By Laurel Rosenhall, Charlie Savage, Jesus Jiménez, Helene Cooper and Jack Healy
Tensions began to rise in Los Angeles on Monday evening after a mostly quiet day of protests against President Trump’s deportation roundups, and following the administration’s orders to more than double the number of military forces being sent to the area.
The unrest initially focused on a small area downtown, near a federal building and City Hall, where law enforcement officers fired flash bangs and foam rounds to disperse a crowd. Police officers and National Guard troops in riot gear surrounded the federal building as night approached. But protesters then began to spread out, with some moving into the nearby area of Little Tokyo.
The confrontation on the ground mirrored the one between top officials in California and in Washington, as the Trump administration’s new deployments brought the number of federal forces to 4,000 National Guard troops and 700 active-duty Marines. The escalation was striking, given that the protests had been relatively small and limited to a few locations and that Mr. Trump himself had said that the situation in Los Angeles was “under control.” But Mr. Trump has also labeled the protesters “insurrectionists.”
City and state officials said the federal troops were unneeded and provocative, and Gov. Gavin Newsom’s administration filed a lawsuit seeking to block Mr. Trump’s initial order to deploy 2,000 National Guard troops, hundreds of which have arrived in the city and are visible around federal buildings. In an afternoon interview with The New York Times, Mr. Newsom said that the troops that had deployed over the weekend had little to do, that the Marines were not necessary and that the president was acting to sow “more fear, more anger, and to further divide.”
Hours later, a Pentagon spokesman announced that 2,000 more National Guard troops were being mobilized.
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