US anti-deportation protests continue and spread beyond 'test case' Los Angeles
PROTESTS AGAINST AGGRESSIVE immigration raids have continued in the United States after President Donald Trump ordered the deployment of National Guard troops and US marines in Los Angeles this week, against the wishes of the state's Democratic governor.
More than 1,000 people massed yesterday in America's second-biggest city for a sixth day of demostrations, as peaceful protesters marched through the streets.
A second night of curfew was in place as city leaders try to get a handle on the after-dark vandalism and looting that scarred a few city blocks in the city.
'I would say for the most part everything is hunky dory right here at Ground Zero,' protester Lynn Sturgis, 66, a retired school teacher, told the AFP news agency.
'Our city is not at all on fire, it's not burning down, as our terrible leader is trying to tell you.'
The mostly peaceful protests are the result of a sudden escalation by the Trump administration to arrest and deport undocumented immigrants.
Police kettle protesters under arrest on in LA
Alamy Stock Photo
Alamy Stock Photo
Pockets of violence have included the burning of self-driving taxis and the hurling of stones at police.
Arrests by masked and armed men, who have refused to identify themselves during raids, continued yesterday.
A pastor in the LA suburb of Downey said five armed men driving out-of-state cars grabbed a Spanish-speaking man in the church's carpark.
When she challenged the men and asked for their badge numbers and names, they refused.
'They did point their rifle at me and said, 'You need to get back,'' Lopez told broadcaster KTLA.
'The first, perhaps, of many'
Police and National Guard members have fired rubber bullets at protesters,
and reporters
, while Los Angeles residents have been demanding the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency (ICE) to get out of the city.
The deployment of US military personnel on the streets of a major American city has been met with shock and concern by many.
This week, Mayor Karen Bass said LA residents are living in fear and that the city had become the site of an 'experiment' conducted by the Trump administration.
'Our city is actually a test case for what happens when the federal government moves in and takes the authority away from the state or away from local government,' she said on Tuesday.
LA police officers on Wednesday
Alamy Stock Photo
Alamy Stock Photo
'By having the military, it de-escalates,' Trump said about the decision to send 700 marines to LA.
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'They're stopping an invasion,' he told graduates in an address at West Point military academy.
'This is the first, perhaps, of many,' Trump said yesterday of the National Guard and Marine deployments.
'Democracy is under assault'
Trump won the election last year partly on promises to combat what he claims is an 'invasion' by undocumented migrants.
'We're going to have a safe country,' he told reporters on his way into a performance of 'Les Miserables' in Washington.
'We're not going to have what would have happened in Los Angeles. Remember, if I wasn't there… Los Angeles would have been burning to the ground.'
Around 1,000 of the 4,700 troops Trump deployed are actively guarding facilities and working alongside ICE agents, said Scott Sherman, Deputy Commanding General Army North, who is leading operations.
The Pentagon has said the deployment will last for 60 days and cost taxpayers $134 million.
Governor Newsom, a Democrat widely viewed as eying a 2028 presidential run, has charged that Trump is seeking to escalate the confrontation for political gain.
He warned on Tuesday that the unprecedented militarization would creep beyond his state's borders, claiming 'democracy is under assault right before our eyes.'
Los Angeles Metro police ride on a vehicle during a protest on Wednesday
Alamy Stock Photo
Alamy Stock Photo
Lawyers for California are expected in court today to seek an order blocking troops from accompanying immigration officers as they arrest migrants.
Trump administration lawyers called the application a 'crass political stunt.'
Not just LA
Despite Trump's threats to deploy the National Guard to other Democratic-run states, protesters appear to be undeterred.
In Spokane, Washington, a night curfew was declared after police arrested more than 30 protesters and fired pepper balls to disperse crowds, police chief Kevin Hall told a news conference.
Demonstrations were reported in St Louis, Raleigh, Manhattan, Indianapolis and Denver.
In San Antonio, hundreds marched and chanted near city hall, reports said, where Republican Texas Governor Greg Abbott has deployed the state's National Guard.
A nationwide 'No Kings' movement is expected on Saturday, when Trump will attend a highly unusual military parade in the US capital.
The parade, featuring warplanes and tanks, has been organized to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the founding of the US Army but also happens to be the day of Trump's 79th birthday.
