WASHINGTON - US President Donald Trump’s administration said it would deploy 2,000 National Guard troops on June 7 as federal agents in Los Angeles faced off against demonstrators for a second day following immigration raids.

The security agents confronted around 100 protesters in the Paramount area in southeast Los Angeles, where some demonstrators displayed Mexican flags and others covered their mouths with respiratory masks.

Mr Trump’s border czar, Tom Homan, told Fox News that the National Guard would be deployed in Los Angeles on June 7 evening.

California Governor Gavin Newsom called the decision “purposefully inflammatory”.

“If Governor Gavin Newscum, of California, and Mayor Karen Bass, of Los Angeles, can’t do their jobs, which everyone knows they can’t, then the Federal Government will step in and solve the problem, RIOTS & LOOTERS, the way it should be solved!!!” Mr Trump posted on his Truth Social platform.

US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth said that the Pentagon was prepared to mobilise active duty Marines “if violence continues” in Los Angeles.

Immigration crackdown

The protests pit Democratic-run Los Angeles, where census data suggests a significant portion of the population is Hispanic and foreign-born, against Mr Trump’s Republican White House, which has made cracking down on immigration a hallmark of his second term.

In the late afternoon, authorities began detaining some protesters, according to Reuters witnesses. There was no immediate official information of any arrests.

Video footage showed dozens of green-uniformed security personnel with gas masks lined up on a road strewn with overturned shopping carts as small canisters exploded into gas clouds.

“Now they know that they cannot go to anywhere in this country where our people are, and try to kidnap our workers, our people - they cannot do that without an organized and fierce resistance,” said protester Ron Gochez, 44.

A first round of protests kicked off on June 6 night after Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents conducted enforcement operations in the city and arrested at least 44 people on alleged immigration violations.

Mr Stephen Miller, an immigration hardliner and the White House deputy chief of staff, wrote on X that the June 6 demonstrations were “an insurrection against the laws and sovereignty of the United States.” On June 7, he described the day’s protests as a “violent insurrection”.

The Department of Homeland Security said in a statement about June 6’s protests that “1,000 rioters surrounded a federal law enforcement building and assaulted ICE law enforcement officers, slashed tires, defaced buildings, and taxpayer funded property”.

Reuters could not verify DHS’s accounts. Ms Angelica Salas, executive director of immigrants’ rights organisation Chirla, said lawyers had not had access to those detained on June 6, which she called “very worrying”.

Mr Trump has pledged to deport record numbers of people in the country illegally and lock down the US-Mexico border, with the White House setting a goal for ICE to arrest at least 3,000 migrants per day.

But the sweeping immigration crackdown has also caught up people legally residing in the country, including some with permanent residence, and has led to legal challenges.

In a statement on June 5 about the protests in Paramount, the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Office said: “It appeared that federal law enforcement officers were in the area, and that members of the public were gathering to protest.”

Ms Salas of Chirla said protesters gathered after an ICE contingent appeared to be using parking lots near a Paramount Home Depot store as a base.

ICE, the Department of Homeland Security, and the Los Angeles Police Department did not respond to requests for comment on the protests or potential immigration sweeps on Saturday.

Television news footage on June 6 showed unmarked vehicles resembling military transport and vans loaded with uniformed federal agents streaming through Los Angeles streets as part of the immigration enforcement operation.

Raids occurred around Home Depot stores, where street vendors and day laborers were picked up, as well as at a garment factory and a warehouse, Ms Salas of Chirla said.

Ms Bass, the Democratic mayor of Los Angeles, condemned the immigration raids.

“I am deeply angered by what has taken place,” she 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.”

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Source: The Straits Times.