
Trump insists riots would have ‘completely obliterated' LA without National Guard and demands Dems say ‘THANK YOU'
A lawmaker warned the chaos is the 'tip of the iceberg'
LA DESTRUCTION Trump insists riots would have 'completely obliterated' LA without National Guard and demands Dems say 'THANK YOU'
DONALD Trump has doubled down on his decision to send the National Guard to Los Angeles after days of unrest in the city.
The president said California Governor Gavin Newsom should be thanking him for deploying the troops to protests downtown against federal immigration raids.
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A protester jumps over a burning car with his bike in Los Angeles on Sunday
Credit: The Mega Agency
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Masked rioters wave a Mexican flag while standing on top of a burning self-driving car in Los Angeles
Credit: Getty
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LAPD officers shoot rubber bullets at protesters as they march through the streets on horseback
Credit: Getty
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A burning Waymo taxi near the Metropolitan Detention Center of downtown Los Angeles
Credit: Getty
However, Newsom was furious with Trump's decision to send federal service members without his permission and slammed the move as "illegal" and "immoral," as he plans to bring a lawsuit against the Trump administration over it.
Newsom and Mayor Karen Bass, both Democrats, insist that the peaceful protests turned into riots on Sunday night only in response to the National Guard showing up.
But Trump said on Monday the city would be "completely obliterated" if he hadn't mobilized the Guard.
"We made a great decision in sending the National Guard to deal with the violent, instigated riots in California. If we had not done so, Los Angeles would have been completely obliterated," he wrote on Truth Social.
"The very incompetent 'Governor,' Gavin Newscum, and 'Mayor,' Karen Bass, should be saying, 'THANK YOU, PRESIDENT TRUMP, YOU ARE SO WONDERFUL. WE WOULD BE NOTHING WITHOUT YOU, SIR.'"
He continued, "Instead, they choose to lie to the People of California and America by saying that we weren't needed, and that these are 'peaceful protests.'"
Rioters looted shops, set self-driving Waymo cars on fire, and blocked off the 101 Freeway on Sunday night after the National Guard was deployed.
Cops used tear gas, flash-bang explosives and pepper balls to push back the protesters, even shooting a TV reporter with rubber bullets live on air at the terrifying scene.
Newsom has asked Trump to withdraw the troops and threatened to sue the Trump administration after the president authorized 2,000 troops to storm the city.
This is the first time in decades that a state's National Guard has been activated without the governor's permission, which Newsom called a "serious breach of state sovereignty."
On Truth Social, Trump called for anyone hiding their identities behind masks to be arrested immediately.
He added, "Order will be restored, the Illegals will be expelled, and Los Angeles will be set free."
Now, 500 Marines are waiting in a "prepared to deploy" status at a base that sits about 142 miles east of Los Angeles.
The city is bracing for more violent clashes on Monday as Trump's new travel ban comes into effect, furthering his crackdown on immigration.
More than 100 people were arrested in ICE raids last week as agents targeted the city of Paramount, which has a predominantly Latino population in Los Angeles.
LAPD chiefs have now voiced concerns over the use of deadly weapons by the rioters.
Trump vowed to support law enforcement in the protests and said he will make sure his administration "sends whatever we need to make sure there's law and order."
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LAPD Metropolitan Division officers clash with demonstrators
Credit: Getty
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Dozens of self-driving cars were set on fire by rioters
Credit: Getty
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Police officers take cover under an overpass on Highway 101 in downtown Los Angeles as activists lob rocks and fireworks at their vehicles
Credit: Getty
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Read our Los Angeles protests blog for the latest updates...

