Lack of coordination over military deployment poses 'significant' challenge as immigration protests continue

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Hundreds of Marines are expected to stand guard in Los Angeles on Tuesday following another night of unrest in downtown Los Angeles that resulted in arrests and a handful of businesses being burglarized.
The deployment of 700 active-duty U.S. Marines comes despite California officials' insistence that federal help isn't necessary and is actually escalating tensions between authorities and protesters. L.A. Police Chief Jim McDonnell said the deployment poses a "significant" challenge to law enforcement's efforts to protect the city.
McDonnell said Monday afternoon that his department had not received any formal notification that the Marines would be arriving in L.A.
'The possible arrival of federal military forces in Los Angeles — absent clear coordination — presents a significant logistical and operational challenge for those of us tasked with safeguarding this city,' he said. 'The Los Angeles Police Department, alongside our mutual aid partners, have decades of experience managing public demonstrations, and we remain confident in our ability to do so effectively and professionally.'
L.A. Mayor Karen Bass also decried the deployment during a news conference on Tuesday emphasizing that city officials have not been given information about federal actions including immigration raids or what the military would do given that the National Guard is already in place outside of federal buildings.
"This is just absolutely unnecessary," Bass said. "People have asked me, 'What are the Marines going to do when they get here?' That's a good question. I have no idea."
"I feel like we've all been in Los Angeles a part of a grand experiment to see what happens when the federal government decides they want to roll up on a state or roll up on a city and take over," she added.
There have been intense but isolated clashes between protesters and law enforcement for several days as immigration arrests continue across Southern California. The fear from the raids has been felt across the city with people wondering whether they should send their children to school or go to work, Bass said.
It is not clear how long the federal government's immigration enforcement could continue in Los Angeles.
"The bottom line is we don't know, and that is consistent with ICE raids. Of course, we never know when, we never know how long, but that very notion creates such a terrible sense of fear in our city, and it's just not right to do that to a population who's trying to survive," Bass said, adding that Los Angeles is a "city of immigrants."
Monday's protests were largely calmer than Sunday's melees, which left a trail of foam bullets around the city's center, buildings vandalized, Waymos set ablaze and many protesters injured from the munitions.
Assemblymember Mark González, who represents downtown, said the violence and destruction in Little Tokyo and parts of downtown is "completely unacceptable."
"Tagging historic landmarks, launching fireworks at officers and terrorizing residents is not protest — it's destruction," he said. "If you're out here chasing clout while our neighbors are scared and storefronts are boarded up — you're not helping, you're harming. You're playing right into Trump's hands and undermining the very movement you claim to support."
The Marines are expected to join the roughly 1,700 California National Guard soldiers in Los Angeles to help protect federal agents and buildings. On Monday evening, a military convoy was seen traveling from Twentynine Palms toward Los Angeles.
As midnight approached in downtown, officers used less-lethal munitions and tear gas as they clashed with a few dozen people who remained in downtown Los Angeles. Earlier in the day, a crowd of several hundred rallied in front of the federal building.
Officers moved in the late afternoon to push the throng away from the buildings that had been the focus of Sunday's protests and steadily pushed them into Little Tokyo, with the crowd thinning with each push.
A few dozen protesters remained scattered around Little Tokyo around 10 p.m. Officers were shooting flash-bangs and less-lethal munitions, while the protesters tried to erect a barrier with recycling bins.
At least one car window was shattered, sending glass shards shooting into the crowd.
Law enforcement sources told The Times that authorities are analyzing dozens of videos of people throwing bricks, scooters and other heavy objects toward officers during protests. They're working with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms to identify several young men who recently smashed windows at LAPD headquarters and tossed incendiary devices inside.
On Tuesday morning, Kazumi Tsuji, who owns a business in Little Tokyo, walked around her shop and the surrounding buildings with a handful of burning sage. She passed by a scrawl of fresh graffiti spray-painted overnight.
"It's to keep away the evil spirits," she said of the sage. "I'm OK with protests, but setting fires, destroying businesses, all of that seems like people who just want to start chaos."
While her shop was not damaged, around the corner, what appeared to be masked teenagers smashed a glass door with a skateboard near Shoe Palace. Property manager Frank Chavez showed a Times reporter footage of the individuals bashing a security camera around 10:30 p.m. Despite the damage, nothing was missing from the building, he said.
"We just cleaned Little Tokyo about two weeks ago," he said. "The whole community came together and now here we are."
Nearby, a small bean bag projectile lay on the floor near a shattered store window at Cafe Dulce. A security guard, who declined to give his name, said that the bean bag was fired at protesters by police and shattered the window.
Foot traffic was sparse on South Broadway in downtown Los Angeles on Tuesday morning after days of demonstrations. A T-Mobile store that was burglarized during the demonstrations was boarded up with wood planks. Several other storefronts remained closed.
The El Pollo Loco on Broadway and 3rd Street has been closed for the past two days and reopened Tuesday at 9 a.m., said Britney Abila, who has been working as a cashier at the location for the past year.
'It's been very scary for my cookers especially,' she said, adding that they were fearful about the raids and the resulting protests.
In Orange County, where protesters gathered in front of federal buildings in downtown Santa Ana, police used tear gas, pepper balls and rubber bullets to clear crowds following reports of protesters throwing objects at police Monday night.
'What began as a lawful assembly around the Civic Center Plaza, has escalated into objects being thrown towards officers and other members of the public, posing a risk to public safety, property, and the well-being of our community,' the Santa Ana Police Department said in a statement on X.
Immigration enforcement agents were spotted Monday at a courthouse and library in Whittier, Home Depots in Huntington Park and Santa Ana and businesses in Fountain Valley, according to officials and media reports.
In an interview with Jesse Watters on Fox News on Monday, Tom Homan, Trump's top border policy advisor, said that Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids will continue in Los Angeles, in part because of so-called "sanctuary city" policies that restrict how local law enforcement can cooperate with federal immigration agents.
"ICE ain't leaving," Homan said, adding that the agency had more than 100 teams working in L.A. on Monday. "We're gonna flood the zone.
"And based on what L.A. is doing now, we're going to continue to flood the zone. We're gonna be there tonight, we're gonna be there tomorrow, we're going to be there every day in the next four years, arresting public safety threats and illegal aliens. We're not gonna apologize for doing it."
During a news conference Tuesday morning at the U.S. Capitol, 16 House Democrats from California condemned the actions of the Trump administration in Los Angeles, saying the president is attempting to incite unrest, test the limits of executive power and distract from the failures of his own leadership.
Rep. Jimmy Gomez (D-Los Angeles) led the news conference after arriving back in Washington from Los Angeles, where he was denied entry Saturday to the immigration detention facility inside the Roybal Federal Building. Gomez said he attempted to conduct a lawfully permitted oversight inspection after receiving reports that immigrants who were detained at workplace raids were being held in basement cells for up to 24 hours without food, water or sunlight.
Gomez said that what's happening in California could happen in any state.
'The chaos is the bait and the switch is a constitutional crisis,' he said. 'President Trump created this political distraction to divide us and keep our focus away from his policies that are wreaking havoc on our economy and hurting working families. He's not keeping us safe; he's not restoring order. He's ratcheting up the tension, wishing for it to reach a boiling point — and we all knew that this day would come.'
Staff writers Seema Mehta, Andrea Castilo and Laura J. Nelson contributed to this report.
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This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.