The US President Donald Trump-led administration said that it would deploy 2,000 National Guard troops on Sunday as the federal agents in Los Angeles faced off against a few hundred demonstrators amid the immigration raids. According to news agency Reuters, Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth warned that the Pentagon was prepared to mobilize active-duty troops “if violence continues” in Los Angeles, saying the Marines at nearby Camp Pendleton were “on high alert.”
The agents of federal security confronted protestors on Saturday in the Paramount area in southeast Los Angeles, where some demonstrators displayed Mexican flags. In downtown, a second protest on Saturday attracted some 60 people, who went to southeast Los Angeles, where some demonstrators displayed Mexican flags.
The US President signed a presidential memorandum to deploy the National Guard troops to “address the lawlessness that has been allowed to fester”, the White House said in a statement. Trump’s border czar, Tom Homan, told Fox News that the National Guard would be deployed in Los Angeles on Saturday.
The California Governor Gavin Newsom called the decision “purposefully inflammatory.” On X, he posted that Trump was deploying the National Guard “not because there is a shortage of law enforcement, but because they want a spectacle,” adding: “Don’t give them one. Never use violence. Speak out peacefully.”
The US President posted on his Truth Social platform that if Newsom and Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass can’t do their jobs “then the Federal Government will step in and solve the problem, RIOTS & LOOTERS, the way it should be solved!!!”
The protests pit Democratic-run Los Angeles, where census data suggests a significant portion of the population is Hispanic and foreign-born, against Trump’s Republican White House, which has made cracking down on immigration a hallmark of his second term, reports Reuters.
Vice President JD Vance posted on X on Saturday that, “Insurrectionists carrying foreign flags are attacking immigration enforcement officers, while one half of America’s political leadership has decided that border enforcement is evil.”
The protests was described as a “violent insurrection by senior White House aide Stephen Miller.
According to Reuters, the video footage of the Paramount protest showed dozens of green-uniformed security personnel with gas masks at the Paramount protest, lined up on a road strewn with overturned shopping carts as small canisters exploded into gas clouds. Authorities began detaining some protesters. There was no official information of any arrests.
(With inputs from Reuters.)