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Reuters
an hour ago
- Reuters
ICE's tactics draw criticism as it triples daily arrest targets
WASHINGTON, June 10 (Reuters) - Migrant workers picked up at a well-known Italian restaurant in San Diego. A high school volleyball player detained and held for deportation after a traffic stop in Massachusetts. Courthouse arrests of people who entered the U.S. legally and were not hiding. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers have been intensifying efforts in recent weeks to deliver on Republican President Donald Trump's promise of record-level deportations. The White House has demanded the agency sharply increase arrests of migrants in the U.S. illegally, sources have told Reuters. That has meant changing tactics to achieve higher quotas of 3,000 arrests per day, far above the earlier target of 1,000 per day. Community members and Democrats have pushed back, arguing that ICE is targeting people indiscriminately and stoking fear. Tensions boiled over in Los Angeles over the weekend when protesters took to the streets after ICE arrested migrants at Home Depot stores, a garment factory and a warehouse, according to migrant advocates. 'It seems like they're just arresting people they think might be in the country without status and amenable to deportation,' said Julia Gelatt, associate director of the U.S. immigration policy program at the nonpartisan Migration Policy Institute. The apparent shift further undercuts the Trump administration message that they are focused on the "worst of the worst" criminal offenders, and suggests they are pursuing more people solely on the basis of immigration violations. Trump's border czar, Tom Homan, told Reuters in late May that the administration had deported around 200,000 people over four months. The total lags deportations during a similar period under former President Joe Biden, who faced higher levels of illegal immigration and quickly deported many recent crossers. ICE's operations appeared to intensify after Stephen Miller, a top White House official and the architect of Trump's immigration agenda, excoriated senior ICE officials in a late May meeting over what he said were insufficient arrests. During the meeting, Miller said ICE should pick up any immigration offenders and not worry about targeted operations that focus on criminals or other priorities for deportation, three people familiar with the matter said, requesting anonymity to share the details. Miller said ICE should target stores where migrant workers often congregate, such as the home improvement retailer Home Depot and 7-Eleven convenience stores, two of the people said. The message was 'all about the numbers, not the level of criminality,' one of the people said. Miller did not seem to be taking into account the complexities of immigration enforcement, one former ICE official said. In Los Angeles, for example, a 2024 court decision limits ICE's ability to knock on doors to make immigration arrests and local law enforcement does not cooperate fully with federal immigration authorities. "The numbers they want are just not possible in a place like L.A. unless you go to day laborer sites and arrest every illegal alien," the former ICE official said. White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson defended Trump's enforcement push. 'If you are present in the United States illegally, you will be deported,' she said in a statement to Reuters. 'This is the promise President Trump made to the American people and the administration is committed to keeping it.' A DHS spokesperson said ICE officers executed criminal search warrants at the restaurant in San Diego; that the high school volleyball player in Massachusetts was subject to deportation; and that courthouse arrests were aimed at speeding up removals of migrants who entered under Biden. On Sunday, more than a hundred people gathered outside the jail in Butler County, Ohio, to protest the detention of Emerson Colindres, 19, a standout soccer player from Honduras who graduated from high school in May. Colindres, who has been in the U.S. since he was 8 years old, was being monitored via an ICE 'alternatives to detention' program that uses cell phone calls, ankle bracelets and other devices to track people. He received a text message to come in for an appointment last week and was taken into custody on arrival. Colindres was ordered deported after his family's asylum claim was denied, but he had been appearing for regular check-ins and had a pending visa application, his mother, Ada Baquedano, said in an interview. "They want to deport him, but he knows nothing about our country,' she said. 'He's been here since he was very little.' The DHS spokesperson said Colindres had a final deportation order and that too many people with such orders had previously been placed on alternatives to detention. 'If you are in the country illegally and a judge has ordered you to be removed, that is precisely what will happen,' the spokesperson said. The Migration Policy Institute's Gelatt said detaining people at ICE check-ins will help the agency boost arrest numbers. But these are often people who are already cooperating with ICE and could cost more to detain.


