US President Donald Trump’s administration said it would deploy 2,000 National Guard troops on Saturday as federal agents in Los Angeles faced off against a few hundred demonstrators during a second day of protests following immigration raids.
US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth warned that the Pentagon was prepared to mobilise active-duty troops “if violence continues” in Los Angeles, saying the Marines at nearby Camp Pendleton were “on high alert.”
Federal security agents on Saturday confronted protesters in the Paramount area in southeast Los Angeles, where some demonstrators displayed Mexican flags. A second protest in downtown Los Angeles on Saturday night attracted some 60 people, who chanted slogans including “ICE out of L.A.!”
Trump signed a presidential memorandum to deploy the National Guard troops to “address the lawlessness that has been allowed to fester,” the White House said in a statement. Trump’s border czar, Tom Homan, told Fox News that the National Guard would be deployed in Los Angeles on Saturday.
California Governor Gavin Newsom called the decision “purposefully inflammatory.” He posted on X that Trump was deploying the National Guard “not because there is a shortage of law enforcement, but because they want a spectacle,” adding: “Don’t give them one. Never use violence. Speak out peacefully.”
Newsom said it was “deranged behavior” for Hegseth to be “threatening to deploy active-duty Marines on American soil against its own citizens.”
Trump posted on his Truth Social platform that if Newsom and Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass can’t do their jobs, “then the Federal Government will step in and solve the problem, RIOTS & LOOTERS, the way it should be solved!!!”
The protests pit Democratic-run Los Angeles, where census data suggests a significant portion of the population is Hispanic and foreign-born, against Trump’s Republican White House, which has made cracking down on immigration a hallmark of his second term.
“Insurrectionists carrying foreign flags are attacking immigration enforcement officers, while one half of America’s political leadership has decided that border enforcement is evil,” Vice President JD Vance posted on X late on Saturday.
Senior White House aide Stephen Miller, an immigration hardliner, described the protests as a “violent insurrection.”
The administration has not invoked the Insurrection Act, two US officials told Reuters on condition of anonymity. One said that National Guard troops can deploy quickly, within 24 hours in some cases, and that the military was working to source the 2,000 troops.
The 1807 law empowers a president to deploy the US military to enforce the law and suppress events like civil disorder. The last time it was invoked was during the 1992 Los Angeles riots at the request of the California governor.
Video footage of the Paramount protest showed dozens of green-uniformed security personnel with gas masks at the Paramount protest, lined up on a road strewn with overturned shopping carts as small canisters exploded into gas clouds. Authorities began detaining some protesters, according to Reuters witnesses.
Los Angeles police posted on X that “multiple people have been detained for failing to disperse after multiple warnings were issued.” It did not give further details.
There was no official information on any arrests.
“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 organised and fierce resistance,” said protester Ron Gochez, 44.
A first round of protests kicked off on Friday night after Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents conducted enforcement operations in the city and arrested at least 44 people on alleged immigration violations.
The Department of Homeland Security said in a statement that there were about “1,000 rioters” at the protests on Friday.
Reuters could not verify DHS’s account. Angelica Salas, executive director of the immigrants’ rights organisation Chirla, said lawyers had not had access to those detained on Friday, which she called “very worrying.”
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.
ICE, the Department of Homeland Security, and the Los Angeles Police Department did not respond to requests for comment on the protests or whether there had been any immigration raids on Saturday.
Television news footage on Friday 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 labourers were picked up, as well as at a garment factory and a warehouse, Salas of Chirla said.
Bass, the mayor of Los Angeles, condemned the immigration raids.
“I am deeply angered by what has taken place,” Bass 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.”
