3 days ago
Los Angeles immigration protests: How did we get here?
Tensions skyrocketed in Los Angeles over the weekend, as protesters faced off with police, setting cars alight, throwing concrete, and coming under fire from tear gas and non-lethal rounds.
The violent clashes followed a series of immigration raids in the city on Friday. Similar scenes of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents detaining suspected illegal immigrants have become emblematic of President Trump 's radical deportation policy.
But what caused the situation to escalate in LA, why is Trump's response so unprecedented - and how did we get here? ITV News explains.
Nationwide crackdown
Immigration was high on Trump's agenda during the presidential election campaign, promising to deport illegal immigrants en masse on "day one" of his term in office.
Once he officially took charge in January, he signed in a flurry of executive orders and mandates on immigration to toughen border security and carry out mass deportations.
US Immigration and Customs Enforcement - or ICE - was given enhanced powers, including making it easier to deport people without appearing before an immigration judge.
Trump has enlisted hundreds of state and local law enforcement agencies to help ICE identify those who have entered the US illegally.
He has also lifted long-standing rules restricting immigration enforcement near schools, churches and hospitals, and has ordered prosecutors to investigate officials accused of interfering with his crackdown.
The Trump administration found itself defying federal courts, after flying hundreds of Venezuelan and Central American men to El Salvador - despite a judge blocking the move. The White House later admitted to mistakenly deporting one of the men, who was flown to the country due to an "administrative error".
Trump's moves to ramp up arrests and deportations has left immigrant communities across the US fearful. He claims agents are arresting an average of 1,600 "dangerous criminals" per day.
Raids in LA
Los Angeles is a diverse city with a significant Latino population. ICE agents arrested 44 people across multiple locations in the city on Friday, June 6.
Charities working to support immigrants said people were detained at seven places, including several car parks of hardware chain Home Depot, a doughnut shop and a clothing warehouse.
Videos from bystanders and television news crews captured people being walked across a Home Depot car park by federal agents.
Yliana Johansen-Mendez from the Immigrant Defenders Law Center said one man had already been deported back to Mexico on Saturday, after being picked up at a Home Depot on Friday morning.
Karen Bass, the mayor of Los Angeles, condemned the immigration raids.
"I am deeply angered by what has taken place," Bass said in a statement. "These tactics sow terror in our communities and disrupt basic principles of safety in our city. We will not stand for this."
Protesters then gathered outside a federal detention centre, chanting "set them free, let them stay". Others held signs saying 'ICE out of LA!', and some scrawled graffiti on the building facade.
Police with riot shields used tear gas and batons to disperse the crowd, and force people away from the building.
Deploying the National Guard
As demonstrations grew, Trump ordered the deployment of the National Guard in Los Angeles on Sunday, and said: "We'll send whatever we need to make sure there's law and order."
The guard is a US military reserve force often mobilised in domestic emergencies, answering to both state governors and the president.
Trump's move to bring in the National Guard was done without the request of the Governor of California, Gavin Newsom - who requested guard members be removed and called their deployment a "serious breach of state sovereignty".
The deployment marks the first time in decades that a state's National Guard was activated without the governor requesting it.
Newsom has maintained Californian authorities had the situation under control. In a series of attacks on social media, he called Trump a "stone cold liar", accusing him of stoking the violence and "trying to manufacture a crisis".
Some 2,000 troops from the guard were deployed in response to the protests.
As he prepared to board Air Force One in New Jersey on Sunday, Trump told reporters that there were 'violent people' in Los Angeles, adding: "They're not gonna get away with it."Asked if he was planning to send in soldiers from the US army, Trump said: "We're gonna have troops everywhere. We're not going to let this happen to our country."
The United States Northern Command, part of the country's Department of Defence, said around 500 marines stationed east of LA were in a "prepared to deploy status".
