Monday was the fourth day in a row that anti-ICE protesters gathered in downtown Los Angeles. Earlier that day, hundreds of National Guard troops came in the area after President Trump ordered them to be sent there after days of violent clashes.
Over the weekend, protests took over several blocks in downtown Los Angeles, including a stretch of the 101 Freeway. The Los Angeles Police Department stated that 50 people were arrested. A police spokesperson said that the people who were taken were charged with a number of crimes, such as failing to disperse, assault with a deadly weapon on a police officer, theft, and setting fires. The LAPD also said that five officers were hurt during the events over the weekend. Three people were treated at the spot, and two had minor injuries.
The LAPD and the LA County Sheriff’s Department said the events were illegal and told everyone to leave.
Officers from the LAPD and the National Guard were seen with riot gear on outside the Metropolitan Detention Center on Sunday afternoon, in front of a big group of protesters. SkyCal took pictures of soldiers trying to break up crowds by shooting what looked like tear gas and non-lethal rounds. Police patrol cars, buildings, street signs, and public buses were all damaged with anti-ICE messages.
Kristi Noem, secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, wrote on X that people who “lay a hand” on police officers will be punished to the fullest limit of the law.
Immigration enforcement actions in the Westlake District, downtown LA, and South LA on Friday night led to the arrest of dozens of illegal immigrants. This led to the start of protests. Officials from ICE stated that four federal search warrants were carried out in three different places.
Again, a lot of people gather downtown
Large groups of protesters met in downtown Los Angeles for the fourth day in a row. Most of their actions took place outside of the Robert Young Federal Building.
A line of National Guard troops carrying riot shields stood between the hundreds of protesters and the front door of the building.
The meeting on Monday afternoon was mostly peaceful, but things got tense when LAPD officers started to push the crowd out of the area around 5:30 p.m., and there were some small fights between crowd members and police.
Reporters who were at the scene saw police members use rubber bullets and pepper-filled rounds to try to scatter the protesters.
While most of the crowd seemed to have left downtown by 9:30 p.m., there was still a group of several hundred people at 2nd Street and San Pedro Street, where they were met by a line of police cars that went for three city blocks.
The situation got worse again for a short time. Some people threw fireworks at police officers and even pushed a big trash can toward their line of battle. Officers were also seen pointing smoke bombs at the crowd at the same time.
This happened after three days of protests that turned violent. In each case, LAPD officers said that the crowds were illegally gathering and told them to leave because they were blocking the 101 Freeway, setting fires, damaging Waymo cars, and writing on many buildings in the area, including the LAPD Headquarters and the federal courthouse.
Around 3:20 p.m., L.A. police said again that the department was on “tactical alert,” which meant that all uniformed officers had to stay on duty and help with the problem as it grew.
In answer to what happened over the weekend, the LAPD released a statement about how they handle crowds.
The police said in a statement that protesters “erected barricades and continued to launch projectiles at officers” during the protests. It was okay to use hand-held CS gas grenades to get rid of the angry crowd. Chemical agents were used, and they worked to take down the barriers. Multiple uses of less-lethal weapons were also needed to control the crowd and stop any more damage to people or property. More than 600 shots of less-lethal weapons were used.
On Monday morning, the cleanup had already begun.
The U.S. military is being sent to Los Angeles by President Trump.
On Monday, a U.S. defense source said that 700 active duty Marines from Twentynine Palms were sent to join the nearly 300 National Guard troops who were already in Los Angeles because Mr. Trump told them to do so on Saturday because of the protests.
A presidential memo said that 2,000 National Guard troops were sent to the area, but on Sunday, the Northern Command of the U.S. military said that only 300 were actually there.
He said that Gov. Gavin Newsom and Mayor Karen Bass were not able to handle the problem in a post on Truth Social. He made more claims in a new post on Sunday, saying that Newsom and Bass should “apologize to the people of Los Angeles for the absolutely horrible job that they have done, and this now includes the ongoing L.A. riots.”
When LAPD Chief McDonnell found out that U.S. Marines were also going to be sent to the city, he made a comment.
“There has been no official notice to the LAPD that the Marines will be coming to Los Angeles.” But the possible arrival of government military forces in Los Angeles without clear coordination makes it very hard for those of us whose job it is to protect this city to do our jobs, the statement said. “The Los Angeles Police Department, along with our mutual aid partners, have decades of experience managing large-scale public demonstrations, and we remain confident in our ability to do so professionally and effectively.”
Newsom wrote on X on Monday afternoon that he had been told that an extra 2,000 National Guard troops were being sent out.
