About 700 navies were deployed for Los Angeles Monday to help members of the National Guard to answer Immigration protestssaid the US military, when California was preparing to continue the American president Donald Trump on its use of guard troops and an increasing number of demonstrators Caught in the streets of the city for a fourth day.
US Northern Command said in a statement that the Marines would “transparently integrate” into the National Guard operations that started on Sunday, for the sole purpose of defending federal goods and staff until more troops in the National Guard arrive.
“The activation of the navies is intended to provide working group 51 an adequate number of forces to provide continuous coverage of the region,” said the press release, using the name given to the military operation in the Grand Los Angeles region.
The California Attorney General Rob Bonta announced the planned trial by telling journalists that Trump had “trampled” state sovereignty.
“We do not take lightly to the abusing president of his authority and illegally mobilizing the troops of the California National Guard,” said Bonta. He planned to request an order from the court declaring the use by Trump of illegal custody by Trump and requesting a prohibition order to stop deployment.
The smell of smoke suspended the city center on Monday, one day after the crowd blocked a large highway and set fire to autonomous cars while the police responded with tear gas, rubber bullets and flash-bang grenades. This could take days to clean up the debris of burned cars and to clean or paint on sprayed graffiti at the town hall and to other nearby buildings.
The presence of the police was heavy, the police blocking the street in front of the federal detention center which was at the center of the demonstrations.
But the clashes took place on a few square blocks in a huge city of some 4 million people, most of whom did their normal activities in the peaceful streets.
Thousands of people on Monday flooded the streets of the Town Hall for a union rally before an audience for the work manager David Huerta, who was released a few hours later with a deposit of $ 50,000. Huerta’s arrest on Friday when he protests against immigration raids has become a rallying cry for angry people against the repression of the administration. He is president of the International Union of Employees of the California Service, which represents thousands of concierges, security agents and other state workers.
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Earlier in the day, religious leaders joined demonstrators outside the downtown federal detention where Huerta took place, sometimes working to suppress explosions of anger in the otherwise peaceful demonstration. The demonstrators linked their hands and sometimes sang in front of a line of police officers, who in vain asked people to leave the road and on the sidewalk.
Bonta accused Trump of Fanning of the anger of the demonstrators with his announcement of the deployment, saying that he had triggered Sunday clashes with the police in downtown Los Angeles. “It was not inevitable,” he said.
Trump said on Monday that the city would have been “completely erased” if he had not deployed the guard.
Later, during a White House event, he added that the heads of state “were afraid of doing anything.”
US officials said that around 1,000 members of the National Guard were in the city under federal orders by noon on Monday. The 2,000 complete members authorized by the president had to be on the ground by the end of the day. Officials spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss details of military operations.
The arrival of the National Guard followed two days of demonstrations which began on Friday in downtown Los Angeles before spreading Saturday in Paramount, a strongly Latin city south of the city, and a neighboring Compton.
Other demonstrations took shape on Monday afternoon in Los Angeles on Monday afternoon, and other demonstrations were planned for cities across the country.
Apart from a Los Angeles clothing warehouse, parents of detained workers demanded during a press conference that their loved ones were released.
Jacob Vasquez’s family, 35, who was detained on Friday at the warehouse, where he worked, said that she had not yet received information about him.
“Jacob is a father and the only family support for his house,” Vasquez’s brother Gabriel told the crowd. He asked that his last name would not be used, fearing to be targeted by the authorities.
On Sunday, many demonstrators dispersed in the evening and the police declared an illegal assembly, a precursor of the police lining up and arresting those who refuse to leave. Some of those who stayed threw objects in the police behind a makeshift barrier. Others have launched pieces of concrete, rocks, electric scooters and fireworks at California road patrol officers and their vehicles. The police ran under a higher passage to hide at some point.
The goalkeeper was specifically deployed to protect federal buildings, including the city center detention center where demonstrators have concentrated.
Los Angeles police chief Jim McDonnell said the police were “overwhelmed” by other demonstrators. He said they understood regular agitators who arise during demonstrations to cause problems.
Several dozen people were arrested throughout the weekend. One was arrested on Sunday for throwing a Molotov cocktail to the police and another for hitting a motorcycle in a line of officers.
The governor says that the guard is not necessary
Newsom urged Trump to cancel the deployment of the guard in a letter on Sunday, calling it “serious violation of state sovereignty”.
The governor, who was in Los Angeles, met local police and the officials, also told demonstrators that they played in Trump’s plans and should face an arrest for violence or destruction of property.
“Trump wants chaos and caused violence,” he said. “Stay peaceful. Stay concentrated. Do not give him the excuse he is looking for.”
The deployment seemed to be the first time in decades that the national guard of a state was activated without request from its governor, a significant escalation against those who sought to hinder the mass deportation efforts of the administration.
Newsom, on the other hand, said on several occasions that the Californian authorities had under control the situation. He made fun of Trump for having published a message of congratulations to the custody on social networks even before the troops arrived in Los Angeles.
The last time the National Guard was activated without the authorization of a governor, it was in 1965, when President Lyndon B. Johnson sent troops to protect a march of civil rights in Alabama, according to the Brennan Center for Justice.
In a directive on Saturday, Trump invoked a legal provision allowing him to deploy federal soldiers when there is “a rebellion or a danger of rebellion against the authority of the United States government”.
Sullivan reported to Minneapolis. The writers of the Associated Press Dorany Pineda in Los Angeles, Amy Taxin in the County of Orange, California, and Jake Offenhartz in New York contributed to this report.
Additional Global News files