The Independent
an hour ago
- The Independent
Trump calls LA a ‘trash heap' of ‘chaos and disorder' in Fort Bragg troop rally after sending Marines to quell protests
President Donald Trump on Tuesday turned what was meant as a celebration of the U.S. Army's 250th anniversary, for soldiers at one of the nation's most storied military bases, into a bellicose campaign-style rally as he attacked Democratic elected officials and denigrated the country 's second-largest city as a c esspool made rotten by 'uncontrolled migration.' Speaking before a crowd of uniformed soldiers at Fort Bragg in North Carolina, Trump defended his decision to send National Guard soldiers and active duty Marines to quell protests against his anti-immigrant deportation operations in Los Angeles as necessary to prevent attacks on federal law enforcement from a 'violent mob.' He claimed that had he not ordered the soldiers into federal service over the objections of California Gov. Gavin Newsom, Los Angeles would be on fire, and compared the guardsmen's mission to past overseas battles in which the Army had fought over its 250 years. 'Generations of army heroes did not shed their blood on distant shores only to watch our country be destroyed by invasion and third-world lawlessness here at home, like is happening in California. As Commander in Chief, I will not let that happen. It's never going to happen,' Trump said, overstating the current state of affairs in LA by several degrees. Trump told the soldiers that the protests and unrest in Los Angeles represented a 'full-blown assault on peace, on public order and on national sovereignty carried out by rioters bearing foreign flags, with the aim of continuing a foreign invasion of our country,' before segueing into a partisan attack on former President Joe Biden. He accused 'stupid people or radical left people or sick people' in the previous administration of having allowed 'millions of people' to 'come into our country, totally unchecked and unvetted' and claimed those people were responsible for attacks on police in Los Angeles over the last few days. 'They're hurling bricks and cinder blocks at law enforcement ... they're breaking up the sidewalks and the curbs, breaking it up with big, strong hammers. These guys are professionals. These are not amateurs,' he claimed. 'These are animals, but they proudly carry the flags of other countries, but they don't carry the American flag. They only burn it.' The president cast his effort to use military force to tamp down protests against his immigration policies as a battle against a foreign foe rather than repression of the free speech rights guaranteed to all by the U.S. Constitution, telling the soldiers who'd been ordered to attend his speech that his administration would 'not allow an American city to be invaded and conquered by a foreign enemy.' 'That's what they are. Lot of those people were let in here by the Biden administration. They just poured right in. They came from prisons. They came from jails from all over the world. They came from mental institutions. They were the leaders of gangs. They were drug lords, allowed to come into our country,' he said. Trump's partisan commentary to the troops touched on many of the anti-immigrant tropes that have long been a staple of his political stump speech during his three campaigns for the presidency, including claims that other countries have deliberately sent criminals and mental patients to the United States to claim asylum with the consent of the Biden administration and the aid of Democrats in state and local governments. He also praised the thousands of National Guard soldiers and Marines he has dispatched over the past two days for 'standing guard to protect federal property and personnel and uphold the supremacy of federal law' while accusing Newsom and Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass of fomenting the violence against Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials. 'In Los Angeles, the governor of California, the mayor — they're incompetent and they paid troublemakers, agitators and insurrectionists, they're engaged in this willful attempt to nullify federal law and aid the occupation of the city by criminal invaders,' he said. Continuing, the president praised his own election as a turning point when the country rejected Democratic rule and slammed Los Angeles as having 'gone from being one of the cleanest, safest and most beautiful cities on earth to being a trash heap with entire neighborhoods under the control of transnational gangs and criminal networks.' Echoing the openly racist rhetoric of European far-right parties, Trump blamed 'uncontrolled migration' for the city's supposed condition of 'chaos, dysfunction and disorder' and suggested that European leaders should adopt his anti-immigrant stance. 'They have it in Europe too. It's happening in many of the countries of Europe. They don't like it when I say it, but I'll say it loudly and clearly. They better do something before it's too late,' he said. The president's rabidly partisan denunciation of duly elected officials in the nation's most populous state came just hours after he made a chilling threat against free speech rights of Americans in the nation's capital ahead of the military parade he has ordered up to celebrate his own birthday on Saturday. Speaking in the Oval Office following an impromptu event to discuss forest management ahead of the upcoming summer wildfire season, Trump was riffing on what he described as violent excesses by protesters who've been demonstrating against Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids in Los Angeles when he was asked about the possibility of protests against the June 14 parade. 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The Independent
an hour ago
- The Independent
Trump preparing to send thousands of immigrants including Europeans to Guantanamo military prison: reports
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