“The first 2,000?” Not given any water or food. “Only about 300 are actually being used; the rest are just sitting in federal buildings doing nothing,” the post said. “This isn’t about keeping people safe. It’s about making a dangerous President feel good about himself. This is Careless. Not useful. It’s also rude to our troops.
Sean Parnell, the chief spokesman for the Pentagon, stated that more troops would be sent to the city to help the thousands that were already there.
Newsom’s office reported on Saturday that he had a 40-minute conversation with Mr. Trump, but it’s not clear if they talked before or after Mr. Trump announced the deployment.
Newsom and Rob Bonta, who is the attorney general of California, sued the Trump administration on Monday. He told a virtual press conference that the lawsuit is in response to orders from Mr. Trump and Pete Hegseth, the Defense Secretary, to “federalize the California National Guard.”
“President Trump’s order to send federalized National Guard troops to Los Angeles, even though the Governor and local police are against it, is pointless and harmful.” “It’s also very unfair to the National Guard members who work hard every day to protect our state, get ready for and respond to emergencies, and train so that if they are called, they can fight our country’s wars,” Bonta said.
The attorney general also said that the case says Mr. Trump’s orders go beyond what the Tenth Amendment allows the federal government to do.
Operations to police immigration laws all over Los Angeles
Several search warrants were carried out by agents from the FBI, Homeland Security Investigations, and the Drug Enforcement Agency in the Westlake District, downtown LA, and South LA on Friday. A spokesperson for ICE told News that 44 illegal aliens were arrested at one operation site.
Dave Huerta, the head of the Service Employees International Union-United Services Workers West, was one of the dozen people arrested. “He purposely obstructed” federal officers by blocking their car during the operation, which is what U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli said led to his arrest.
People began to gather to try to stop agents from putting people into federal cars as videos of the operations spread on social media. There was a big protest outside the Federal Building in downtown Los Angeles on Friday night after people learned that prisoners were supposedly being held inside.
According to a federal law enforcement source who knows about the operations, ICE asked the LAPD for help several times on Friday night. That same official said it took more than two hours for local authorities to comply with that request. However, a senior city official in Los Angeles said it took the LAPD 55 minutes to reply, not two hours.
On Saturday, there were also protests in Paramount and Compton. In Compton, a car was set on fire in the middle of the street.
City officials said at a press conference in the afternoon that ICE action in Huntington Park on Monday made people scared.
“This city is aware that Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents were here this morning for an operation,” said Arturo Flores, mayor of Huntington Park. “The point of this press conference is to condemn what the federal government is doing.” I want to be very clear: public safety was at the center of the Trump administration’s immigration policy. The things that are happening, not just in Los Angeles but all over the region, go against that story.
It happened at about 7:30 a.m. at a Home Depot on Slauson Avenue, and he said that city officials still don’t know how many people were arrested.
LAUSD head on how ICE works
Superintendent of the LA Unified School District, Alberto Carvalho, told reporters at a news conference Monday morning that his office is still committed to keeping kids and schools safe, even though there have been more operations to enforce immigration laws.
Carvalho said that a few blocks away from two LAUSD schools, federal vans were seen in two recent incidents. He said that agents did not try to get into either school, but the district sees those “actions as acts of intimidation.”
The superintendent also said that there will be more LAUSD cops at school events now that graduation season is here. He said that parents shouldn’t be afraid to go to school events because they think government agents will be there.
“I have directed our own police force to redouble their efforts and establish perimeters of safety around graduation sites and to intervene and interfere with any federal agency that may want to take action during these joyous times that we call graduation,” said Carvalho.
California has protests all over the state.
Even though the main protests were in Los Angeles, people also took to the streets in other towns across the Golden State.
On Monday, a lot of people gathered outside of the downtown Santa Ana complex of government buildings for a protest. The protest got so bad that police used objects filled with smoke and pepper to break up the crowd. Reporters who were there said that people in the area had been throwing things at police officers before this.
Feds would sometimes fire tear gas cans at the feet of protesters who moved closer to the building while a helicopter flew overhead. In the parking lot next to the government building, at least one person was picked up by police.
During protests against ICE in San Francisco’s Financial District, more than 150 people were jailed, and buildings were damaged and some police officers were hurt. The crowd got together in front of an ICE field office, according to the police there. An additional group of protesters in Sacramento called for an end to the current ICE operations and said they stood with Los Angeles.
There were also hundreds of people protesting against the immigration operations outside of the federal courts in Santa Ana on Monday. They held signs that said the operations were wrong. On the same weekend, hundreds of people gathered outside of a diner in San Diego where an immigration operation had taken place earlier in the month.
There were also protests in Dallas, Texas. The events were planned by community leaders in Dallas to show support for Los Angeles.
