Trump sends thousands more national guard troops to LA as protests continue

The Trump administration was deploying roughly 4,000 national guard members in Los Angeles on Monday in response to protests over immigration raids, in an extraordinary mobilization of troops against US residents that California leaders have called “authoritarian”.

Tensions between the federal government and the nation’s second-largest city dramatically escalated over the weekend as residents took to the streets to demonstrate against a series of brutal crackdowns on immigrant communities. Raids in the region have affected garment district workers, day laborers and restaurants, and the president of a major California union was arrested by federal agents while serving as a community observer during US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) arrests.

Despite facing teargas and other munitions over the weekend, protesters continued to rally on Monday, and families of detained immigrants pleaded for their loved ones to be released.

The Trump administration initially said 2,000 national guard members were being sent to LA, but California governor Gavin Newsom said late on Monday he was informed federal officials were sending an additional 2,000 troops, though he said only 300 had been deployed so far, with the remainder “sitting, unused, in federal buildings without orders”.

Federal authorities also said the military would be sending roughly 700 marines, marking an exceptionally rare deployment of troops to police US residents.

On Monday, California filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration challenging the federal deployment of the state national guard over Newsom’s objections. Meanwhile, Trump’s border czar, Tom Homan, earlier threatened to arrest Newsom and the Los Angeles mayor, Karen Bass, a move the governor said was “an unmistakable step toward authoritarianism”.

Newsom dared the administration to follow through with the threats, prompting Trump to respond: “I would do it if I were Tom. I think it’s great.”

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) held another rally in downtown Los Angeles on Monday, demanding the humane treatment and access to lawyers for all detainees” and an “end to Ice raids that devastate immigrant families and communities”.

“We will not be intimidated. We will not be silenced,” the civil rights group said. The ACLU of Southern California said it planned to sue over the national guard deployment.

Advocates also rallied in support of David Huerta, the president of SEIU California and SEIU-USWW, who was arrested on Friday and initially hospitalized, with video showing officers shoving him to the ground. Huerta was charged on Monday afternoon with a federal offense of conspiracy to impede an officer, which could result in a six-year prison sentence. He was released from federal custody on a $50,000 bond following a court hearing, telling reporters in Spanish: “This fight is ours, it’s our community’s, but it belongs to everyone. We all have to fight for them.”

The charges come after the US government has repeatedly arrested high-profile officials who the Trump administration claims are obstructing Ice, including a New Jersey mayor, a congresswoman and a Wisconsin judge.

People protest against the detention of David Huerta on Monday. Photograph: Daniel Cole/Reuters

Trump, who congratulated the national guard troops for a “great job” even before they had arrived in the city, posted on his Truth Social platform on Monday that deploying them was a “great decision”, saying the city would have been “completely obliterated” otherwise.

Homan claimed on Fox News on Monday that Ice “took a lot of bad people off the street”. He said, without providing specifics, that he had arrested gang members and people with serious criminal convictions, but also admitted that Ice was detaining immigrants without criminal records.

Homan also told NBC News that more raids were coming. “Every day in LA, we’re going to enforce immigration law. I don’t care if they like it or not.”

California’s lawsuit, filed late on Monday against Trump and Pete Hegseth, his defense secretary, said the president had “used a protest that local authorities had under control to make another unprecedented power-grab … at the cost of the sovereignty of the state of California and in disregard of the authority and role of the governor as commander-in-chief of the state’s national guard”.

The suit, which seeks to block the defense department from deploying the state national guard, said there has been no “rebellion” or “insurrection” in LA. California also said that during raids, Ice agents “took actions that inflamed tensions and provoked protest” and “sparked panic”. California noted that Ice sealed off entire streets around targeted buildings, used unmarked armored vehicles with paramilitary gear, and did not coordinate with LA law enforcement officials.

Rob Bonta, the California attorney general who filed the suit, said the president was “trying to manufacture chaos and crisis on the ground for his own political ends”.

Newsom earlier said the president’s actions were unconstitutional and “immoral” and “putting lives at risk”.

Also on Monday, families targeted by the recent raids spoke out. Trabajadores Unidos Workers United, an immigrant rights group, held a press conference outside Ambiance Apparel, a garment district warehouse raided on Friday.

One woman said she witnessed the raid where her father was “kidnapped by Ice”, adding: “What happened was not right. It was not legal. In this country, we all have the right to due process … I saw with my own eyes the pain of the families, crying, screaming, not knowing what to do.”

Yurien Contreras said her family has had no communication with her father, Mario Romero, since he was taken: “I witnessed how they put my father in handcuffs, chained him from the waist and from his ankles.” Lawyers from the Immigrant Defenders Law Center (ImmDef), found that immigrants apprehended in LA were initially detained in a basement of a federal building, alleging they were denied food, water or beds for more than 12 hours.

California highway patrol using smoke grenades to advance and push protestors off the 101 freeway during a demonstration following federal immigration operations in Los Angeles. Photograph: Blake Fagan/AFP/Getty Images

Mayor Bass has said that LA is a “proud city of immigrants” and has strongly condemned the raids, but has also said protesters would be arrested for “violent” acts. LAPD said on Monday that 29 people had been arrested on Saturday for “failure to disperse”, and that there were 21 additional arrests on Sunday on a range of charges, including looting, attempted murder with a molotov cocktail and assault on an officer.

Civil rights activists criticized the militarized response of local law enforcement, including LAPD, which has a history of injuring protesters, sometimes leading to costly settlements. Several journalists were injured at the protests, with an Australian reporter on Sunday shot by a rubber bullet at close range while filming a segment.

“When residents come together to make use of their first amendment rights, often LAPD responds with a show of force,” said Sergio Perez, executive director of the Center for Human Rights and Constitutional Law, a legal support group, who was present at the protests. “When you show up in riot gear and paramilitary equipment, you inject into an already dynamic situation a volatile element that escalates things.”

The LAPD said officers had fired more than 600 rubber bullets over the weekend. Thousands had protested on Sunday, rallying around city hall and a federal detention center, and at one point, taking over a freeway.

Jim McDonnell, the chief of the LAPD, also said his department had not been formally notified that marines were being deployed to the city, and said their arrival would present a “significant logistical and operational challenge”.

Hegseth, meanwhile, said the marines were needed to “restore order” and “defend federal law enforcement officers”.

Trump’s national guard deployment marked a stunning escalation in a broad crackdown on immigrants following raids across the country. The federalization of the guard troops is the first time an American president has used such power since the 1992 LA riots, when widespread violence broke out in reaction to the acquittal of four white police officers for brutally beating the Black motorist Rodney King. It also was the first deployment without the express request of the governor since 1965.

Los Angeles county, home to 3.5 million immigrants, making up a third of the population, has a long history of civil rights protests. The demonstrations come as the White House has aggressively ramped up immigration enforcement with mass detentions in overcrowded facilities, a new travel ban, a major crackdown on international students and rushed deportations without due process.

Perez, of the legal support group, noted how immigrants were deeply woven into the fabric of life in LA, making uprisings against raids inevitable: “When a city like this is the target of an immigration raid by an administration like this, you’re going to deal with a popular and massive outpouring of resistance.”