Los Angeles police have made arrests after a curfew took effect in part of the United States’s second-largest city amid continuing protests against President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown.
The Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) said late on Tuesday that “mass arrests” were under way as people gathered within the designated downtown curfew area.
“Multiple groups continue to congregate on 1st St between Spring and Alameda,” the LAPD wrote on X. “Those groups are being addressed and mass arrests are being initiated. Curfew is in effect.”
Later, many of the protesters had dispersed, although sporadic confrontations continued. Officials said the curfew was necessary to stop vandalism and theft by agitators looking to cause trouble.
The curfew applies to 1sq mile (2.6sq km) of the downtown area, and will be in effect from 8pm on Tuesday to 6am on Wednesday (03:00 GMT to 13:00 GMT Wednesday), LA Mayor Karen Bass said.
Bass said she expected the curfew to remain in effect for several days, but stressed that the order applied only to a small portion of the city, which covers 502sq miles (1,300sq km).
The curfew took effect on the fifth night of protests against the Trump administration’s raids on suspected undocumented immigrants in Los Angeles, and as demonstrations spread to dozens of other US cities, including New York, Chicago and Atlanta.
Trump’s immigration crackdown and deployment of the National Guard and Marines against protesters have drawn condemnation from California officials, who have accused the president of abusing his authority and fanning tensions.
In an address to Californians on Tuesday night, Governor Gavin Newsom blasted Trump’s use of military force as a “brazen abuse of power”.
“That’s when the downward spiral began. He doubled down on his dangerous National Guard deployment by fanning the flames even harder, and the president – he did it on purpose,” Newsom said.
Newsom, who has filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration’s deployment of troops against his wishes, said the president had unleashed a “military dragnet” targeting “dishwashers, gardeners, day labourers and seamstresses” rather than violent criminals.
“That’s just weakness – weakness masquerading as strength. Donald Trump’s government isn’t protecting our communities, they’re traumatising communities, and that seems to be the entire point,” Newsom said. “California will keep fighting.”
“If some of us can be snatched off the streets without a warrant, based only on suspicion or skin colour, then none of us are safe,” he added.
“Authoritarian regimes begin by targeting people who are least able to defend themselves. But they do not stop there.”
Reporting from a vigil against the raids in Los Angeles, Al Jazeera’s Teresa Bo said protesters are rejecting the Trump administration’s characterisation of the raids as being aimed at violent criminals.
“Many of the people we have spoken to here say that they are wrong – that they are working people who have come to this country to find a better life,” Bo said.
“That’s why most of the people who are here are extremely angry, and they are demanding an end to the raids.”
Bo said the activists she spoke to also stressed the need to keep the demonstrations peaceful.
“This is something that we’ve been hearing over and over,” she said.
“They say that the main reason they need to be peaceful is because violence gives Donald Trump an excuse to use the military, to use the National Guard on the streets of Los Angeles.”
Earlier on Tuesday, Trump doubled down on his decision to mobilise troops against protesters amid growing condemnation.
“Generations of army heroes did not shed their blood on distant shores only to watch our country be destroyed by invasion and third-world lawlessness here at home, like is happening in California,” Trump told US Army soldiers during a visit to Fort Bragg in North Carolina.
“As commander-in-chief, I will not let that happen. It’s never going to happen.”