With reporting from AFP
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Irish Examiner
an hour ago
- Irish Examiner
America's first military parade in decades sees US marching into dark chapter of history
Today, Washington DC will wake up to its first military parade in decades. The US capitol will rumble with the sounds of armoured tanks, marching soldiers, and the roar of military aircraft. The parade, which is being held on US president Donald Trump's 79th birthday, is ostensibly to mark the 250th anniversary of the US Army. Sometimes a parade is just a parade and any resemblance to the proclivities of would-be despots living or deceased is, as they say in Hollywood, entirely unintentional. But it's difficult, given the events of the past week, not to see today's flex of military muscle as a metaphor for the authoritarian creep that threatens US democracy in ways large and small - and a warning to those who would defy it. On Wednesday night, Trump attended the opening night of Les Misérables at the Kennedy Centre, where he has also installed himself as cultural commander in chief, apparently oblivious to the irony of his fondness for a musical about the sans culottes struggle against authoritarians. People take photos with a tank parked on the National Mall in Washington during preparations for the upcoming military parade commemorating the Army's 250th anniversary. Photo: AP/Rod Lamkey, Jr. 'Viva Los Angeles!' a member of the audience shouted amid cheers and boos. Trump's executive order provides for the deployment of the US military across the US as he sees fit. His decision to invoke an obscure provision of a little-known law may provide a sufficient, albeit flimsy legal fig leaf to withstand California governor Gavin Newsom's legal challenge, paving the way for the deployment of the US military across the United States, even as the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency ratchets up raids and detentions in a bid to meet its unfeasible 3,000 detentions a day quota. It was always going to be Los Angeles first. The state of California and America's second largest city have long been in Trump's crosshairs. No other state is home to as many immigrants, documented and undocumented. And no state is more innovative or more prosperous; it recently bypassed Japan to become the world's fourth largest economy. California has wrestled with inequality and unrest, racism and political extremes throughout its history, but for 150 years America's wealthiest and most populous state has doubled as the petri dish that fuelled almost every surge in America's economic fortunes. From Levi's jeans to Mickey Mouse, from the movie industry to the internet, from smartphones to electric cars to CAT scans, California has been synonymous with creativity and innovation. The US Capitol is seen through security fencing set up on the National Mall in Washington during preparations for the upcoming military parade commemorating the Army's 250th anniversary. Photo: AP/Rod Lamkey, Jr. It's where surgeons first removed an appendix through a mouth and a gallbladder through a bellybutton. Cheap immigrant labour has allowed its construction, agriculture and hospitality industries to flourish, while progressive policies laid the groundwork for investment in technology and green energy. Now it seems it may become the testing ground for Trump's strongman tactics. A combination of border proximity, liberal policies, and a labour market that relies on migrants both documented and undocumented has contributed to California's disproportionately high migrant population. Los Angeles county is home to 10 million people of whom almost four million live in Los Angeles city. Around 3.5 million are first-generation immigrants and of these an estimated 800,000 to 950,000 are undocumented. Many live in 'mixed status' households where one or more family members may be legally working in the US while others are undocumented. They are concentrated in working-class neighbourhoods like Paramount, which along with a downtown clothing wholesaler, was the site of the initial ICE raids that triggered the protests that prompted Trump to deploy of US troops onto its streets. Protests and clashes Trump's decision to deploy the military marks the first time in 60 years that a US President federalised the National Guard without consulting, much less obtaining the consent, of its governor. The last time it happened Lyndon Johnson sent troops to Alabama to protect civil rights activists against a virulently racist governor and police force. The city bears decades-old psychic scars from riots in the 1960s and the 1990s when mob violence and mayhem took a savage toll on the city and left an abiding mistrust of the Los Angeles Police Department, which has a long and undistinguished history of corruption and racism. Recently, however, community policing initiatives have led to significant drops in violent crime in some of Los Angeles's most dangerous neighbourhoods. Predictably, the protests against ICE led to clashes with the LAPD and re-inflamed tensions, with thugs setting fire to Waymo cars and providing the sort of made-for-FOX-News images that Trump seized upon to retrospectively justify his overreach. Trump's narrative LA was "trash", he said. Willing supplicants fanned out across pro-MAGA media outlets peddling the narrative that the military prevented an all-out conflagration, protecting ICE agents and federal buildings from marauding hordes of homegrown