It is now dark outside in Los Angeles for a second night in a row because of US immigration raids that have caused a lot of trouble in the city for almost a week.
Several people were arrested for breaking the city curfew soon after it started at 20:00 local time on Wednesday (03:00 GMT on Thursday).
LA has arrested almost 400 people since the protests started on Friday. Of these, 330 are illegal immigrants and 157 are for assault and obstruction, including one person who tried to kill a police officer.
So far, federal officials have charged two men with two different counts of throwing Molotov cocktails at police officers.
Four thousand National Guard troops and seven hundred Marines have been sent to help calm things down. Some of those National Guard troops can now hold people until the cops can arrest them.
A lot of protesters marched to Los Angeles City Hall early in the evening, but cops broke them up.
LA Mayor Karen Bass wrote on X that the measure was meant to “stop bad actors who are taking advantage of the president’s chaotic escalation” as the curfew went into effect for a second night.
She had earlier said that the protests were caused by US President Donald Trump’s immigration raids, which she said made people “angry” by making them feel “fear” and “panic.”
She told a news gathering, “A week ago, everything was calm.” “Things began to be difficult on Friday when raids took place.”
Bass said Los Angeles was “part of a national experiment to determine how far the federal government can go in taking over power from a local government, from a local jurisdiction” . She has asked the government to stop the raids.
Bass’s Tuesday order for a curfew only covers a small area of about one square mile in the US’s second-largest city. This was because LA had hit a “tipping point,” she said. “Stop the vandalism, stop the looting.”
In the late evening of Tuesday, police said they had made “mass arrests” after another day of protests over the immigration move.
The police said in a series of comments that 203 people were arrested for failing to disperse, 17 for violating curfew, 3 for having a gun, and 1 for assaulting a police officer with a deadly weapon.
The fights hurt two police officers, the statement said.
When asked about the disorder the next day, police chief Jim McDonnell said, “Some of the imagery of the protests and the violence gives the appearance as though this is a city-wide crisis, which it is not.”
At the White House, US Attorney General Pam Bondi told reporters that the curfew had “helped a bit.”
And in other parts of Los Angeles, Trump’s immigration raids have gone on with the help of National Guard troops.
The National Guard and Marines in Los Angeles are not allowed to arrest people; they can only hold protesters until cops arrive to arrest them.
Maj Gen Scott Sherman, who is in charge of the deployment, said, “They are only used to protect federal employees while they do their jobs and to protect them so they can do their federal mission.”
Sherman told US media that 500 National Guard troops have already been trained to go with agents on immigration raids, and that some troops have already temporarily arrested people in LA protests.
The fight between Trump and state leaders got worse after he sent federal troops to Los Angeles. Trump has promised to “liberate” the city, but California Governor Gavin Newsom has called him a “assault” on democracy.
A lot of people in the state have also said that local police have the situation under control.
But Pete Hegseth, the US Defence Secretary, has backed Trump. On Wednesday, he told the Senate that sending the troops to Los Angeles was “lawful and constitutional.”
The Pentagon says sending troops to the LA area will cost $134 million (£99 million).
Trump called the protests a “full-blown assault on peace and public order” earlier this week while speaking to troops at the North Carolina military base Fort Bragg.
The president, a Republican, said that he was going to use “everything at our disposal” to stop the fighting.
It was during his speech that he told the troops to boo the names of Newsom and Joe Biden, who was president before him.
Newsom, who is seen as a possible presidential candidate, spoke out against the president’s unusual use of the military without asking state officials first in a live speech. “Brazen abuse of power” was what he said.
“California may be first – but it clearly won’t end here,” he stated. “Next are other states. Next up is democracy. There is an attack on democracy going on right now.
As part of his campaign to stay in office, Trump promised that he would deport a lot of people, and he wants border police to make at least 3,000 arrests every day.
Since taking office, the president has cut down on illegal crossings at the US-Mexico border to numbers that have never been seen before.
In early June, before the protests, a News/YouGov poll found that 54% of Americans agreed with Trump’s policy on deportations and 50% agreed with how he was treating immigration.
Compared to that, only 42% agreed with his economic policy and 39% agreed with his strategy to fight inflation.
