Trump says Los Angeles ‘safe and sound' for two nights after protests
The protests had ignited over an escalation in efforts to apprehend migrants in the US illegally. PHOTO: AFP
Trump says Los Angeles 'safe and sound' for two nights after protests
WASHINGTON - Los Angeles 'was safe and sound for the last two nights', US President Donald Trump said on the morning of J une 12 , as he hailed troops for helping to restore order in the city after days of anti-deportation protests.
'Our great National Guard, with a little help from the Marines, put the LA Police in a position to effectively do their job,' Mr Trump said on Truth Social, adding that without the military the city 'would be a crime scene like we haven't seen in years'.
The mostly peaceful protests ignited last week over a sudden escalation in efforts to apprehend migrants in the country illegally.
But there were also pockets of violence, including the burning of self-driving taxis and hurling stones at police.
Mr Trump deployed several thousand National Guard troops and some 700 active-duty Marines over the objections of Democratic California governor Gavin Newsom, the first such action by a US president in decades.
In his post, Mr Trump said Mr Newsom 'had totally lost control of the situation'.
'He should be saying THANK YOU for saving his a**, instead of trying to justify his mistakes and incompetence!!!' the president added.
Similar protests also ignited in other cities across the United States, as California prepared on June 12 for a legal showdown of Mr Trump's deployment of the military.
A second night of curfew was in place as city leaders tried to get a handle on the after-dark vandalism and looting that scarred a few city blocks in the 1,300 sq km metropolis. AFP
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Business Times
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Trump urges Iran to make deal after Israel blasts nuclear and military targets
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Iranian media and witnesses reported explosions, including some at the main uranium enrichment facility at Natanz. Iran's Atomic Energy Organisation said Natanz had sustained damage but no casualties had been reported. Iran said several top commanders and six nuclear scientists had been killed, including the armed forces chief of staff, Major General Mohammad Bagheri, and Revolutionary Guards chief Hossein Salami. Two sources in the region said at least 20 senior commanders were dead, including the head of the Revolutionary Guards aerospace force. An Israeli military official said the strikes had achieved a great deal but assessments were continuing and Israel was prepared to keep the operation going for days. Among the targets were ballistic missiles pointed towards Israel, they added. 'We are at a decisive moment in Israel's history,' Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a recorded video message. Just before six am Washington time, Trump posted on his Truth Social platform. 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US and Iranian officials are scheduled to hold a sixth round of talks on Tehran's escalating uranium enrichment programme in Oman on Sunday. REUTERS
Straits Times
an hour ago
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Trump urges Iran to make a deal, warning next attacks will be ‘more brutal'
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Straits Times
an hour ago
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Soldiers, Strykers and 100-degree temps: Inside Trump's border military zone
FILE PHOTO: A Stryker armored vehicle stands near U.S. military personnel and Border Patrol agents on the U.S.-Mexico border, in Sunland Park, New Mexico, U.S., March 28, 2025. REUTERS/Jose Luis Gonzalez/File Photo SANTA TERESA, NM - The weapons system atop a drab green U.S. Army Stryker swivels, its camera shifting downward toward a white Ford F-150 driving slowly along the U.S.-Mexico border. Under the watchful eye of the 26-ton armored vehicle perched on a sand dune above them, humanitarian volunteers are driving the dirt road next to the border wall to see if they can continue to search for migrant remains inside one of two military zones established along the border by the Trump administration in April and May. Soon, they get their answer. It's not long before an unmarked gray pickup appears, makes a U-turn in the sand, and puts on its siren, here in the desert 5.6 miles (9 km) west of the Santa Teresa, New Mexico border crossing. 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That meant if you had crossed the border and could read them, you were already in the zone. Migrants caught illegally crossing the border into the zones face new trespassing charges on top of unlawful entry to the country, with combined penalties of up to 10 years imprisonment. Attempts to prosecute them for trespassing have floundered. Starting in May, federal judges in Texas and New Mexico have dismissed trespassing charges against migrants caught within the area and acquitted a Peruvian woman brought to trial, ruling there was no evidence they saw signs before entering the zone. Illegal border crossings fell to a record low in March after the Biden administration shut down asylum claims in 2024 and Mexico tightened immigration controls. Trump, who banned people from claiming asylum on the southern border shortly after starting his second term in January, nonetheless says the military areas are needed to repel an "invasion" of human traffickers and drug smugglers. 