Fresh Los Angeles rallies planned to demand release of arrested union leader
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Los Angeles gears up for fourth day of protests against immigration raids
The president of the U.S. has ordered a crackdown on illegal immigrants in Los Angeles. Police used tear gas and water hoses to disperse crowds of protesters. The protests are the latest in a series of anti-immigration protests in the city over the past year. The president has been accused of being ‘racist’ and ‘un-American’ by some of his supporters. He has also been criticised for using the power of the federal government to ‘police’ the streets of Los Angeles and other parts of the country. The federal government says it is ‘committed to the rule of law’, but critics say it has been ‘corrupt’ in its use of the power to crack down on illegal immigration. The US government says the move is necessary to protect the nation’s borders from ‘undue pressure’ from illegal immigrants. The U.N. says it has ‘no plans’ to stop illegal immigrants from entering the country, and that it has no plans to stop them leaving.
Federal agents the day before clashed with demonstrators in Los Angeles as police used teargas and “less-lethal munitions” to disperse crowds of people who were mostly peacefully protesting against immigration raids across the city and Trump’s deployment of the California national guard against the will of Newsom and the state’s other elected leaders.
On Monday new rallies against US immigration and customs enforcement (Ice) detentions were planned for noon in downtown Los Angeles, with the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) announcing an event “to demand justice for detained immigrants and an end to the ongoing human rights abuses by Ice”.
“We will not be intimidated. We will not be silenced,” the civil rights organisation said in a statement.
The rally is set to demand the immediate release of David Huerta, a union leader who it said “was unjustly arrested and is still being held by the government, and all unjustly detained individuals”.
But the political rhetoric over the protests has not cooled. Trump’s “border czar”, Tom Homan, told Fox News early Monday that Ice “took a lot of bad people off the street”.
“We arrested a sexual predator, we arrested gang members, we arrested somebody that had an armed robbery conviction,” Homan said, without providing specifics. “We made LA safer … but you’re not hearing any of this. All you’re hearing is rhetoric about Ice being racist, Ice being Nazis and terrorists – and Governor [Gavin] Newsom feeds that, just like [Democratic US House minority leader] Hakeem Jeffries says he’s going to unmask Ice agents.
“We’re not going to stop.”
Homan also told NBC News that more raids are coming. “I’m telling you what – we’re going to keep enforcing law every day in LA,” he said. “Every day in LA, we’re going to enforce immigration law. I don’t care if they like it or not.”
The tensions between elected state and local officials and the federal government showed signs of escalating further after Newsom said he planned to sue the federal government and dared Trump to arrest him.
In an interview on MSNBC, Newsom said the lawsuit would challenge Trump’s federalizing of the California national guard without the state’s consent.
“Donald Trump has created the conditions you see on your TV tonight,” Newsom told the outlet. “He’s exacerbated the conditions. He’s, you know, lit the proverbial match. He’s putting fuel on this fire, ever since he announced he was taking over the national guard – an illegal act, an immoral act, an unconstitutional act.”
Federal law, he said, “specifically notes they had to coordinate with the governor of the state.
“They never coordinated with the governor of the state.”
On Fox News, Newsom said Trump is “reckless and immoral, and he’s taken the illegal and unconstitutional act of federalizing the national guard and putting lives at risk”.
Newsom added that he is confident that California’s legal challenge would succeed.
On Sunday thousands of Angelenos had swamped the streets around city hall, the federal courthouse and a detention center where previously arrested protesters are being held. They also brought a major freeway to a standstill.
Vocal and boisterous, the crowd for large parts of the day was mostly peaceful. But tensions flared several times. On Sunday afternoon, police used teargas to disperse groups of protesters gathered near the detention center. And in the evening, officers fired round after round of flash-bangs in an attempt to push the protesters back up the freeway off-ramps. Los Angeles police leaders said officers had been shot at with commercial grade fireworks, and had rocks thrown at them.
Trump’s decision to deploy national guard troops into Los Angeles, against the wishes of state and local officials, has sent shock waves through American politics. Newsom and other Democratic governors have sharply criticized the move, describing it as an “alarming abuse of power”.
The deployment marked a stunning escalation in a broad crackdown on immigrants following raids across the country. Trump’s federalization of the guard troops is the first time an American president has used such power since the 1992 LA riots – when widespread violence broke out in reaction to the acquittal of four white police officers for brutally beating Black motorist Rodney King – and the first without the express request of the governor since 1965.
Source: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jun/09/los-angeles-protests