Protests spread across US despite Trump threats
California seeks to block Trump's use of military in immigration raids, warning of creeping militarization and political escalation.
Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department deputies fire a nonlethal weapon toward a man after he threw a can at them following a protest against federal immigration operations near Los Angeles City Hall in Los Angeles on June 11, 2025. Protests against Donald Trump's harsh immigration policies spread on June 11 across the United States despite a military-backed crackdown in Los Angeles and threats by the hard-right Republican president to use 'heavy force.' In Los Angeles, where the unrest began on June 6, an overnight curfew intended to keep people out of the downtown area was largely effective, with police arresting around 25 people who had refused to leave. (Photo by RONALDO SCHEMIDT / AFP)
Protests over hardline immigration tactics ignited across the United States after days of demonstrations in Los Angeles, as California prepared Thursday for a legal showdown over President Donald Trump's deployment of the military.
More than 1,000 people massed Wednesday in America's second biggest city, for a sixth day of protests, with the crowd peaceful as they 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 500-square-mile (1,300 square kilometers) metropolis.
'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 AFP.
'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 ignited over a sudden escalation in efforts to apprehend migrants in the country illegally.
ALSO READ: Hopes rise as US and China continue trade talks
Pockets of violence — including the burning of self-driving taxis and hurling stones at police — were nothing the 8,500 officers of the Los Angeles Police Department had not dealt with before.
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.
Trump won the election last year partly on promises to combat what he claims is an 'invasion' by undocumented migrants.
He is now seizing the opportunity to make political capital, ordering the California National Guard to deploy despite Governor Gavin Newsom's objections, the first time a US president has taken such action in decades.
'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.'
ALSO READ: Trump says Musk has 'lost his mind' as feud fallout mounts
Around 1,000 of the 4,700 troops Trump deployed were actively guarding facilities and working alongside ICE agents, said Scott Sherman, Deputy Commanding General Army North, who is leading operations.
The rest — including 700 active duty Marines — were mustering or undergoing training to deal with civil disturbances, he said.
The Pentagon has said the deployment will 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 Tuesday that the unprecedented militarization would creep beyond his state's borders, claiming 'democracy is under assault right before our eyes.'
Lawyers for California were expected in court on Thursday to seek an order blocking troops from accompanying immigration officers as they arrest migrants.
ALSO READ: Accusations and threats fly as Trump and Musk alliance melts down in blazing public row
Trump administration lawyers called the application a 'crass political stunt.'
Nationwide protests growing
Despite Trump's threats to deploy the National Guard to other Democratic-run states, protesters appeared undeterred.
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 was 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.
ALSO READ: US level 2 travel alert for SA 'nothing new', Presidency says
'Inflamed' situation
The Trump administration is painting the protests as a violent threat to the nation, requiring military force to support regular immigration agents and police.
But Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass said the crisis had been manufactured in Washington.
'A week ago, everything was peaceful in the city of Los Angeles,' she told reporters.
'Things began to be difficult on Friday when raids took place… that is the cause of the problems.
'This was provoked by the White House.'
Arrests by masked and armed men continued Wednesday.
ALSO READ: Magwenya: Ramaphosa optimistic after Trump meeting boosts US-SA ties
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 parking lot.
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.
