LOS ANGELES – Several US cities braced for a new round of protests on Wednesday over President Donald Trump’s sweeping immigration raids, as parts of Los Angeles spent the night under curfew in an effort to quell five days of unrest.
Officials were also preparing for nationwide anti-Trump demonstrations on Saturday, when tanks and armored vehicles will rumble down the streets of Washington, DC, in a military parade marking the US Army’s 250th anniversary and coinciding with the president’s 79th birthday.
The governor of Texas, Republican Greg Abbott, said he will deploy the National Guard on Wednesday ahead of planned protests. Already this week, demonstrations have broken out in Austin, Texas, New York, Atlanta and Chicago, among other cities.
Trump’s decision to send National Guard troops and Marines to Los Angeles has sparked a national debate on the use of military on US soil and pitted the Republican president against California’s Democratic governor, Gavin Newsom.
Trump has claimed that the deployment prevented the violence from raging out of control, an assertion Newsom and other local officials said was the opposite of the truth.
“This brazen abuse of power by a sitting president inflamed a combustible situation, putting our people, our officers and even our National Guard at risk. That’s when the downward spiral began,” Newsom said in a video address on Tuesday. “He again chose escalation. He chose more force. He chose theatrics over public safety. … Democracy is under assault.”
Newsom, who is widely expected to mount a presidential run in 2028, sued Trump and the Defense Department on Monday, seeking to block the deployment of federal troops. Trump in turn has suggested that Newsom should be arrested.
Hundreds of Marines arrived in the Los Angeles area on Tuesday under orders from Trump, who has also called up 4 000 National Guard troops to the city. The Marines and National Guard are assigned to protect government personnel and buildings and do not have arrest authority.
About 700 Marines were in a staging area in the Seal Beach area about 30 miles (50 km) south of Los Angeles on Tuesday, awaiting deployment to specific locations, a US official said.
Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass said the deployments were not necessary and that local police could manage the protests, which have been largely peaceful and limited to about five downtown streets.
But the mayor elected to impose a curfew over one square mile of the city’s downtown starting on Tuesday night after several businesses were looted during the unrest. The curfew will last several days.
Police said multiple groups stayed on the streets in some areas despite the curfew and “mass arrests” were initiated.
California Attorney General Rob Bonta told Reuters that the state was concerned about allowing federal troops to protect personnel, saying that could violate an 1878 law that generally forbids the US military, including the National Guard, from taking part in civilian law enforcement.
“Protecting personnel likely means accompanying ICE (US Immigration and Customs Enforcement) agents into communities and neighbourhoods, and protecting functions could mean protecting the ICE function of enforcing the immigration law,” Bonta said.
The agency posted photos on X on Tuesday of National Guard troops accompanying ICE officers on an immigration raid. Trump administration officials have vowed to redouble the immigration raids in response to the street protests.
The last time the military was used for direct police action under the Insurrection Act was in 1992, when the California governor at the time asked President George H.W. Bush for help responding to Los Angeles riots over the acquittal of police officers who beat Black motorist Rodney King. (Reuters)
The post US cities brace for more protests, downtown Los Angeles under curfew appeared first on nationnews.com.
