By BRITTANY CHAIN FOR DAILYMAIL.COM
Los Angeles has imposesd a curfew across riot-ravaged Downtown in an effort to end pro-migrant protests which have gripped the city for five days.
From 8pm Tuesday through to 6am Wednesday, swathes of the city will be under a strict lockdown as officers fight to regain control and stamp out widespread violence and destruction.
Mayor Karen Bass announced the new orders after she was locked in tense meetings with the police chief and senior officials to weigh whether a strict curfew would help act as a circuit breaker and soothe tensions.
For five days now rioters have wreaked havoc on communities as they railed against President Donald Trump 's efforts to rid the city of illegal migrants.
They were only further enraged when Trump gave orders to send 700 Marines and 4,100 National Guard troops in to take over policing efforts and assist the LAPD.
Rioters set fire to cars, looted buildings and attacked officers with rocks, fireworks and cement bricks in harrowing scenes of destruction which Attorney General Pam Bondi compared to a third world nation.
Bass said the curfew is expected to last several days and will emcompass a square mile radius around the epicenter of the violence in Downtown LA.
Instead, she said there are certain streets of Downtown which have been particularly targeted during the riots which would be the central focus of the orders.
This comes despite LAPD issuing repeated alerts listing Downtown Los Angeles as 'unlawful assembly' zones in an effort to rid the area of any and all protesters over the past three days.
Trump has threatened to invoke the Insurrection Act to stop the LA rioters, which authorizes the president to deploy military forces inside the United States to suppress rebellion or domestic violence or to enforce the law in certain situations.
'If there's an insurrection, I would certainly invoke it. We'll see. But I can tell you, last night was terrible. The night before that was terrible,' Trump said.
He repeatedly referred to 'bad, sick people' and 'agitators' he said were paid.
'There are certainly areas of Los Angeles you could have called It an insurrection,' Trump said. It was terrible.'
A curfew is the natural next step in efforts toward regaining control of the city, as the LAPD ramps up arrests and cracks down on protesters breaching unlawful assembly orders.
Hordes of protesters were zip-tied and forced onto LAPD buses en masse as authorities sought to bring an end to days of chaos and destruction.
The arrival of Trump's military reinforcements brought its own set of challenges on Tuesday, with furious Governor Gavin Newsom filing an emergency motion for a temporary restraining order.
'I just filed an emergency motion to block Trump's illegal deployment of Marines and National Guard in Los Angeles,' he said on X.
'Trump is turning the U.S. military against American citizens. The courts must immediately block these illegal actions.'
The state said the order would 'prevent the use of federalized National Guard and active duty Marines for law enforcement purposes on the streets of a civilian city.'
'Federal antagonization, through the presence of soldiers in the streets, has already caused real and irreparable damage to the City of Los Angeles, the people who live there, and the State of California,' the filing stated. 'They must be stopped, immediately.'
A judge denied the motion and instead granted the Trump administration an extension of time to respond to Newsom's filing.
The federal government now has until 2pm on Wednesday to file its response. Newsom will then have an opportunity to file its opposition ahead of a hearing at 1.30pm Thursday.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth told lawmakers the deployment of National Guard troops and Marines to Los Angeles will cost at least $134 million and last 60 days.
'We stated very publicly that it's 60 days because we want to ensure that those rioters, looters and thugs on the other side assaulting our police officers know that we're not going anywhere,' he said.
'Thankfully, unlike the previous administration, we've got a 13 percent increase in our defense budget, and we will have the capability to cover down on contingencies, which is something the National Guard and the Marines plan for.
'So we have the funding to cover down on contingencies, especially ones as important as maintaining law and order in a major American city. As far as training, all of the units on the ground have been fully trained in their capabilities of what they're executing on the ground.'
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