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Some 105 Stryker combat vehicles and around 2,400 troops from the 4th Infantry Division deployed from Colorado Springs in March. They rove in armored personnel carriers across New Mexico, Texas and Arizona. Reuters saw Strykers concentrated in a roughly 20-mile ribbon from El Paso west to Santa Teresa, one of the 2,000-mile border's busiest and most deadly areas for migrant crossings. The 8-wheeled vehicles, used by Americans in Iraq and Afghanistan, and now by Ukraine in its war with Russia, can be seen parked under a bridge to Mexico, atop a landfill and on a ridge above a gap in the border wall. Their engines run 24/7 to cool crews in the 100 F. (38 C.) plus heat. Vehicles are unarmed but soldiers have personal weapons. Crews take shifts operating the joystick-controlled camera systems that can see for two miles (3.2 km) and have night vision, according to the Army. A person familiar with Strykers, who asked not to be named, said the work was 'monotonous' but said it gave soldiers 'a sense of purpose.' Troops have alerted Border Patrol to 390 illegal crossings in the nearly two months since the first zone was established. They made their first detentions on June 3, holding 3 'illegal aliens' in New Mexico before handing them over to Border Patrol, according to Army spokesperson Geoffrey Carmichael. Border Patrol arrested 39,677 migrants in the El Paso sector in the fiscal year to April, down 78% from the year-earlier period. 'COVERED BY DESERT SAND' Sitting outside his juice bar in Sunland Park, Harold Gregory says he has seen a sharp drop in migrants entering his store or asking customers for a ride since Strykers arrived. "We feel safer," said Gregory, 38. "They do kind of like intimidate so there's not so many people come this way." In neighboring Santa Teresa, trade consultant Jerry Pacheco says the optics of combat vehicles are not good as he tries to draw international firms to the town's industrial park. 'It's like killing an ant with a sledgehammer,' says Pacheco, executive director of the International Business Accelerator, a nonprofit trade counseling program. 'I think having the military down here is more of a political splash.' About 90 miles (143 km) west, New Mexico rancher Russell Johnson said he saw five Strykers briefly positioned in a gap in the border barrier on his ranch. He welcomes the zone as an extra layer of security and has testified to the U.S. Congress on illegal border crossers destroying barbed wire fences, cattle thieves driving livestock into Mexico and a pickup stolen at gunpoint by drug smugglers. He is unsure if his home, or over half his ranch, is inside the area but has been assured by U.S. Border Patrol he can continue to work land ranched by his family since 1918. 'I don't know, I don't think anyone knows,' says Johnson, 37, a former Border Patrol agent, of the zone's boundaries. He says the Army has not communicated rules for hunters with permits to shoot quail and mule deer this fall in the military area, or hikers who start or end the 3,000-mile (4,800 km) Continental Divide Trail within it. The Army has been seeking memoranda of understanding with local communities and agencies to continue activities in the New Mexico zone, said Nicole Wieman, a U.S. Army spokesperson. "The MOU process for commercial and recreational activities, such as hunting, mining and ranching, is complex," Wieman said. Jenifer Jones, Republican state representative for Johnson's area, said Americans can keep doing what they did before in the zone. 'They can carry their firearms as they would have prior,' said Jones, who welcomed the troops to her 'neglected' area where only a barbed-wire fence separates the two countries in places. To the east in Las Cruces, the state's second largest city, State Representative Sarah Silva, a Democrat, said the zones have created fear and apprehension 'I see this as an occupation of the U.S. Army on our lands,' said Silva. Back in desert west of Santa Teresa, Battalion Search and Rescue leader Abbey Carpenter, 67, stands among dunes where the group has discovered the remains of 24 migrants in 18 months, mostly women. She is concerned the area could be absorbed into the military zone. "Who's going to look for these remains if we're not allowed out here," she said, showing the jaw and other uncollected bones of a woman her group reported to local authorities in September. "Will they just be covered up by the desert sands?" REUTERS Join ST's Telegram channel and get the latest breaking news delivered to you.
