LOS ANGELES—Over the objections of California Gov. Gavin Newsom, President Trump intensified his terrorizing of immigrants and anyone who supports them by federalizing the National Guard and sending them into this city yesterday.
Newsom said the move, following two days of anti-ICE protests in the city, was not just unnecessary but designed to inflame the situation by “creating a spectacle of force.” Mayor Bass also condemned the move, describing it as an “escalatory measure necessitated by an administration trying to provoke situations to demonstrate its alleged strength.”
Tom Homan, Trump’s so-called border czar, said Newsom and Bass “will be arrested if they get in the way of our operations.”
The National Guard troops that arrived Sunday were stationed outside a federal complex to which the masked secret police have been taking people they illegally and unconstitutionally snatch from their workplaces, homes, and off the streets.
MSNBC reporters, who were covering the developments, said Sunday that they have seen a lot of scared and some angry demonstrators here, but nothing that can be described as “rioting.”
Gov. Newsom urged demonstrators to remain calm. “Don’t give Trump what he wants,” the governor said.
The people grabbing the immigrants have no uniforms, are heavily masked, and wear no identification or badges. When questioned about who they are by the people they grab or the protesters who witness the kidnapping, they refuse to answer any questions.
“This is nothing more than the setting up of a secret police operation, completely in line with the fascist nature of what this administration is doing,” a member of Democratic Rep. Maxine Waters’s staff told People’s World.
Grabbed people around the country
The masked secret police, who are described as ICE agents, in true police state fashion, grabbed people around the country this week, even as they appeared for scheduled court appointments. They were following the law, showing up for court appointments to have their cases reviewed, and they were snatched by the secret police and hauled off to detention centers to prepare for deportation.
In one situation here in Los Angeles, the masked men entered a neighborhood restaurant and grabbed the kitchen staff who were busy at work. The move angered the customers in the restaurant, who called friends and neighbors, and they quickly turned out to protest the ICE actions. In an act of civil disobedience, they stood in front of the vans trying to prevent them from taking the restaurant workers to the detention center.
Local activists said that any violence that resulted from ICE raids in the Los Angeles area in the last few days was triggered by unnecessary, violent, and illegal raids by the masked government agents.
Protesters were attacked and shot at with rubber bullets, and some were seriously injured. Civil rights lawyer Maya Wiley said that the Trump administration was responsible for any violence that happened. “When you violate people’s rights with illegal raids and then you attack peaceful protests and people doing civil disobedience, then you get the sporadic acts of violence that play into Trump’s hands.”
The deployment of the National Guard was the first time in decades that a state’s National Guard was activated without a request from its governor, a significant escalation of the Trump terror campaign against those who oppose the administration’s illegal deportations.
Yesterday, National Guard troops were stationed outside the Metropolitan Detention Center in downtown Los Angeles, dressed in tactical gear and holding long guns in front of armored vehicles.
Rep. Maxine Waters went there with a small group, demanding entry to the facility. Waters and her supporters had to make their way along a street littered with tear gas containers used against demonstrators on Saturday. As a Congresswoman entitled to enter any federal facility, she was denied entry even after repeated requests to the National Guard.
The protests began on Friday in downtown Los Angeles. The next day, protests began in Paramount, a heavily Latino city south of the city limits.
The secret police, described in much of the corporate media as “federal agents,” provocatively set up “headquarters” at a Home Depot in Paramount.
Their provocative deployment followed the provocative anonymous grabbing of people off the streets and out of their homes and workplaces from coast to coast for weeks now by the Trump secret police.
The situation is making people in Los Angeles angry, although only a tiny minority engaged in throwing rocks at the Border Patrol vehicles or doing anything else that can be described as “violent.” A demonstrator told MSNBC reporters that no one threw rocks until after people were shot with rubber bullets. One bleeding demonstrator showed TV reporters how a bullet had removed a large chunk of flesh from his side.
When several people threw rocks at the large border patrol vehicles near the Home Depot, the secret police, dressed in riot gear, massively overreacted by unleashing enormous amounts of tear gas, flash bang explosives, and pepper balls.
Union leader arrested
David Huerta, the union leader who is president of California’s SEIU, was arrested at the protests for using his right to free speech and observing developments. He was accused of “impeding law enforcement.”
The AFL-CIO and the Service Employees are holding a Day of Action on June 9, demanding Huerta’s release and an end to the ICE raids. Rallies are planned for Los Angeles, Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Raleigh, N.C., Sacramento, Seattle, and Washington, D.C.
“What happened to David on Friday is about more than just a single leader. It is an attack on all of us who believe in the fundamental American right to stand up for justice, and speak out for the rights of workers,” the AFL-CIO’s statement said.
“We oppose immigration enforcement tactics that breed fear and stoke violence. We stand firmly together in our demand for Huerta’s immediate release and, more broadly, call on the administration to halt its attack on immigrant workers who feed our families, care for our seniors, and contribute to our economy every single day.”
Protest leaders in Chicago condemned the arrest, which they said was aimed at intimidating the labor and immigrant rights movements. The demonstration in Chicago was called by the city’s AFL-CIO central labor council and immigrant rights activist organizations that have been mobilizing the community, religious, labor, and other groups in the struggle for immigrant rights.
