A fifth day of protests sparked by federal immigration enforcement efforts in Los Angeles unfolded Tuesday, with dozens of demonstrators gathering outside the downtown Metropolitan Detention Center, where National Guard troops maintained a skirmish line around the building to prevent the group from approaching the facility.
The federal detention center on Alameda and Aliso streets has been a common site of protests over the past four days, along with the nearby federal building and federal courthouse. The MDC is believed to be the facility where immigrant detainees taken into custody in recent days are being held.
The nearby federal building on Los Angeles Street houses the local office of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
The Tuesday afternoon protest outside MDC was so far peaceful with no reports of serious confrontations between activists and National Guard troops. The Guard members wore helmets and carried shields and maintained a defensive posture.
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.
The protests all generally began peacefully, but devolved into violent confrontations later in the day, with activists over the weekend damaging California Highway Patrol vehicles parked on the Hollywood (101) Freeway and setting fire to multiple driver-less Waymo vehicles that just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. There was also extensive graffiti vandalism throughout the Civic Center area.
On Monday, the daytime demonstrations also grew unruly starting in the evening, leading to more vandalism, violence and arrests, with some protesters throwing fireworks and other objects at law enforcement, and authorities responding with tear gas and other less-lethal munitions.
Well after nightfall, 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.
According to the Los Angeles Police Department, 96 people were arrested on suspicion of failure to disperse during Monday night’s demonstrations.
One person was arrested on suspicion of assault with a deadly weapon, another on suspicion of resisting arrest and one on suspicion of vandalism.
Another 14 people were arrested on suspicion of looting.
Two officers were injured during the Monday unrest. They were treated at a hospital and released, according to the LAPD. Numerous less-lethal rounds were fired by officers from the LAPD and other partner agencies Monday night and early Tuesday morning.
Police eventually demobilized around 3 a.m. Tuesday.
Mayor Karen 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.
“Let me be clear: Anyone who vandalized downtown or looted stores does not care about our immigrant communities,” Bass wrote. “You will be held accountable.”
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.”
Bass on Monday evening and Tuesday morning again called for an end to the immigration raids to bring an end to the nightly protests.
But federal officials have remained adamant, with President Donald Trump set on carrying out his campaign pledge to conduct mass deportations of people in the country illegally.
Trump over the weekend federalized 2,000 California National Guard troops and ordered them to be deployed to Los Angeles, despite protests by Bass, Gov. Gavin Newsom and other local officials who said such a move would further exacerbate tensions and lead to more intense protests.
But Trump doubled-down on the move Monday, ordering an additional 2,000 Guard troops into the city, while also directing 700 U.S. Marines to move into Los Angeles and support the Guard’s mission of protecting federal facilities and personnel. Pentagon officials said Tuesday the deployment is expected to cost about $134 million.
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. It was unclear when a hearing on the matter might be held.
Bass blamed the ICE raids and the military response for the unrest in the city.
“Last Thursday, there was nothing happening in this town that called for the raids that took place Friday,” Bass told reporters at a downtown news conference Monday evening. “Nothing was happening. Nothing warranted the raids.”
She said the immigration raids being carried out should be curtailed.
“Stop the raids,” she said. “This is creating fear and chaos in our city and it is unnecessary.”
The mayor said local law enforcement — most notably the Los Angeles Police Department — was fully equipped to deal with the protests, and the deployment of Guard troops and Marines was completely unnecessary.
Bass noted that despite claims by Trump, National Guard troops played no role in quelling violence in the streets over the past four nights, since their mission is strictly to protect federal assets, such as the federal buildings in downtown Los Angeles and in Westwood.
Monday’s protests began peacefully, with a small group gathering in an intersection near the Metropolitan Detention Center. By Monday afternoon, a large crowd was gathered outside the federal building, where they were met by a line of National Guard troops positioned to keep people outside the building.
Law enforcement officers maintained a major presence in the Civic Center area, in some cases preventing protesters from marching along certain streets and setting up skirmish lines to block access to freeway on-ramps.
The LAPD declared a tactical alert, allowing it to keep officers on duty beyond their normal shifts if needed to respond to growing protests.
Early Monday evening, police declared the gathering outside the federal building an unlawful assembly and ordered the crowd to disperse. LAPD officers in a skirmish line then pushed the crowd south on Los Angeles Street, effectively clearing the street between Aliso and Temple streets. As the skirmish line pushed the crowd, some protesters hurled rocks and water bottles toward officers, and police fired what appeared to be flash-bang devices to keep the group moving.
The skirmishes dragged on throughout the night, with a large swath of the downtown area virtually off-limits to the public as protesters and law enforcement personnel filled the streets. News video showed a parked vehicle defaced with graffiti and consumed with flames as police officers stood by about 40 yards away.
Some of the most intense activity Monday evening took place in Little Tokyo and the Arts District, where people threw fireworks and other objects at police in riot gear, who responded with flash bangs and rubber bullets.
Video showed some demonstrators being placed on police buses with hands zip-tied behind their backs.
U.S. Northern Command confirmed Monday that about 700 Marines from the 2nd Battalion, 7th Marines, 1st Marine Division in Twentynine Palms east of Los Angeles will be deployed in the area to “seamlessly integrate” with federalized National Guard troops that arrived Sunday to help protect federal facilities and personnel.
The Marine deployment will ensure there are “adequate numbers of forces to provide continuous coverage of the area in support of the lead federal agency,” according to U.S. Northern Command.
Rep. Mike Levin, D-San Juan Capistrano, issued a statement calling the Marine deployment “an astounding overreach of authoritarian power.”
Newsom also condemned the move, saying Marines “shouldn’t be deployed on American soil facing their own countrymen to fulfill the deranged fantasy of a dictatorial president. This is un-American.”
LAPD Chief Jim McDonnell, meanwhile, said his agency had been given no formal notice about Marines being deployed to the city, and he said without better coordination, their arrival could present “a significant logistical and operational challenge for those of us charged with safeguarding this city.”
According to the LAPD, 29 people were arrested during Saturday night’s protests for failure to disperse. On Sunday, the LAPD made 21 arrests for offenses including attempted murder with a Molotov cocktail, assault with a deadly weapon on a police officer, looting and failure to disperse.
Five LAPD officers sustained minor injuries during the Sunday unrest, and five LAPD horses suffered minor injuries.
The California Highway Patrol also made additional arrests.
On social media Tuesday, Trump again insisted that his deployment of the National Guard saved the city.
“If I didn’t `send in the troops’ to Los Angeles the last three nights, that once beautiful and great city would be burning to the ground right now,” he wrote, referring to Newsom and Bass as “incompetent.”