Trump deploys National Guard to LA

LOS ANGELES — Tensions boiled over in Los Angeles on Sunday for a third day, hours after President Donald Trump took the extraordinary action of ordering at least 2,000 National Guard members to assist immigration agents clashing with demonstrators.

Near downtown, federal law enforcement officials fired canisters of tear gas at a group protesting immigration raids. Department of Homeland Security officers were among those who fired less-than-lethal rounds outside the Metropolitan Detention Center, where a crowd had been growing since the morning. The officers included at least one member of Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s Special Response Team, which wears military fatigues.

The announcement late Saturday by Trump — who said that any protest or act of violence that impeded officials would be considered a “form of rebellion” — was an escalation that put Los Angeles, and California, squarely at the center of his administration’s immigration crackdown.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom called the rare use of federal powers to bypass his authority “purposefully inflammatory” on Saturday night, adding that there was “no unmet need” and that the deployment was “the wrong mission and will erode public trust.”

On Sunday, in a formal letter, Newsom asked Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to rescind Trump’s order to deploy the National Guard in Los Angeles. “We didn’t have a problem until Trump got involved,” Newsom said in a social media post. “This is a serious breach of state sovereignty — inflaming tensions while pulling resources from where they’re actually needed.”

Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass on Sunday said sending the National Guard to Los Angeles is “a chaotic escalation,” in the aftermath of immigration raids that she said have terrorized community members.

Nearly 300 members of the California National Guard took up positions at three sites around Los Angeles on Sunday morning, according to Newsom’s office. They were the first of what Trump said would be at least 2,000 National Guard members being sent to deal with the demonstrations. Izzy Gardon, a spokesperson for Newsom, said the soldiers were deployed after Trump credited them with having turned the situation around.

Armed and in camouflage, the troops arrived Sunday at the start of what was expected to be a third consecutive day of demonstrations over the administration’s recent raids on workplaces in search of immigrants in the country without legal permission.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

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