Tensions in the city of Los Angeles heightened on Sunday as protesters in their thousands took to the streets in response to President Donald Trump’s extraordinary deployment of the National Guard, intercepting a major freeway and setting self-driving cars on fire as law enforcement fire tear gas, rubber bullets, and flash bangs to disperse the crowd.
Some police officers patrolled the streets on horseback while others with riot gear queued up behind Guard troops deployed to shield federal facilities, encompassing a detention center where some immigrants were taken in recent days.
Police declared an unlawful assembly, and by early evening many people had left.
Protesters however who were left grabbed chairs from a nearby public park to form a impermanent blockage, throwing objects at police on the other side.
Others standing above the closed southbound 101 Freeway threw blocks of concrete, rocks, electric scooters and fireworks at California Highway Patrol officers and their vehicles that were parked on the highway. Officers ran under an overpass to take protection.
This is the third day of protests against President Trump’s immigration crackdown in the region, as the arrival of around three hundred (300) federal troops ignited anger and fear among some residents.
The protests on Sunday in Los Angeles, a city of 4 million people, were centered in several blocks of downtown.
National Guard troops stood shoulder to shoulder, starting in the morning, carrying long guns and riot shields outside the Metropolitan Detention Center in downtown Los Angeles. Protesters shouted “shame” and “go home.”
After some closely approached the guard members, another set of uniformed officers advanced on the group, shooting smoke-filled canisters into the street.
Some minutes after, the Los Angeles Police Department (LADP) shot rounds of crowd-control munitions to scatter the protesters, who they said were converged unlawfully.
Much of the group then went ahead to block traffic on the 101 freeway until state patrol officers dispersed them from the roadway by late afternoon, while southbound lanes remained shut down.
At least four (4) self-driving Waymo cars were torched, sending large plumes of black smoke into the air and exploding sporadically as the electric vehicles burned. By evening, police had issued an unlawful assembly order closing down several blocks of downtown Los Angeles.
President Trump wrote on Truth Social: “Looking really bad in L.A. BRING IN THE TROOPS!!!”
Governor Gavin Newsom, under the Democratic Party, requested Trump get rid of the guard members in a letter Sunday afternoon, calling their deployment a “serious breach of state sovereignty.”
Newsom was in Los Angeles meeting with local law enforcement and officials. It remains unclear if he’d spoken to Trump since Friday.
The deployment of the National Guard Troops appeared to be the first time in decades that a state’s national guard was deployed in the absence of a request from its governor, a huge escalation against those who have sought to intercept the administration’s mass deportation efforts.
The arrival of the National Guard is coming after two days of demonstrations that started on Friday in downtown Los Angeles before spreading on Saturday to Paramount, a heavily Latino city south of the city, and neighboring Compton.
Federal agents arrested immigrants in Los Angeles’ fashion district, in a Home Depot parking lot and at several other locations on Friday.
The following day, they were staging at a Department of Homeland Security office near another Home Depot in Paramount, which pulled out protesters who were suspecting another raid. Federal authorities later said there was no enforcement activity at that Home Depot.
Protesters tried to block Border Patrol vehicles by hurling rocks and chunks of cement. In response, agents in riot gear fired tear gas, flash-bang explosives and pepper balls.
Photo: Demonstrators flood the 101 Freeway as immigration operation protests continue for third day in Los Angeles. KCAL News via CBS News