– By: © Agence France-Presse
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
IOL News
2 hours ago
- IOL News
Trump's white South African resettlement plan and the global colour line
The narrative that white South Africans are victims of racial persecution has long circulated in far-right echo chambers, sustained by groups like AfriForum and amplified by conservative US media. Yet no credible human rights body has substantiated claims of systematic violence or oppression based on race in South Africa. Image: File/X THE arrival of over 3 000 white South Africans in the United States under President Donald Trump's fast-tracked refugee resettlement programme is a racial spectacle of historic proportions. Framed by Trump as a rescue mission from 'racial discrimination' and even 'genocide' in post-apartheid South Africa, the scheme repackages whiteness as victimhood while reasserting racial hierarchies through the veneer of humanitarian concern. Cheryl Harris's seminal concept of 'whiteness as property' is especially instructive here. This programme protects not the displaced, but the entitlements embedded in whiteness — land, social status, and the right to global mobility. These arrivals, facilitated under a controversial executive order, mark the first time in US history that white South Africans have been accepted en masse as refugees. The move has drawn intense scrutiny, with South African Foreign Minister Ronald Lamola dismissing the claims as 'unfounded and inflammatory'. He clarified that the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) had no involvement and had consistently found no basis for refugee status for white South Africans. 'The resettlement of South Africans under the guise of being 'refugees' is a political project to delegitimise our democracy,' Lamola asserted. The narrative that white South Africans — particularly Afrikaner farmers — are victims of racial persecution has long circulated in far-right echo chambers, sustained by groups like AfriForum and amplified by conservative US media. Yet no credible human rights body has substantiated claims of systematic violence or oppression based on race in South Africa. In February 2025, Trump signed Executive Order 14152: Addressing Egregious Actions of the Republic of South Africa, suspending non-essential aid. He cited South Africa's land reform policies and its support for Palestine at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) as evidence of 'anti-white discrimination'. His language echoed apartheid-era rhetoric, framing land expropriation without compensation — a constitutional measure designed to redress historical injustice — as proof of racial targeting. This is not a story about humanitarian rescue. It is about the repackaging of privilege as persecution. Trump's administration, by reclassifying specific 'South African communities' for humanitarian parole, has revived the settler-native divide. As Mahmood Mamdani has noted, this manoeuvre casts descendants of apartheid's beneficiaries as 'refugees' and South Africa itself as the oppressor. Achille Mbembe's critique of global humanism is relevant here: the programme renders Black suffering invisible while privileging whiteness as a passport to refuge and legitimacy. Consequently, while Black refugees languish in camps, whiteness is deemed inherently worthy of protection, effectively enacting a form of apartheid within the asylum system itself. The 1951 Refugee Convention defines a refugee as someone fleeing a 'well-founded fear of persecution.' Neither the Convention nor US law has ever interpreted this to include the loss of economic dominance or historical privilege. Fleeing land redistribution or reduced social status does not amount to persecution, especially when these changes are legally enacted by a democratic society seeking to correct historical wrongs. The parallels to earlier racial engineering are striking. In 1932, the US-sponsored *Carnegie Poor White Study* analysed the 'problem' of poor whites in South Africa. The initiative was not rooted in concern for poverty but in preserving white supremacy. The report warned that poor whites threatened the racial order and recommended state interventions to uplift them, while black South Africans were systematically excluded from similar support. This laid the foundation for apartheid's white welfare state and established a pattern of American intervention when white South Africans faced hardship, real or perceived. Trump's resettlement scheme is the 21st-century iteration of this pattern. White South Africans are framed not as beneficiaries of a violent racial order, but as victims of transformation, worthy of rescue. South Africa's Constitutional Court recently affirmed that acquiring foreign nationality — whether through refugee resettlement or otherwise — does not automatically strip someone of South African citizenship. In a landmark ruling, the Court struck down a section of the Citizenship Act that had quietly revoked citizenship without due process, calling the move irrational and unconstitutional. However, the case of these white South Africans is unique. Their refugee claims are based on false premises and a political agenda. South Africa may therefore have grounds to argue that accepting the US offer constitutes a voluntary renunciation of citizenship. The Constitutional Court's ruling on dual citizenship might not protect them in this politically charged context. Nowhere is the hypocrisy more glaring than in the American South. In the Mississippi Delta, six Black farmworkers filed a federal lawsuit in 2021 after being replaced by white South Africans brought in under the H-2A visa programme. The plaintiffs, many descended from enslaved people who built Southern agriculture, earned just $7.25 per hour — the federal minimum wage — while their white South African replacements were paid over $11. The lawsuit alleges that these Black workers were forced to train their replacements, who were then housed in better accommodations and elevated in status simply because they were white. Between 2011 and 2020, the number of South Africans on H-2A visas increased by 441%, making them the second-largest national group in the programme. The majority are white. The message is clear: in the racial calculus of US capitalism, white foreign labour is worth more than black American lives. Mexican seasonal workers, once the backbone of US agriculture, are also increasingly excluded — both by border walls and by labour policies that privilege whiteness over need. The result is a reshuffling of the global racial order, disguised as economic necessity. Trump's South African refugee programme is less about humanitarian concern and more about reaffirming a hierarchy of global suffering, where privilege continues to mask itself as victimhood. What we are witnessing is the reinforcement of a global colour line — one where whiteness retains its claim to mobility, safety, and opportunity, while blackness and brownness are rendered threats to be contained. The implications are profound: Refugee systems that prioritise whiteness over need. Economic visas favour white foreign farmers over Black citizens. Historical privilege is purposely mistaken for victimhood. This is not humanitarianism. It is neo-colonialism in motion. As the world watches Trump engineer the next stage of global apartheid, we must ask: What kind of refugee is it when only the privileged are welcome? When does skin colour ration citizenship, safety, and opportunity? If the notion of 'refuge' is to mean anything, it must centre justice, not historical comfort. Siyayibanga le economy! * Siyabonga Hadebe is an independent commentator based in Geneva on socio-economic, political and global matters. ** The views expressed here do not reflect those of the Sunday Independent, Independent Media, or IOL.
