U.S. President Donald Trump deployed 2,000 National Guard members in response to protests against Immigration and Customs Enforcement activity in Los Angeles over the weekend, as Secretary of Defence Pete Hegseth threatened to call in the Marines.
The protests began on Friday in opposition to ICE raids on retail establishments around Los Angeles. During Friday’s protests, David Huerta, president of SEIU California and SEIU-United Service Workers West, was injured and then arrested while observing a raid. His arrest sparked further protests, which carried over into Saturday in response to apparent ICE activity in the nearby city of Paramount.
“The Trump administration’s baseless deployment of the National Guard is plainly retaliation against California, a stronghold for immigrant communities, and is akin to a declaration of war on all Californians,” Victor Leung, chief legal and advocacy officer at the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) Foundation of Southern California, said in a statement.
Saturday’s most dramatic protest occurred outside a Home Depot in Paramount following rumors of an ICE raid there. However, Paramount Mayor Peggy Lemons told the Los Angeles Times that the ICE agents may instead have been staging at a nearby Department of Homeland Security (DHS) office. There were also rumors of an ICE raid on a meatpacking plant that never occurred.
“We don’t know what was happening, or what their target was. To think that there would be no heightening of fear and no consequences from the community doesn’t sound like good preparation to me,” Lemons said. “Above all, there is no communication and things are done on a whim. And that creates chaos and fear.”
According to the LA Times, the Home Depot protests began peacefully until officers lobbed flash-bang grenades and pepper balls at the crowd, after which some individuals responded by throwing rocks and other objects at the ICE cars, and one person drove their vehicle toward the ICE agents.
“Many of the protesters did not appear to engage in these tactics,” the LA Times reported.
In another incident, Lindsay Toczylowski, the chief executive of Immigrant Defenders Law Center, wrote on social media that ICE agents threw a tear-gas canister at two of the center’s female attorneys after they asked the agents if they could see a warrant and observe their activities.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Central District of California said that over a dozen people were arrested on Saturday for interfering with the work of immigration agents.
The first member of the Trump administration to mention sending in the National Guard was White House border czar Tom Homan, who told Fox News, “We’re gonna bring National Guard in tonight and we’re gonna continue doing our job. This is about enforcing the law.”
Trump then signed a memo Saturday night calling members of the California National Guard into federal service to protect ICE and other government officials.
“To the extent that protests or acts of violence directly inhibit the execution of the laws, they constitute a form of rebellion against the authority of the Government of the United States,” the memo reads in part.
Source: Commondreams.org
