Marines on high alert after Trump sends National Guard to Los Angeles

Los Angeles: US President Donald Trump is deploying 2000 California National Guard troops to Los Angeles over the objections of state Governor Gavin Newsom after a second day of clashes between hundreds of protesters and federal immigration authorities in riot gear.

Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth said the Pentagon was prepared to mobilise active duty troops “if violence continues” in the Californian city, saying the marines at nearby Camp Pendleton were on high alert.

Confrontations broke out on Saturday near a Home Depot store in the heavily Latino city of Paramount, south of Los Angeles, where federal agents were staging at a Department of Homeland Security office nearby. Agents unleashed tear gas, flash-bang explosives and pepper balls, and protesters hurled rocks and cement at Border Patrol vehicles. Smoke wafted from small piles of burning refuse in the streets.

Tensions were high after a series of sweeps by immigration authorities the previous day, including in the Los Angeles fashion district and at a Home Depot, as the weeklong tally of immigrant arrests in the city climbed past 100. A union leader arrested while protesting was accused of impeding law enforcement.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt on Saturday night said Trump had signed a presidential memorandum deploying 2000 National Guard troops because “California’s feckless Democrat leaders have completely abdicated their responsibility to protect their citizens”. It wasn’t clear when the troops would arrive.

Newsom, a Democrat, said in a post on the social platform X that sending in the National Guard was “purposefully inflammatory and will only escalate tensions”. He later said the federal government wanted a spectacle and he urged people not to give it one by becoming violent.

Newsom also said it was “deranged behaviour” for Hegseth to be “threatening to deploy active duty marines on American soil against its own citizens”.

Trump’s order came after clashes in Paramount and neighbouring Compton, where a car was set fire. Protests continued into the evening in Paramount. Several hundred demonstrators gathered near a doughnut shop and authorities held up barbed wire to keep the crowd back.

Crowds also gathered again outside federal buildings in downtown Los Angeles, including a detention centre, where local police declared an unlawful assembly and began to arrest people.

Earlier in Paramount, immigration officers had faced off with demonstrators at the entrance to a business park, across from the back of a Home Depot. They set off fireworks and pulled shopping trolleys into the street, broke up cinder blocks and pelted a procession of Border Patrol vans as they departed and careened down a boulevard.

Newsom had earlier said Trump was moving to take over the California National Guard, even though local authorities would have access to law enforcement help at a moment’s notice, and that there was currently “no unmet need” for such assistance.

Trump posted 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!!!”

Vice President J.D. Vance also commented on the situation on X late on Saturday, saying “insurrectionists carrying foreign flags are attacking immigration enforcement officers, while one half of America’s political leadership has decided that border enforcement is evil”.

Senior White House aide Stephen Miller, an immigration hardliner, described the protests as a “violent insurrection”.

Law enforcement officers stand with weapons raised towards the protesters.Credit: AP

But the administration had not invoked the Insurrection Act, two US officials told Reuters on condition of anonymity. One also said National Guard troops could deploy quickly, within 24 hours in some cases, and that the military was working to source the 2000 troops.

The Insurrection Act is an 1807 law that empowers a president to deploy the military to enforce the law and suppress events such as civil disorder. The last time it was invoked was during the 1992 Los Angeles riots, at the request of the California governor.

The protests have pitted Democratic-run Los Angeles, where census data suggests a significant portion of the population is Hispanic and foreign-born, against Trump’s Republican White House, which has made cracking down on immigration a hallmark of his second term.

“Now they know that they cannot go anywhere in this country where our people are, and try to kidnap our workers, our people – they cannot do that without an organised and fierce resistance,” protester Ron Gochez, 44, said.

People block off the street and set a fire during protests against ICE and immigration raids in Paramount on Saturday.Credit: Los Angeles Times via Getty Images

“ICE out of Paramount. We see you for what you are,” a woman said through a megaphone. “You are not welcome here.”

One handheld sign said: “No Human Being is Illegal.”

In explaining the decision to send in the National Guard, Leavitt said violent mobs had attacked immigration officers and federal agents while they were carrying out deportations essential to Trump’s efforts to halt and reverse “the invasion of illegal criminals”, and that lawlessness had been “allowed to fester”.

“The Trump administration has a zero tolerance policy for criminal behaviour and violence, especially when that violence is aimed at law enforcement officers trying to do their jobs,” she said. “These criminals will be arrested and swiftly brought to justice. The commander-in-chief will ensure the laws of the United States are executed fully and completely.”

Protesters shoot fireworks during clashes in Paramount, California, on Saturday.Credit: Getty Images

On Friday, Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers arrested more than 40 people while executing search warrants at multiple locations, including outside a clothing warehouse, where a tense scene unfolded as a crowd tried to block agents from driving away.

The raids came after a judge found probable cause that the warehouse employer was using fictitious documents for some of its workers, according to Homeland Security Investigations and the US Attorney’s Office.

The Department for Homeland Security said 118 immigrants had been arrested in the raids on Friday and Saturday, including five people linked to criminal organisations and people with prior criminal histories.

Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass said the immigration raids were meant to “sow terror” in the nation’s second-largest city.

In a statement, ICE acting director Todd Lyons chided Bass for the city’s response to protests.

“Mayor Bass took the side of chaos and lawlessness over law enforcement,” Lyons said. “Make no mistake, ICE will continue to enforce our nation’s immigration laws and arrest criminal illegal aliens.”

Reuters, AP

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