anarchists, leftists, and communists who are simultaneously seeking to destroy the US from within, whilst preventing the rounding up and deporting of an invasion of foreign terrorists, drug cartel members, murderers and child traffickers. It's a narrative that Trump has pushed to justify his trampling of the presidential norms that have thus far protected and nurtured the American experiment as it approaches its 250th anniversary. A protester holds a sign as Border Patrol personnel in riot gear and gas masks stand guard outside an industrial park in Paramount, California last Saturday. Photo: AP/Eric Thayer While previous presidents from both parties have dinged the guardrails of democracy in furtherance of their aims, none has attempted the sort of blatant transgressions of the past five months. His Department of Justice is a willing and eager accomplice, defending the absurdity of deploying more US troops to Los Angeles than is currently spread across Iraq and Syria to prevent a resurgence of ISIS – just hours after the LAPD police chief issued a press statement acknowledging the peaceful nature of the protests. Protests spread At the time of writing, protests had spread across the United States to other cities with significant migrant populations – Denver, St Louis, Chicago, San Antonio, Atlanta, Milwaukee, Philadelphia. Most are cities in blue states but protests also broke out in Nevada, Wisconsin, Georgia and Pennsylvania – four of the six swing states that Biden won in 2020 and Trump claimed back in 2024, both candidates doing so with the narrowest of margins. Trump may not be particularly bothered by the political impact of his flirtation with authoritarianism in the 2026 midterms – or indeed the 2028 presidential election. Thus far, his presidency seems to be primarily an exercise in self-enrichment and retribution. But even Congressional Republicans who have drowned their political principles in a murky bath of expediency and denial are aware that, to paraphrase Elon Musk, Trump has 3.5 years left while the GOP presumably hopes to match and exceed Musk's prophesied expiry date of 40 years hence. The border crisis The current crisis has its roots in part at least in Joe Biden's reckless border policies. The Biden administration did little to curb or control the post-covid surge of undocumented migrants and asylum seekers. When he and the Democrats finally acted, delivering a comprehensive bipartisan border reform bill in early 2024, it was deliberately tanked by Trump's Congressional lackeys, who knew a solution to America's decades-old border crisis would stall the engine that was powering his 2024 comeback campaign. Polls have shown so far that the public remains largely on Trump's side. A majority of Americans prefer the performative hyper kinetics of his immigration policies to the listlessness of the Biden era. But outside the far-right faction of the GOP, that support is contingent upon the belief that mass deportations will lead to increased prosperity for American citizens, to cheaper homes, lower crime rates, and better paying jobs. It's unclear to what degree and for how long America will remain willing to tolerate chaos and the suppression of individual rights if prices keep rising and Trump fails to deliver on his side of the economic Faustian pact that America has entered. Last week may be just the beginning of a dark new chapter in US history.
Irish Examiner
an hour ago
- Irish Examiner
How a dog called Fern solved the mystery of where Cork woman Tina Satchwell had been hidden
When Fern made a positive detection for the presence of human remains in the home of Richard and Tina Satchwell, the dog helped unravel the mystery of where the missing woman had been hidden for more than six years. After Richard Satchwell was sentenced to life in prison for the 2017 murder of his wife, the role of Fern in the case and the absence of a cadaver dog in An Garda Síochána's dog unit has raised hackles, led to soundbites and sparked debate on why the Irish force had to rely on the PSNI's only cadaver dog. Use of Fern in October 2023 for the search of Ms Satchwell's Youghal home was not the only time the services of a cadaver dog were requested by gardaí during the probe into her disappearance. The first time was in 2018, when Ronnie, a dog from Britain, was brought to Castlemartyr for a woodland search after information led gardaí to concentrate on the area. Mick Swindells has worked on a number of other high-profile cases in Ireland, including a search of the Slieve Bloom mountains for Fiona Pender in 2014. Ronnie's handler, Mick Swindells, a former British police officer, recalls staying in Garryvoe during the 2018 search, and says the approach came from gardaí because of his work with the Independent Commission for the Location of Victims' Remains, set up to find the bodies of people murdered and secretly buried by republicans during the Troubles. He has worked on a number of other high-profile cases in Ireland, including a search of the Slieve Bloom mountains for Fiona Pender in 2014. She has been missing since 1996 and her case was recently upgraded to a murder investigation. He became involved in human remains detection in 1992 when working with the dogs section in Lancashire police. He has handled five cadaver dogs in his career, but also trained dogs in Britain as well as in the Malaysian and Spanish fire services, and Spanish police. He pointed out training dogs to find human remains in water is different to training them