eNCA
5 hours ago
- eNCA
Second officer arrested over Kenya custody death
A second officer has been arrested in connection with the death of a teacher in custody in the Kenyan capital Nairobi, the police watchdog said Friday, a case that has sparked nationwide outrage. Albert Ojwang, 31, died in custody last weekend after being arrested for criticising a senior officer online. Police initially said Ojwang had fatally injured himself by banging his head against a wall, but a government pathologist later found the wounds were "unlikely to be self-inflicted". His death has reignited anger over a wave of abductions and heavy-handed policing during anti-government protests last year. Protesters marched on parliament on Thursday, some throwing stones and police firing tear gas. The Independent Policing Oversight Authority (IPOA) watchdog said in a statement that Samson Talaam, the head of the central Nairobi police station where the incident occurred, had been arrested along with an unnamed civilian. A police official confirmed to AFP that Talaam had been arrested in the western city of Eldoret. Another officer from the same Nairobi station, Constable James Mukhwana, appeared in court earlier in a case under the charge of the IPOA. The watchdog asked for three weeks to complete its investigation, telling the court Mukhwana was present on the night Ojwang was processed by officers. Earlier in the week, police spokesman Michael Muchiri said five officers had been removed from active duty, to "allow for transparent investigations". President William Ruto has called for a swift investigation, and promised on Friday that the government would "protect citizens from rogue police officers". The IPOA recently reported 18 people had died in police custody in the past four months. Protesters have called for the resignation of Deputy Inspector-General Eliud Kipkoech Lagat -- the officer Ojwang was accused of criticising.
eNCA
5 hours ago
- eNCA
Macron urges renewed nuclear dialogue after Israel's Iran strikes
France's President Emmanuel Macron on Friday urged the US and Iran to resume nuclear talks following a wave of Israeli strikes against Iran. "Iran bears a heavy responsibility in the destabilisation of the whole region," he said after Western nations in recent days accused Tehran of deliberately escalating its nuclear programme, despite several rounds of US-Iran talks. "We call for the resumption of dialogue and the reaching of a deal." US President Donald Trump's Middle East pointman Steve Witkoff had been set to hold a sixth round of talks with Iran on Sunday in Oman. After Israel's deadly strikes early on Friday, Trump afterwards urged Iran to "make a deal, before there is nothing left", warning of "even more brutal" attacks to come. Macron, who earlier on Friday defended Israel's right to protect itself, said France could help in the case of an Iranian retaliation against Israel. "If Israel were to be attacked in retaliation by Iran, France, if in a position to do so, would take part in protection and defence operations," he said. Macron earlier in the day spoke by phone to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the Elysee said, following a spike in diplomatic tensions. The French presidency said the phone conversation took place but did not provide details. Relations between Macron and Netanyahu have been strained in recent months over Israel's blockade of Gaza and France's plans to recognise a Palestinian state. - UN meeting postponed - France and Saudi Arabia have been planning to co-chair a UN conference on a two-state solution for Israel and the Palestinians next week in New York. But Macron said on Friday evening that meeting had been postponed. "While we have to postpone this conference for logistical and security reasons, it will take place as soon as possible," Macron said at a press conference. Israel pounded Iran in a series of air raids, striking 100 targets including nuclear and military sites, as well as killing the armed forces' chief of staff. In the aftermath of the strikes, Macron also spoke with leaders including Trump and the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia. Earlier Friday, Macron said Israel had the right to defend itself and ensure its security but also called for de-escalation. "To avoid jeopardising the stability of the entire region, I call on all parties to exercise maximum restraint and to de-escalate," he said on X. Macron spoke after convening a meeting of the National Defence and Security Council. "All necessary steps will be taken to protect our nationals and our diplomatic and military missions in the region," Macron said. Iran has gradually broken away from its commitments under the nuclear deal it struck with world powers including the United States and France in 2015. The landmark deal provided Iran sanctions relief in exchange for curbs on its atomic programme, but it fell apart after the unilateral withdrawal of the United States during Trump's first term in 2018.
