Los Angeles (United States) (AFP) – Downtown Los Angeles was largely calm overnight into Wednesday, with police arresting at least 25 people for violating a curfew after a fifth day of protests against President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown. Heavily armed security officers, including several riding horses, patrolled near government buildings, while men boarded up storefronts after dark on Tuesday to protect against vandalism. Looting and vandalism in the second-biggest US city have marred the largely peaceful protests over ramped-up arrests by immigration authorities.
The demonstrations, which began Friday, and isolated acts of violence prompted Trump to take the extraordinary step of sending in troops, over the objection of the state governor. One protester told AFP the arrest of migrants in a city with large immigrant and Latino populations was the root of the unrest. “I don’t think that part of the problem is the peaceful protests. It’s whatever else is happening on the other side that is inciting violence,” she said Tuesday.
Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass said the curfew — meant to stop vandalism and looting — was in effect within one square mile (2.5 square kilometers) of the city’s more-than-500 square mile area from 8:00 pm to 6:00 am (0300 to 1300 GMT). That zone was off-limits for everyone apart from residents, journalists, and emergency services, she added. Protests against immigration arrests by federal law enforcement have also sprung up in cities around the country, including New York, Atlanta, Chicago, San Francisco, and Austin.
On Tuesday, in the Atlanta suburb of Brookhaven, dozens of demonstrators waved American and Mexican flags and held signs against US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), the federal agency that has ramped up arrests and deportations of migrants under Trump. “You got people that are being arrested on the street by (immigration) agents that don’t wear badges, wear masks…it makes me really angry,” 26-year-old protester Brendon Terra told AFP.
The Los Angeles protests again turned ugly Tuesday night, but an hour into the curfew only a handful of protesters were left downtown, with police making several arrests as they warned stragglers to leave. “Multiple groups continue to congregate” within the designated downtown curfew area, the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) wrote on X late Tuesday. “Those groups are being addressed and mass arrests are being initiated.” Police arrested at least 25 people on suspicion of violating the curfew as of Tuesday evening, the Los Angeles Times reported, citing an LAPD spokesperson.
At their largest, the protests have included a few thousand people taking to the streets, but smaller groups have used the cover of darkness to set fires, daub graffiti, and smash windows. Overnight Monday, 23 businesses were looted, police said, adding that more than 500 people had been arrested over recent days.
Trump has activated 4,000 National Guard troops in Los Angeles, along with 700 active-duty Marines, in what he has claimed is a necessary escalation to take back control, even though local law enforcement authorities insisted they could handle the unrest. A military spokeswoman said the Marines were expected to be on the streets by Wednesday. Their mission will be to guard federal facilities and provide protection to federal officers during immigration enforcement operations. The Pentagon said the deployment would cost US taxpayers $134 million. Photographs issued by the Marine Corps showed men in combat fatigues using riot shields to practice crowd control techniques at the Naval Weapons Station Seal Beach.
Late Tuesday, Texas Governor Greg Abbott said his state would deploy its National Guard “to locations across the state to ensure peace & order” after solidarity protests. In sprawling Los Angeles on Tuesday, it was largely a typical day, with tourists thronging Hollywood Boulevard, children attending school, and commuter traffic choking streets.
But at a military base in North Carolina, Trump painted a darker picture. “What you’re witnessing in California is a full-blown assault on peace, on public order and national sovereignty,” the Republican told troops at Fort Bragg. “We will not allow an American city to be invaded and conquered by a foreign enemy.” California Governor Gavin Newsom, a Democrat who has clashed with the president before, said Trump’s shock militarization of the city was the behavior of “a tyrant, not a president.”
In a filing to the US District Court in Northern California, Newsom asked for an injunction preventing the use of troops for policing. US law largely prevents the use of the military as a police force — absent the declaration of an insurrection, which Trump has mused. The president “is trying to use emergency declarations to justify bringing in first the National Guard and then mobilizing Marines,” said law professor Frank Bowman.
© 2024 AFP
