Demonstrators torched cars and scuffled with security forces in Los Angeles on Sunday as police kept protesters away from the National Guard troops President Donald Trump sent to the streets of the second biggest US city.

Unrest broke out for a third day, with protesters angry at action by immigration officials that have resulted in dozens of arrests of what authorities say are illegal migrants and gang members.

The raids – which began in broad daylight in a city with a large Latino population – were always likely to spark reaction among the public in the liberal city.

But opponents say Trump, who has made clamping down on illegal migration a key plank of his second term, was deliberately stoking tensions with his deployment of California’s National Guard, a standby military usually controlled by the state’s governor, Gavin Newsom.

“We didn’t have a problem until Trump got involved,” Newsom wrote on X.