A curfew has come into force for part of Los Angeles as hundreds of US Marines arrived in the area under orders from President Donald Trump, ratcheting up tensions in America’s second largest city.
Mayor Karen Bass announced the curfew for one square mile of downtown Los Angeles that will run from 8pm to 6am locally (4am to 2pm BST) for several days.
With five minutes until the curfew took effect, hundreds of protesters faced police with their hands raised, chanting “peaceful protest.”
Ms Bass emphasised at a press conference the distinction between the majority of demonstrators protesting peacefully and a smaller number of agitators she blamed for violence and looting.
She said she decided to impose a curfew after 23 business were looted on Monday night.
“When these peaceful rallies end, and the protesters head home, another element moves in: opportunists, who come in under the cover of a peaceful protest to ravage and destroy,” Council member Ysabel Jurado, who represents the area, told reporters.
Trump’s extraordinary measures of sending National Guard and Marines to quell protests, which broke out in response to his immigration raids, fueled demonstrations for a fifth day in Los Angeles, and sparked protests in several other cities.
The President’s extraordinary measures prompted California’s governor, Gavin Newsom, to warn “democracy is under assault.”
Police arrested another 197 people on Tuesday - more than double the total number of arrests to date.
Democratic leaders have raised concerns over a national crisis in what has become the most intense flashpoint yet in the Trump administration’s efforts to deport migrants living in the country illegally, and then crack down on opponents who take to the streets in protest.
“This brazen abuse of power by a sitting president inflamed a combustible situation, putting our people, our officers and even our National Guard at risk. That’s when the downward spiral began,” Mr Newsom said in an a video address.
“He again chose escalation. He chose more force. He chose theatrics over public safety. ... Democracy is under assault.”
Mr Newsom, widely seen as preparing for a presidential run in 2028, has called the deployments an illegal waste of resources. He and the state sued Trump and the Defense Department on Monday, seeking to block the deployment of federal troops. Trump in turn has suggested Mr Newsom should be arrested.
Trump, voted back into office last year largely for his promise to deport undocumented immigrants, used a speech honouring soldiers on Tuesday to defend his decision.
He told troops at the Army base in Fort Bragg, North Carolina: “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.”
“What you’re witnessing in California is a full-blown assault on peace, on public order and on national sovereignty, carried out by rioters bearing foreign flags,” Trump said, adding his administration would “liberate Los Angeles.”
Demonstrators have waved the flags of Mexico and other countries in solidarity for the migrants rounded in a series of intensifying raids.
Homeland Security said on Monday its Immigration and Customs Enforcement division had arrested 2,000 immigration offenders per day recently, far above the 311 daily average in fiscal year 2024 under former President Joe Biden.
