LOS ANGELES — National Guard troops started arriving in Los Angeles early Sunday morning after President Donald Trump issued orders in response to recent confrontations between federal immigration authorities and protestors who are trying to prevent deportations.
California’s National Guard members were observed gathering at the federal complex in downtown Los Angeles, which houses the Metropolitan Detention Center. This location is one of several that have experienced large-scale confrontations involving hundreds of individuals over the last two days.
Trump has said he is deploying 2,000 California National Guard troops to Los Angeles to quell the protests, which he called “a form of rebellion.”
This deployment occurred despite opposition from Governor Gavin Newsom and marks the first occasion in decades that the National Guard was activated in a state without the governor’s request, as reported by the Brennan Center for Justice.
Early Sunday, the deployment was limited to a small area in downtown Los Angeles, with the rest of the city of 4 million people largely unaffected.
Their arrival follows two days of relatively small protests that began Friday in downtown Los Angeles before spreading on Saturday to Paramount, a heavily Latino city south of the city, and neighboring Compton.
As federal agents staged near a Home Depot in Paramount, demonstrators sought to block Border Patrol vehicles, with some hurling rocks and chunks of cement. In response, federal agents in riot gear unleashed tear gas, flash-bang explosives and pepper balls.
Tensions were high after a series of sweeps by immigration authorities the previous day, as the weeklong tally of immigrant arrests in the city climbed past 100. A prominent union leader was arrested while protesting and accused of impeding law enforcement.
On Sunday morning, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said the National Guard would “keep peace and allow people to be able to protest but also to keep law and order.”
The troops included members of the 79th Infantry Brigade Combat Team, according to a social media post from the Department of Defense that showed dozens of National Guard members with long guns and an armored vehicle.
In a signal of the administration’s aggressive approach, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth also threatened to deploy active-duty Marines “if violence continues” in the region.
Newsom, a Democrat, described Trump’s decision to call in the National Guard as a “provocative show of force” that would only escalate tensions, adding that Hegseth’s threat to deploy Marines on American soil was “deranged behavior.”
Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders said the order by Trump reflected “a president moving this country rapidly into authoritarianism” and “usurping the powers of the United States Congress.”
Several Republicans, meanwhile, have voiced support for the involvement of the National Guard. Among them was Wisconsin Republican Sen. Ron Johnson, who stopped short of backing Hegseth’s threat to send in active-duty military personnel.
“My guess is the National Guard ought to take care of the situation,” Johnson said.
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Offenhartz reported from New York.
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