to find buried remains 'because they can smell scent coming through the water'. For land searches, probes are used to prod the ground to release any odours which could indicate if human remains are buried in the area. He stressed, however, that the manner of a person's death can have an impact on the scent, explaining: 'Somebody who has been poisoned will decompose differently to somebody who has shot or stabbed, if there is trauma. "Indeed, the size of a person and the type of soil they have been put in also changes decomposition — also, if there were clothes, or they were wrapped in a shower curtain or carpet or that kind of thing.' He said in most cases, people do not have time to bury remains very deep — although he acknowledged cases like the Tina Satchwell case were different. During the recent trial, the jury heard her body had been buried unusually deep for a 'clandestine burial', with 84cm depth to the bottom of the burial site. 'He [Satchwell] was in his own house so he controlled the environment, whereas when you are burying bodies in woods … even the IRA didn't bury bodies deep and they had control of the areas. In his own house, he could take his time, he wasn't going to be disturbed,' Mr Swindells said. In his work, cadaver dogs are trained on pigs. He explains why: 'If you train a dog to find Semtex and you hide a block of Semtex, it won't change. But, obviously, a dead body evolves and is always changing. So we have to try to train the dog to find a body from, for example, one day after death to 25 years after death when it is just pure skeletal. So you have to train the dog on every aspect of the decomposition and the only way you can do that is by using pigs. It is similar decomposition.' A pig dressed in a coat and placed in a grave. Mick Swindells says the coat has been put on the pig to simulate a real concealment, for the purpose of training a cadaver dog. He says pigs used for the purpose of training dogs to find human remains are buried in the ground for many years. 'We had a site in the UK where we buried pigs in 1992 and every so often we went back there with dogs if we are looking at a really old case to refresh them. Pigs are the closest thing to human because they are omnivores — pigs eat meat and vegetables the same as we do. They have the same skin type — the same number of layers of skin as we do, the same digestive system as we do.' He says the normal police course for training dogs to find human remains is eight weeks: 'The basic course is eight weeks but the dog is always learning after that.' The Search and Rescue Dog Association Ireland (North) currently has four specially trained cadaver dogs in Northern Ireland. The association's Clair O'Connor says: 'We would use archaeological bone or human blood in training. We get blood from donors.' The association, which was founded in 1978 by Cork-born Dr Neil Powell, began working in the area of human remains detection in the 1990s, after being tasked to a search for two cousins who drowned in a lake. Wexford-based Rachell Morris owns K9 Detect and Find Ireland. She and Clair O'Connor both say they have had requests to aid An Garda Síochána over the years with searches. 13/06/'25 Gardaí bring a cadaver dog into a house on Monastery Walk, Clondalkin, where they are continuing their search in the investigation into the death of American woman, Annie McCarrick, who disappeared in 1993. Picture: Colin Keegan/ Collins However, on Monday, Garda Commissioner Drew Harris said there were no plans at the moment to acquire a cadaver dog for the force . He described such a dog as a very specialised resource which is not out every day working, as is the case for drugs, firearms or money dogs. He also said a cadaver dog has only been used by the force three times in the seven years he has been commissioner. It emerged at Tuesday afternoon's meeting of the Oireachtas justice committee that a cadaver dog was used in the search for Kerry farmer Mike Gaine in the early weeks of his disappearance. Mick Swindells believes the addition of a cadaver dog to An Garda Síochána's existing dog unit would not be a big cost. 'If you train them to forensics and blood and semen also, you are not restricting it to murders because you have got assault cases, rape cases, that they can be used for as well.' He rejected minister for justice Jim O'Callaghan's assertion that the working life of a cadaver dog was just three years. He said police dogs operate until they are no longer fit enough to work, with many having a work life of up to seven years, typically retiring at about nine years old. This was echoed by Clair O'Connor, who said: 'All of our search dogs would work until they are aged eight to 10 years old.' A Garda spokeswoman confirmed the force has never had its own cadaver dog. She said there were 28 dogs attached to the Garda Dog Unit, inclusive of the Southern and North Western Dog Units. There are currently four dogs in training. The statement said: 'The Garda Dog Unit has dogs trained in three distinct disciplines, namely general purpose, drugs/cash/firearms detection, and explosive detection. Dogs are trained in one discipline.' In relation to cadaver dogs, the statement said: 'The operational demand for victim recovery dogs is currently sufficiently provided for through third-party contractors or through mutual assistance with the Police Service of Northern Ireland with whom An Garda Síochána has excellent working relations.' Read More Review of Tina Satchwell case to include if cadaver dog should have been used in 2017 search — Harris
