New night of tensions in Los Angeles. The city has been experiencing clashes between the police and the protesters against Donald Trump for three days for three days. To restore the “order”, the US President deployed this Sunday, June 8, the National Guard Army, against the opinion of local authorities.
• What is the reason for these clashes?
The clashes began on the afternoon of this Friday, June 6 in Los Angeles, where a large Hispanic population resides, when the Federal Immigration Police (ICE) agents have made muscle arrests of immigrants.
These were carried out in a context in which Donald Trump erected the fight against illegal immigration with absolute priority. The US president communicates abundantly in the arrests and expulsions of immigrants, evoking an “invasion” of the United States for “abroad criminals.”
Leaded even in the country’s courts, these evictions have become terrorists of millions of immigrants without legal status. The protesters tried to oppose the arrests, giving rise to the first demonstrations and clashes with the police.
“We must defend our people,” a woman told AFP, a daughter of immigrants. “Whatever we are injured, they are gased, they will never stop us. Everything we have left is our voice.”
35 Mexican nationals were arrested in recent operations, Mexico President Claudia Sheinbaum announced Sunday, asking the United States to treat them with dignity. It was “honest men and women who went to look for a better life (…) that are not criminals,” he insisted during a public speech.
• Why was the Republican Guard deployed?
The clashes continued on Saturday, Fulfilling the Los Angeles districtsAs Paramount, a suburb of the Californian city, or Compton.
To “remedy anarchy,” the White House announced the deployment of 2,000 soldiers of the National Guard, through the signing of a presidential memorandum. “You have violent people, and we are not going to let them get out of that,” Donald Trump told reporters before embarking on his plane, a few hours after the arrival of the first army of this armed reserve force in the Californian megalopolis on Sunday.
“They are not protesters, they are uproar and insurgents,” he threw the president in his social network on Sunday denouncing “current disturbances.”
He also indicated that he did not exclude the sending of troops elsewhere to the United States if necessary. The National Guard, the armed reserve force, is often mobilized during natural disasters.
He plays a unique military role in the United States, namely, serving both the federal state and the states. According to its site, the National Guard is “listening to the governor and ready to defend the country at any time and anywhere.”
In 2020, Donald Trump had asked for the deployment of the National Guard in California for civil disorders, after the violent disturbances caused by the death of George Floyd, but requesting the governors. Several had refused to send troops.
But this Saturday, the decision to deploy the National Guard only returned to Donald Trump, federalizing the troops. This unilateral decision is far from harmless in the United States.
According to CNN, this is the first since 1992. That year, on May 1, George Hw Bush invoked the insurrection of the act to display the troops against a city in Los Angeles he had embraced after the acquittal of four white police officers, accused of having swallowed a black motorist, King of Rodney. The riots had lasted six days, there were more than 50 dead, 2,300 injured and gave rise to more than 11,000 arrests.
• How did local authorities react?
This decision was very received by the Democratic governor of California. Gavin Newsom had opposed such a measure, calling it “deliberately incendiary” and ensuring that “only tensions worsen.”
“I called him the other night. I said: ‘Listen, you have to take care of that. Otherwise, I send the troops.’ And that is what we did,” the president said on Sunday.
“We had no problem until Trump got involved,” said Gavin Newsom in X on Sunday, denouncing “a serious attack against the sovereignty of the State” of California and asking the president to cancel the deployment of the troops.
The governors of democratic states punished in a joint press release a “abuse of alarming power.”
• Where is the situation after three days of clashes?
The situation remained tense during Sunday night until Monday, with clashes between security forces and small groups of often masked individuals. Los Angeles Police (LAPD) announced in X that the city center has been declared a prohibited demonstration area, as well as a business district area.
The aerial images transmitted by television showed many police cars rolling in procession in deserted streets in the city center and the police were placed at the crossroads, but also some face to face with small groups of protesters, scattered in different small mobile groups, according to the journalist ABC7 flying over the city by Helicopter.
Early in the afternoon, dozens of protesters blocked a road for more than an hour, in a tense face to face with the police, which made some arrests and uses tear gas, even against journalists. An Australian television journalist was touched without gravity in the leg by a rubber projectile shot by the police in the city center, according to the images that circulate on social networks and his employer, 9News.
Los Angeles police said the police arrested at least 56 people in two days, and that three of its members were slightly injured. According to the deputy director of the Federal Police (FBI), several people were also arrested in New York, during similar demonstrations against the immigration police.
The San Francisco Police has announced that they had arrested the last day at the end of the day, some sixty people during clashes with protesters against US policy to combat immigration, while the other Californian megalopolis Los Angeles has been the scene of clashes since Friday.
The situation degenerated during a demonstration when several participants “became violent”, attacking several buildings and a police car, Local Police (SFPD) said in X. Two police officers were injured.
Source: BFM TV
