Los Angeles, Mayor Bass Considers Curfew. The President: Someone Is Funding the Protests

FROM OUR CORRESPONDENT

LOS ANGELES - For the first time since the start of the protests in Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass last night imposed a curfew in the center of the metropolis, from 8 p.m. to 6 a.m. The mayor said she did so at the request of residents after 23 stores had been looted and multiple facades damaged by graffiti the night before. Meanwhile, the governor of Texas also announced the deployment of the state National Guard to maintain order.

Bass - aware of the use of images by Trump and his supporters - pointed out that only an area of two and a half square kilometers in a city of 1,300 square kilometers would have been off-limits (100,000 people out of 4 million Los Angeles residents live there). In this area, police sirens and helicopter blades resounded throughout the night. The vast majority of protesters dispersed, an hour after the curfew, dissuaded by the huge deployment of police forces but the small groups that remained in the streets were chased and arrested. Arrests have been on the rise in recent days : 27 on Friday, 40 on Saturday, 114 on Sunday, 197 on Monday, according to authorities. We saw solidarity for these demonstrations (cars driving by and waving Mexican flags), but we also spoke to people of Hispanic origin who told us that hurling insults and throwing stones at the police as some of the protesters are doing is not the right way to protest, but only plays into Trump's hands.

 

Mayor Bass has again asked Trump to remove the 4,000 National Guard troops and 700 Marines and to end the raids by ICE (the federal agency for immigration) that are creating tension and fear. More US troops than those deployed in Syria and Iraq, local TV noted. Despite Trump's claims that without federal troops Los Angeles would have burned, the protests have so far been controlled by the Los Angeles police, supported by sheriff's forces and other local forces, while the National Guard is stationed outside public buildings.

Speaking at a rally for soldiers at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, on Tuesday afternoon, the president said the protests in Los Angeles were part of a foreign invasion, as demonstrated by the flags being waved by protesters.

Governor Gavin Newsom, shortly before the curfew began, responded to the president with a very harsh speech on TV, accusing him of abusing his power, of inflaming the situation, and warned Americans that democracy is in danger: Sending trained fighters for war into the streets is unprecedented and threatens the very core of our democracy, the governor said. The system of checks and balances no longer exists. Newsom did not deny that there are also violent protesters and warned them that they will be prosecuted, but he also said that the streets were calming down and that Trump's sending of federal troops was aimed precisely at rekindling tensions ; the governor told people that they must not be silenced but asked them to protest peacefully. Newsom had filed an emergency motion in federal court a few hours earlier to block the National Guard and Marines from participating in raids on immigrants; it was denied, but his lawsuit against the administration will be heard on Thursday. The protests have spread to nine other American cities, including New York, Chicago, Atlanta, Dallas, Philadelphia, San Francisco. Among them were young people who waved the American flag and those of their countries of origin together.

Marine Corps Commandant Gen. Eric Smith testified to the Senate on Tuesday that the battalion sent to Los Angeles has arrived, is trained in crowd control (equipped with shields and batons) and is awaiting orders, but he clarified that it had not yet been called in and in any case does not have the authority to make arrests, only to protect property and federal agents.

Both Bass and Governor Newsom, Democrats, insist that the only way to restore calm is to stop the raids against illegal immigrants, to withdraw federal forces from our city. But it is the very nature of immigrant sanctuary that Republicans are attacking: You have no right to circumvent federal immigration laws, says Ron DeSantis, the Republican governor of Florida who has often clashed with Newsom and like him has presidential aspirations. The problem in California is that they have been a sanctuary state for too many years.

Trump's immigration czar, Tom Homan, warns that the raids will continue, but he argues that they are targeting criminals, not undocumented gardeners and garment workers as Newsom claims. The National Guard and Marines will stay for at least 60 days, at a cost of $134 million, Pentagon chief Pete Hegseth told Democrats in Congress.

The push for workplace raids has been Trump's immigration program architect, Stephen Miller, who said in late May that high-profile arrests of gangsters and violent criminals are not enough to meet the promised deportation numbers, which are still lower than Biden's in the last year; and that you have to go to Home Depot and 7-Eleven stores where day-job seekers congregate.

Meanwhile, Trump intends to send 9,000 migrants to Guantanamo, the media reported, citing administration sources: deportations motivated by the need to free up space in detention facilities in the United States. Among the foreign citizens who could end up in the detention center in Cuba, hundreds come from European nations including Italy, Great Britain, France, Germany, Ireland, Belgium, the Netherlands, Lithuania, Poland, Turkey and Ukraine, writes the Washington Post.