An additional 2,000 National Guard troops, along with 700 Marines, are being deployed to Los Angeles under orders from President Donald Trump, intensifying a military presence that local officials and Gov. Gavin Newsom oppose.
The city’s police chief has warned this buildup poses logistical challenges for safely managing protests.
The first wave of 2,000 National Guard troops began arriving Sunday, a day marked by the most intense violence during three days of protests fueled by anger over Trump’s heightened immigration enforcement actions, critics say are tearing migrant families apart.
Monday’s demonstrations were much calmer, with thousands gathering peacefully at a rally at City Hall and hundreds protesting outside a federal complex housing a detention center where some immigrants are held following workplace raids across the city.
Trump has described Los Angeles in dire terms that Mayor Karen Bass and Newsom say are nowhere close to the truth.
They say he is putting public safety at risk by adding military personnel, even though police say they don’t need the help.
Los Angeles Police Chief Jim McDonnell said in a statement he was confident in the police department’s ability to handle large-scale demonstrations and that the Marines’ arrival without coordinating with the police department would present a “significant logistical and operational challenge” for them.
Newsom called the deployments reckless and “disrespectful to our troops” in a post on the social platform X.
“This isn’t about public safety,” Newsom said. “It’s about stroking a dangerous president’s ego.”
The protests began Friday after federal immigration authorities arrested more than 40 people across the city.
The smell of smoke hung in the air downtown Monday, one day after crowds blocked a major freeway and set self-driving cars on fire as police responded with tear gas, rubber bullets and flash-bang grenades.
Additional protests against immigration raids continued into the evening Monday in several other cities, including San Francisco and Santa Ana, California, and Dallas and Austin, Texas.
California Attorney General Rob Bonta filed a lawsuit over the use of National Guard troops following the first deployment, telling reporters that Trump had “trampled” the state’s sovereignty.
“We don’t take lightly the president abusing his authority and unlawfully mobilizing California National Guard troops,” Bonta said. He sought a court order declaring Trump’s use of the Guard unlawful and asked for a restraining order to halt the deployment.
Trump said the city would have been “completely obliterated” if he had not deployed the Guard.
U.S. officials said the Marines were being deployed to protect federal property and personnel, including immigration agents.
A convoy of 10 to 15 buses with blacked-out windows, escorted by sheriff’s vehicles, left the base at Twentynine Palms in the desert east of Los Angeles late Monday and headed toward the city, stopping around 1 a.m. at Naval Weapons Station Seal Beach, about 20 miles south of downtown Los Angeles.
Despite their presence, there has been limited engagement so far between the Guard and protesters while local law enforcement implements crowd control.
On Monday, thousands flooded the streets around City Hall for a union rally ahead of a hearing for arrested labor leader David Huerta, who was freed a few hours later on a $50,000 bond.
Huerta’s arrest Friday while protesting immigration raids has become a rallying cry for people angry over the administration’s crackdown.
He is the president of the Service Employees International Union California, which represents thousands of the state’s janitors, security officers and other workers.
Early protests had a calm and even joyful atmosphere at times, with people dancing to live music and buoyed by Huerta’s release.
Protesters linked hands in front of a line of police officers outside the downtown federal detention center where Huerta was being held. Religious leaders joined the protesters, working with organizers at times to de-escalate moments of tension.
There was a heavy law enforcement presence in the few square blocks including the federal detention facility, while most in the sprawling city of some 4 million people went about their normal business on peaceful streets.
As the crowd thinned, police began pushing protesters away from the area, firing crowd-control munitions as people chanted, “Peaceful protest.” Officers became more aggressive in their tactics in the evening, occasionally surging forward to arrest protesters who got too close. At least a dozen people remaining in the busy Little Tokyo neighborhood were surrounded by police and detained.
Other protests took shape Monday across L.A. County. Outside a clothing warehouse, relatives of detained workers demanded at a news conference that their loved ones be released.
The family of Jacob Vasquez, 35, who was detained Friday at the warehouse where he worked, said they had yet to receive any information about him.
“Jacob is a family man and the sole breadwinner of his household,” Vasquez’s brother, Gabriel, told the crowd. He asked that his last name not be used, fearing being targeted by authorities.
Several dozen people were arrested throughout the weekend protests. Authorities said one person was detained Sunday for throwing a Molotov cocktail at police and another for ramming a motorcycle into a line of officers.
The deployment appeared to be the first time in decades that a state’s National Guard was activated without a request from its governor, a significant escalation against those who have sought to hinder the administration’s mass deportation efforts.
The last time the National Guard was activated without a governor’s permission was in 1965, when President Lyndon B. Johnson sent troops to protect a civil rights march in Alabama, according to the Brennan Center for Justice.
In a directive Saturday, Trump invoked a legal provision allowing him to deploy federal service members when there is “a rebellion or danger of a rebellion against the authority of the Government of the United States.”
