President Trump and his allies have spent the weekend painting Los Angeles as a city consumed by violent protest and even “insurrection” over immigration raids.
On Saturday evening, Trump insisted the unrest was out of control. He bypassed Gov. Gavin Newsom and called in the National Guard. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth suggested U.S. Marines from Camp Pendleton might need to be deployed to the streets next.
For a governor whose state was portrayed as being in the grips of uncontrolled rebellion, Newsom responded in an unusual way: He began issuing Californians a series of increasingly sophisticated and urgent pieces of political advice about how not to play into the president’s hands.
“The President is attempting to inflame passions and provoke a response,” Newsom wrote in an email Sunday morning. “They want the violence. They think it is good for them politically.”
He all but begged: “To the people of Los Angeles and across the country who are protesting these immigration raids: Don’t give them the spectacle that they want.”
Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputies hold a law enforcement line to keep protesters from advancing after a day of demonstrations continues into the evening on Saturday night in Compton.
(Gina Ferazzi/Los Angeles Times)
A few hours later, Newsom posted on X that the president was sending troops to L.A. County “not to meet an unmet need, but to manufacture a crisis. He’s hoping for chaos, so he can justify more crackdowns.”
Los Angeles County was the site of scattered clashes between authorities and protesters Saturday, but was nowhere near a state of chaos. The governor’s messages illustrate the complex political situation the weekend’s events have created for California’s leaders, and for immigrants’ rights advocates.
They are outraged by what they see as the federal government’s heavy-handed tactics in conducting immigration raids. But they are also terrified that the federal government will win the image battle and convince America that Los Angeles has exploded into a rebellion that needs to be subdued.
“It’s a tightrope of how do we fight this, resist this, stand up and protect our people and not play right into their hands,” said former Los Angeles Councilman Mike Bonin, who is now the executive director of the Pat Brown Institute of Public Affairs at Cal State L.A., in an interview.
Bonin added that he had been monitoring coverage of the immigration standoff on Fox News and other right-leaning outlets and it was “all about the Trump administration trying to quell violent insurrection in chaotic Los Angeles.”
Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass, in an interview Sunday morning, spoke out forcefully against violence, but also called the federal government’s response “unneccessary.”
She called the administration’s actions “posturing” and “completely disruptive to a city that has already gone through so much.” She also condemned violence, saying people who engaged in it or vandalism should be “arrested and held accountable to the full extent of the law.”
“The protest that happened last night in L.A. was relatively minor,” she added, and “to say that the city is out of control, I don’t know what city they are talking about.” Demonstrations in the city of Los Angeles on Saturday were largely confined to the federal Metropolitan Detention Center where immigrants were detained; larger protests unfolded in Paramount, southeast of L.A.
Political consultant Mike Madrid in an interview said the Trump administration has managed to put California officials in the middle of a perilous situation.
On the one hand, he said, there is a legitimate threat to public order. “There are thousands of people in the streets of Los Angeles,” he noted. “There are people throwing rocks at police cars.”
California officials must call for law and order, he said. But on the other hand, Madrid added: “The escalation benefits the president. He wants the violence. He wants the damage. He wants the destruction.”
The National Guard stationed at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Los Angeles on Sunday.
(Jason Armond/Los Angeles Times)
As National Guard troops began moving into Los Angeles on Sunday morning, and protesters began to gather, the streets were mostly calm — more so than the political arena.
Speaking to Jacob Soboroff of “NBC News” on Sunday, Tom Homan, Trump’s so-called border czar, blasted the governor for his criticism of the administration’s effort to detain and deport immigrants without proper documentation.
“Gov. Newsom should be on the phone thanking President Trump for making a state safer,” he said.
He also issued a threat, saying Newsom, Bass and others could face arrest if they impede U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement operations. “It’s a felony to knowingly harbor and conceal an illegal alien. It’s a felony to impede law enforcement from doing their job.”
The Department of Homeland Security issued a press bulletin Sunday with the names of several people arrested in Los Angeles, calling them the “worst of the worst illegal alien criminals in Los Angeles, including murderers, sex offenders, and other violent criminals.”
The release added that “California politicians and rioters are defending heinous illegal alien criminals at the expense of Americans safety” and quoted Assistant DHS Secretary Tricia McLaughlin asking: “Why do Governor Newsom and Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass care more about violent murderers and sex offenders than they do about protecting their own citizens?”
Immigrants rights groups, meanwhile, called for a rally Sunday afternoon at La Placita Olvera near downtown, one of the centers of the immigrant rights movement.
“There is a Constitutional Crisis in Los Angeles, with First, Fourth & Fourteenth Amendment Violations Happening Now,” one of the organizers, civil rights attorney Jaime Gutierrez, said in a statement. “This isn’t just policy disagreement. … This is the blueprint of tyranny.”
And so, as protesters began to gather, more and more officials joined the chorus urging people on the street to keep the political optics in mind.
The message seemed to be resonating.
Julie Solis, 50, was walking back and forth holding a Mexican flag along Alameda Street on Sunday, urging the crowd to “keep it peaceful,” warning protesters that she believes the National Guard was deployed solely to provoke a response and make Los Angeles look unruly to justify further aggression from federal law enforcement.
“They want arrests,” she said. “They want to see us fail. We need to be peaceful. We need to be eloquent.”
Times staff writers Seema Mehta and James Queally contributed to this report.
