Donald Trump’s administration promised to crush opposition in Los Angeles.
Late on Saturday night, the US president deployed national guard soldiers in LA following protests against immigration raids in the city – a stunning escalation in the administration’s promise of “mass deportations”. His administration has promised to quell protests, and warned local leaders to brace for at least 30 days of ramped-up immigration enforcement.
But the overwhelming show of force may have awoken something else. The city is responding with a roaring backlash.
The moment Trump was sworn in for his second presidential term, he unleashed a barrage of draconian immigration restrictions. Ice agents began ambushing people inside their homes, in schools and churches. Children were being detained in what activists have called “baby jails”. Asylum seekers were exiled to a brutal mega-prison in El Salvador.
There were protests across the US – but the resistance that marked Trump’s first term seemed to have flagged. Institutions had begun folding to the president’s threats. As the administration escalated immigration raids and stripped away immigrants’ rights; politicians mounted muffled objections.
And then Trump came after Los Angeles.
Fueling the fury was the brutality with which federal agents had approached their targets, including a clothing manufacturer in Los Angeles’s garment district, and Home Depot in the Westlake district and a warehouse in South Los Angeles. The arrests were carried out without judicial warrants, according to the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) – advocates say that more than 200 people were taken.
Lawyers reported that Immigration and Customs Enforcement has been holding detained families in the basements of federal immigration facilities, separating children and mothers from their fathers. Agents have refused access to attorneys and family members, according to the Immigrant Defenders Law Center (ImmDef).
As masked immigration officers ripped workers away from their jobs, other agents in riot gear attacked protesters with teargas and flash-bang grenades, escalating a handful of isolated demonstrations into a clash that roiled the city and spurred several hundred to join the protest.
Among the protesters arrested was the union leader David Huerta, president of SEIU-USWW and SEIU California. The images of a middle-aged man in a plaid button-down shirt who was shoved down to the ground have angered millions of union workers across the US, wrote the LA Times columnist Anita Chabria. “The battleground has been redrawn in ways we don’t fully yet appreciate,” she wrote.
Trump has responded to the protests with escalating force, bypassing the governor to activate the state’s national guard for the first time since the 1992 LA riots, when police officers were acquitted over the beating of Rodney King. Pete Hegseth, the defense secretary, suggested that in addition to the 2,000 guardsmen promised, the government would consider sending in the marines – a suggestion that California’s governor, Gavin Newsom, called “deranged”.
JD Vance suggested that the administration was targeting this Democratic city in a Democratic state as part of a political lesson, referring to protesters as “insurrectionists”.
The show of might is all part of a deliberate strategy to “flood the zone”, according to the White House border czar, Tom Homan, who told Fox News recently that the administration would be zeroing in on “sanctuary cities” that refuse to cooperate with immigration enforcers.
But communities don’t like to see their friends and neighbors cuffed. “These are workers, these are fathers, these are mothers,” said Angelica Salas, executive director for the advocacy group Chirla, said at a news conference on Friday. “Our community is under attack and is being terrorized.”
The Los Angeles-area US representative Maxine Waters, who also was denied entry to the federal immigration office in downtown LA, said the crowds should “grow and grow and grow” until Trump reversed course on his deployment of soldiers.
The best public interest journalism relies on first-hand accounts from people in the know.
If you have something to share on this subject you can contact us confidentially using the following methods.
Secure Messaging in the Guardian app
The Guardian app has a tool to send tips about stories. Messages are end to end encrypted and concealed within the routine activity that every Guardian mobile app performs. This prevents an observer from knowing that you are communicating with us at all, let alone what is being said.
If you don't already have the Guardian app, download it (iOS/Android) and go to the menu. Select 'Secure Messaging'.
SecureDrop, instant messengers, email, telephone and post
See our guide at theguardian.com/tips for alternative methods and the pros and cons of each.
Similar raids took place in Newark, Chicago, Nashville and other cities across the US. In San Diego last week, a neighbourhood mobilized as federal agents raided restaurants, yelling “Shame! Shame!” at officers in military gear.
“The administration is testing Los Angeles to see if we break under pressure,” said Lindsay Toczylowski, president of ImmDef. “But we won’t back down.”