The Journal
5 hours ago
- The Journal
Explosions over Tel Aviv as Iran launches ballistic missiles towards Israel
LAST UPDATE | 13 mins ago Footage of an Iranian ballistic missile hitting downtown Tel Aviv, Israel, moments ago. — OSINTtechnical (@Osinttechnical) June 13, 2025 IRAN HAS LAUNCHED a barrage of approximately 100 missiles towards Israel. Explosions were spotted over the Israeli city of Tel Aviv, as the public was warned by Israel's Home Front Command to seek out the nearest bomb shelter to them. Israel's national ambulance service, Magen David Adom, said that five people have been injured in the Tel Aviv metropolitan area, and are being taken to hospital. One is in a 'moderate condition' and the other four have been 'lightly injured' by shrapnel, it said in a statement. Israel's firefighting service said its teams were responding to several 'major' incidents resulting from an Iranian missile attack, including efforts to rescue people trapped in a high-rise building. Smoke rises after a missile attack in Tel Aviv, Israel Alamy Stock Photo Alamy Stock Photo 'Firefighters are working in a high-rise building to rescue trapped individuals and extinguish a fire, as well as responding to two additional destruction sites,' a statement said. Footage on Israeli television networks showed what appeared to be a building hit by a missile. Huge plumes of smoke can be seen rising around skyscrapers in Tel Aviv. Israeli Iron Dome air defense system fires to intercept missiles over Tel Aviv. Alamy Stock Photo Alamy Stock Photo Footage also shows the Israeli 'Iron Dome' missile defence system intercepting several missiles above the city. Bright lights were also spotted over Jerusalem, where the missiles appear to have been intercepted. Traces are seen over Jerusalem during a missile attack alert. Alamy Stock Photo Alamy Stock Photo The Iranian missile strikes are in response to several Israeli attacks on Iranian sites this morning , which Iranian sources claim killed 78 people. Advertisement Iran's Revolutionary Guards confirmed this evening that they had launched an attack on a number of targets in Israel. 'The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps… has executed its decisive and precise response against tens of targets, military centres and airbases of the usurping Zionist regime in the occupied territories,' the Guards said in a statement carried by state media. The announcement of the missile attacks on state TV came shortly after a televised speech by supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, in which he promised that 'the Islamic Republic will prevail over the Zionist regime'. In a statement this evening, Iran's military, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), said the missile attacks were 'in response to the aggression and criminal assault carried out this morning by the savage, terrorist, and child-killing Zionist regime'. They added that Israel's earlier attacks on Iran had killed 'several senior military commanders, prominent scientists, and innocent civilians, especially defenseless children'. 'The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, as the defensive and offensive arm of the Iranian nation, has launched a forceful and precise retaliation,' a statement said. Statement from the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC): In response to the aggression and criminal assault carried out this morning by the savage, terrorist, and child-killing Zionist regime on areas within the Islamic Republic of Iran—resulting in the martyrdom of several… — Iran Military (@IRIran_Military) June 13, 2025 'With reliance on divine power, the wise leadership of the Commander-in-Chief (may his shadow be extended), and the united demand and support of the noble Iranian people, the IRGC has executed Operation 'True Promise 3″ against dozens of targets, including military centers and air bases of the usurping Zionist regime in the occupied territories. 'The operation was launched with the sacred call 'O Ali ibn Abi Talib (AS)' on the blessed night of Eid al-Ghadir,' the statement added. Earlier this evening, Iranian state media said the country's forces downed two Israeli fighter jets during an air raid. 'At least two Israeli fighter jets were shot down in Iranian skies,' the official IRNA news agency reported. In a video shared to social media shortly after the attacks, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called on Iranians to unite against what he described as an 'evil and oppressive regime'. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu: To the proud people of Iran, We are in the midst of one of the greatest military operations in history, Operation Rising Lion. The Islamic regime, which has oppressed you for almost 50 years threatens to destroy our country, the State of Israel. — Prime Minister of Israel (@IsraeliPM) June 13, 2025 He said that Israel was engaged in 'one of the greatest military operations in history'. 'Iran doesn't know what hit them, they don't know what will hit them. It has never been weaker,' Netanyahu said. Additional reporting from AFP Readers like you are keeping these stories free for everyone... A mix of advertising and supporting contributions helps keep paywalls away from valuable information like this article. Over 5,000 readers like you have already stepped up and support us with a monthly payment or a once-off donation. Learn More Support The Journal
