White House says the US president is deploying 2,000 guardsmen to address ‘lawlessness’ as protests against immigration raids continue.
United States President Donald Trump is deploying 2,000 National Guard troops to the city of Los Angeles in California, where an immigration crackdown has triggered protests and clashes for a second day.
The White House said in a statement on Saturday that Trump was deploying the guardsmen to “address the lawlessness that has been allowed to fester” in the US’s second most populous city.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth also warned that the Pentagon was prepared to mobilise active-duty troops “if violence continues” in Los Angeles, saying the Marines at nearby Camp Pendleton were “on high alert”.
Trump’s border czar, Tom Homan, meanwhile told Fox News that the National Guard would be deployed in Los Angeles on Saturday.
California Governor Gavin Newsom called the decision “purposefully inflammatory”.
He posted on X that Trump was deploying the National Guard “not because there is a shortage of law enforcement, but because they want a spectacle,” adding: “Don’t give them one. Never use violence. Speak out peacefully.”
During Saturday’s protests, federal agents confronted dozens of protesters in the Paramount area of southeast Los Angeles, deploying tear gas on a street strewn with overturned shopping carts, as the crowds called on Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents to leave their city.
Some of the protesters waved the flag of Mexico and had their faces covered with respiratory masks.
The protests followed reports of continued immigration raids near a home improvement shop in the area.
There had been confrontations in Los Angeles the night before too, when ICE agents raided several locations in the city and arrested at least 44 people on alleged immigration violations.
Following the arrests, protesters gathered in the evening outside a federal detention centre, chanting, “Set them free, let them stay!”
Some held signs with anti-ICE slogans, and some scrawled graffiti on the building.
Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass condemned the immigration raids and said they were meant to “sow terror” in the city, which is one of the most diverse metropolises in the country.
Trump, in turn, chided Newsom and Bass in a post on his Truth Social platform.
“If Governor Gavin Newscum, of California, and Mayor Karen Bass, of Los Angeles, can’t do their jobs, which everyone knows they can’t, then the Federal Government will step in and solve the problem, RIOTS & LOOTERS, the way it should be solved!!!” he wrote.
The immigration crackdown is part of Trump’s pledge to deport record numbers of people in the country without documentation and lock down the US-Mexico border. The White House has set a goal for ICE to arrest at least 3,000 migrants per day.
But people living in the country legally, including some with permanent residence, have also been caught up in the sweeping immigration crackdown, leading to legal challenges.
Al Jazeera’s Rosiland Jordan, reporting from Washington, DC, said Trump’s move to deploy the National Guard has prompted concern across the country.
“There has not been a deployment of the National Guard in Los Angeles since 1991, during the riots after the police beating of Rodney King. So this is a significant step,” she said.
“But there are a lot of questions here in the US whether or not the president has the legal authority to send in the members of the National Guard, who technically report to the state’s governor, and not the president directly. And as we know, the governor of California has not agreed to this deployment.”
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