Tensions High as ICE, Militarized Police Continue to Occupy LA

Tensions sparked by ongoing immigration enforcement operations in the Los Angeles area remained heightened Thursday, but while a dusk-to-dawn downtown curfew appeared to be paying dividends by reducing confrontations with police, arrest numbers continued to mount.

But Mayor Karen Bass and community leaders again took issue with suggestions by President Donald Trump and others that the entire city was under a siege of violence necessitating deployment of the military.

“To characterize what is going on in our city as a city of mayhem is just an outright lie,” Bass said at an afternoon news conference attended by dozens of local faith and community leaders.

The mayor pointed to comments made by U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem in West Los Angeles Thursday morning that described the city as a “war zone.”

“There’s no one up here that sees Los Angeles like that,” Bass said. “… This is not all of Los Angeles. This is isolated to a few blocks in a city that is 500 square miles. And out of those 500 square miles, the protests — and especially the protests that devolved into violence — represent half a square mile.”

She again repeated her assertion that protests in the city would stop immediately if federal immigration authorities discontinued enforcement raids.

“We want peace to come to our city,” Bass said, adding that such an action “needs to begin in Washington, and we need to stop the raids.”

Noem, however, said the enforcement operations were targeting violent criminals. During Noem’s news conference, photos of criminals detained during the Southland operations were shown on video screens.

But Bass said the raids were spreading fear in the community, preventing some people from going to work or school. She said some raids that occurred Thursday took pace at “emergency rooms and homeless shelters.”

Angelica Salas, director of the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights, also condemned immigration enforcement actions.

“What I have seen come to our city is cruelty, is chaos, is violations of human civil and constitutional rights,” she said. “What has been brought to our city has been racial profiling in a way that I have never experienced it in my career.”

Bass on Tuesday night implemented a nightly curfew in a one-square-mile section of downtown Los Angeles, lasting from 8 p.m. to 6 a.m. The move appeared to be paying off, with fewer reports of unrest and property damage. Protesters continued to gather, but many retreated when the curfew took effect. Those who failed to do so faced arrest.

According to the Los Angeles Police Department, seven people were arrested for curfew violations Wednesday night and Thursday morning. There were 71 arrests for failure to disperse, two for assault with a deadly weapon on a police officer and one for resisting an officer.

A motorist was arrested late Wednesday for allegedly driving through a skirmish line of protesters and police officers near Beverly Boulevard and Western Avenue in Koreatown.

That driver led authorities on a high-speed freeway chase into the Inglewood area, where he was arrested after attempting to flee the vehicle on foot on a surface street.

The curfew applies to an area between the Golden State (5) and Harbor (110) freeways, and from the Santa Monica (10) Freeway to where the Arroyo Seco (110) Parkway and Golden State Freeway merge. That area includes Skid Row, Chinatown, and the Arts and Fashion districts.

There will be “limited exceptions” to the curfew — including for residents of the area, “people traveling to and from work and credentialed media representatives,” the mayor said.

Bass said she expected the curfew to be in effect for “several days.”

On the first night of the curfew — Tuesday night into Wednesday morning — 17 people were arrested for curfew violations. During the day Tuesday, the LAPD arrested 203 people for failure to disperse. Three people were arrested for possession of a firearm, one for assault with a deadly weapon and one for discharging a laser at an LAPD airship, police said.

Two officers were injured during Tuesday’s unrest, according to the LAPD.

While most of the protesting has been concentrated near the federal Metropolitan Detention Center downtown and the nearby federal building and City Hall, smaller, scattered protests were held Wednesday at the DoubleTree Hotel in Whittier, the Westin Hotel in Pasadena and the Embassy Suites Hotel in Downey, where demonstrators believed federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents were staying.

Protests have been occurring daily in the area since Friday, when ICE agents carried out a series of immigration enforcement raids, detaining dozens of people.

Prior to the curfew, the nightly protests often devolved into violence, with some demonstrators hurling objects or fireworks at police, who often responded by firing non-lethal weapons or tear gas.

Late Monday night, multiple stores in the downtown area were looted. A window was smashed at an Apple Store downtown during the unrest, with some items stolen and graffiti painted on the shop’s windows. An Adidas store was also hit by looters, along with a jewelry store, a pair of pharmacies, a shoe store and a marijuana dispensary. The affected stores were generally in an area on or near Broadway, near roughly Seventh and Eighth streets.

Bass condemned the looting, noting in a social media post that people who are vandalizing and burglarizing stores are unaffiliated with people legitimately protesting on behalf of immigrants.

In a round of broadcast media interviews Tuesday morning, Bass said police will take advantage of video footage to track down people who take part in looting and ensure they are “prosecuted to the full extent of the law.”

Federal officials have remained adamant about continuing the immigration operations, with President Donald Trump set on carrying out his campaign pledge to conduct mass deportations of people in the country illegally. Noem said Thursday morning federal agents will continue their work in Los Angeles as long as needed, insisting they would not be deterred by protest.

Trump has federalized 4,000 California National Guard troops and ordered them to be deployed to Los Angeles, despite protests by Bass, Gov. Gavin Newsom and other local Democrats who say it has further exacerbated tensions and led to more intense protests.

Trump also directed 700 U.S. Marines to move into Los Angeles and support the Guard’s mission of protecting federal facilities and personnel.

The state of California sued Trump on Monday to overturn the federalization of National Guard troops, and it filed an emergency motion in federal court in Northern California Tuesday seeking a restraining order to block the deployment of the National Guard and the Marines. A judge declined to immediately issue an injunction. Another hearing was held Thursday afternoon, but the judge did not immediately issue a decision.

Trump addressed the Los Angeles situation Wednesday night in comments at the Kennedy Center, where he and first lady Melania Trump attended the opening night performance of “Les Misérables.”

“We are going to have law and order in our country,” Trump said. “If I didn’t act quickly on that, Los Angeles would be burning to the ground right now.”

” … These are radical left lunatics that you’re dealing with, and they’re tough, they’re smart, they’re probably paid many of them, as you know, they’re professionals,” he added. “When you see them chopping up concrete because the bricks got captured, they’re chopping up concrete and they’re using that as a weapon. That’s pretty bad.”

Also Wednesday, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security released a new social media campaign based on the iconic “Uncle Sam” posters from World Wars I and II.

“Help your country locate and arrest illegal aliens,” the department’s post said. “To report criminal activity, call 866-DHS-2-ICE (866-347-2423).”