Demonstrators in Los Angeles do not want to walk in Trumps fall: ‘They escalate, we must remain peaceful’

Waving with a Mexican flag, Lawrence Carvillo is on a Main Street viaduct over the deepened highway 101 in the center of Los Angeles. Historing cars continuously drive under him at high speed. « ¡Viva La Raza (Long live ons people), Viva México!« , He shouts.

The young skateboarder protests against the operations that the federal aliens police carry out on behalf of the government of President Donald Trump. ICE agents trace illegal immigrants all over the city on the American west coast, mostly in their workplaces, to pick them up and set them off. « We stand here for the people who are deported, but also for our own citizens, says Carvillo, an American citizen from a family of Mexican descent. » The government does not care about us. « 

This afternoon, Carvillo is part of a swelling demonstration in the center of the metropolis. He turns against Trumps hard deportation policy – and against the president’s decision to call up the National Guard of California because of the demonstrations.

On Monday, Trump mobilized two thousand reservists from the Garde and seven hundred Marines to LA, after he had already deployed two thousand reservists last weekend. The first of them arrived on Sunday, with the aim of officially protecting federal buildings and federal staff.

« He throws oil on the fire, » says Carvillo, in an ultrasound of criticism from Gavin Newsom, the governor of California, on the measure of the Republican president. The gardists are used against the will of the state, a rarity. According to Newsom, a prominent democrat, the step is « intentionally incentive. » His government is challenging the deployment of the soldiers legally because it goes beyond the « authority of the federal government, » the Californian Minister of Justice Rob Bonta announced on Monday.

Left stronghold

However, Trump eagerly takes on that battle. He wants to profile himself as President of law and orderwho tackles not only illegal immigration, but also alleged lawlessness in left -wing cities. As a democratic stronghold and a ‘Sanctuary State‘Who has been limited to federal deportation policy since 2018, California is a cut target.

Tom Homan, as a ‘borders’ of the White House responsible for expansions, stated on Monday that Newsom has ‘abandoned’ state by tackling the protests ‘too late’. Asked by journalists or Homan would have to proceed to arrest news, Trump replied on Sunday: « If I were Tom, I would do it. »

A lot of Angelenos believe that the Trump government consciously drives the situation. The use of the National Guard to take on the unrest is « unnecessary, » says Cathy Navarrette, a woman in the forty who came to the demonstration with her daughter from the San Gabriel Valley to the east of the city. « They escalate the situation, we can protest peacefully here. There is no reason to get Marines. »

Navarrette is ‘stripped’ about the raids of ICE agents, she tells with a mouth cap. « We saw it on the news and we knew in our hearts that we had to be here. It is not correct what happens, I get tears in my eyes. » Her own grandparents came to the US from Mexico, she says. « If ICE agents want to go after criminals, okay. But I don’t think it’s good that they go to workplaces and pick up working people. That could have been members of our family in the past. »

Her daughter, dressed in a mouth cap and a T-shirt from Nirvana, holds a placard with the text ‘Ice out of la. ‘

The demonstration on Monday afternoon is largely family -friendly. A row of reservists in military uniforms and with shields with the inscription ‘Calfornia National Guard’ is on the landing of a federal building where some arrested migrants are held against a crowd of demonstrators. They chant slogans, such as ‘ICE from the way’, and keep signs up with texts such as ‘Stop the expansions’. Others wave Mexican and American flags, some from cars. Many demonstrators wear face covering, such as mouth caps, in order not to be recognized on video images.

Roads in the area have been closed off by large groups of police officers, several helicopters are flying over the area. There are also sirens. The demonstration, in warm and sunny weather, is peaceful, but there is a sultry atmosphere. A water bottle is thrown to the reservists from the crowd.

A agent of the California Highway Patrol draws an electric scooter from a police car on a highway while protesters throw objects the officers near the Metropolitan Detention Center in the center of Los Angeles. Ethan Swope/AP

Later in the afternoon, demonstrators move west, towards the town hall of Los Angeles. There it came to confrontations between some demonstrators and the police during the weekend, whereby car fires were founded and tear gas were deployed. A few dozen arrests have been made.

Protests spread

The Los Angeles police have stated that they did not need help from federal soldiers to control the demonstrations. The arrival of Mariniers announced by Trump is, without coordination with the police, a « significant logistical and operational challenge, » said police chief Jim McDonnell of Los Angeles in a statement.

According to Araceli Martinez, a demonstrator from San Diego who is wearing a sign with the inscription ‘I am not afraid of you’, the use of the National Guard is part of a strategy of the Trump government to sow fear. « They try to scare people to say anything about what this government does, such as the raids of ICE. We have to get up against it, of course in a peaceful way where we stick to the law. But we can’t be afraid. »

According to Martinez, the protests can form the start of a national movement against the government’s policy. « I hope so, because it has made me anxious in recent months to see that people do not respond to all the lawlessness of the government. It is being done as if nothing is wrong, because we are all stunned. But I think we all finally wake up. We have to keep this up. »

It seems that the protests are spreading over the rest of the country: there have now also been demonstrations against Trump’s expansion policy in San Francisco, New York, Chicago, Boston and Atlanta, among others. In 2020, protests over the death of George Floyd over from police violence in Minneapolis to other cities in the United States, and beyond.

Conscious strategy

Practizer Enrico Green is concerned about the use of soldiers to nip the protests. According to him, this decision makes a conscious strategy of ‘divide and rule’ by Trump. Green, who himself served in the US Army, believes that the step is increasing the potential for violence. « They look like they are ready for violence, so that also prepares the crowd for violence, » he says. « They should have left it to the authorities of the city, it is not a matter for the federal government. »

Green holds a plate up with the text ‘Stop the expansions. He horrors the treatment of immigrants; Some of his friends in the army are migrants and have fought in Iraq and Afghanistan, he says. He is wearing a bracelet with the name of a friend, a Mexican, who died. « The fact is that immigrants contribute a lot to our economy. They pay taxes. They do work that most Americans do not want to do. They are a cheaper source of work. Los Angeles would not be Los Angeles without his immigrant population. It belongs to our character. »

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