Following the arrest of Huerta, the Communist Party USA of California issued a statement:
“We condemn the recent ICE raids in Los Angeles, the seizure of immigrant workers from their workplaces, and the violent arrest of SEIU President David Huerta. We demand the immediate release of Brother Huerta and all those detained for expressing their free speech rights,” the statement read.
The party also took issue with what it described as “state violence.”
“We call on our political leaders to take immediate steps to stop this type of state violence, but that alone is not enough. We must have more mass demonstrations, protests, and direct actions, and we must have action in defense of immigrants who are targeted.”
AFL-CIO President Liz Shuler and Secretary-Treasurer Fred Redmond emphasized that Huerta was “exercising his constitutional rights” as a legal observer when ICE agents “violently arrested him,” leaving him injured.
Huerta, who needed medical treatment following his violent arrest, was released from the hospital on Friday but remains under arrest. He released a statement through SEIU California: “What happened to me is not about me,” he said. “This is about how we as a community stand together and resist injustice.”
“We are proud of President Huerta’s righteous participation as a community observer, in keeping with his long history of advocating for immigrant workers and with the highest values of our movement: standing up to injustice, regardless of personal risk or the power of those perpetrating it,” SEIU California said in a statement.
“As the Trump administration’s mass deportation agenda has unnecessarily targeted our hard-working immigrant brothers and sisters, David was exercising his constitutional rights and conducting legal observation of ICE activity in his community. He was doing what he has always done, and what we do in unions: Putting solidarity into practice and defending our fellow workers.
“With these raids, the government is sowing intense fear for personal safety among our immigrant and migrant community,” said National Nurses United, whose Secretary-Treasurer, Irma Westmoreland, RN, spoke at the AFGE-led rally in D.C. the day before.
“Nurses and other union workers oppose this, and are standing up in solidarity with fellow immigrant workers,” the union continued after Huerta’s arrest. “We refuse to be silent, and people like David Huerta are bravely putting their bodies on the line to bear witness to what ICE is doing. It’s appalling that ICE injured and detained him while he was exercising his First Amendment rights. We demand his immediate release.”
Contradicts our values
“The assault on Los Angeles contradicts all this country stands for,” said AFT/Teachers President Randi Weingarten, a New York City civics teacher who holds a law degree, too. “We are a nation made stronger by immigrant workers, stronger by the unions that represent them, and stronger by the rule of law. The administration’s actions cast a shadow over our democracy, but we will not be cowed, and we will not stay silent.
Weingarten called Trump’s L.A. crackdown “illegal, heavy-handed, and unnecessary.” She added it’s “a trumped-up excuse to manufacture a spectacle and stoke further tensions…The administration seems intent on provoking and scapegoating hardworking immigrants to distract from its political woes.
“The coordinated ICE raids in Los Angeles today were violent and intentionally cruel. These were not acts of justice,” said Peter Finn and Chris Griswold, presidents of the two Teamsters Joint Councils which cover California. “They were calculated displays of power meant to terrify working families and rip communities apart. Families…were targeted and terrorized for simply existing.”
“The values of our labor movement demand that we speak out in moments like this. The California labor movement will not be intimidated, will not be divided, and will fight for the right of every worker to live safely and with dignity.”
The International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) echoed these demands, calling the raids “an attack on all workers.” In a press release, they condemned the “cruel and unjust actions by ICE,” which they said served “no purpose except to create fear.”
The United Farm Workers emphasized working-class solidarity, stating, “An attack against one worker is an attack on all workers.” Lorena Gonzalez, President of the California Federation of Labor Unions, warned that the raids “disrupt our economy and hurt all working people.” For workers in the labor movement, this fight is far from over.
The last time the National Guard was activated without a governor’s permission was in 1965, when President Lyndon B. Johnson sent troops to protect a civil rights march in Alabama, according to the Brennan Center for Justice.
Trump is using the raids to ramp up his attacks on and campaigns against any city or state that has Democratic or Black or Latino political leadership. He claimed that Gov. Newsom and Mayor Bass were unable to contain the unrest in the city without mentioning, of course, that any unrest that is happening is the result of the deliberate actions of his so-called “federal agents.”
In a directive Saturday, Trump invoked a legal provision allowing him to deploy federal service members when there is ”a rebellion or danger of a rebellion against the authority of the Government of the United States.” He said he had authorized the deployment of 2,000 members of the National Guard.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth made matters worse by threatening to also send in the U.S. Marines. “They are available,” he said, “if they are needed.” Trump, answering questions about whether he would deploy the Marines, said, “We will do anything we must to keep law and order. No one is going to get away with spitting on our police.”
Newsom called Trump on Friday night and told him he was ”manufacturing a crisis.”
Accuses California leaders
In a statement Sunday, Assistant Homeland Security Secretary Tricia McLaughlin accused California’s politicians and protesters of “defending heinous illegal alien criminals at the expense of Americans’ safety.” No charges of any criminal activity were filed against any of the allegedly “heinous criminals” that were being rounded up without warrants.
McLaughlin described peaceful protesters as “rioters” and said, “They should be thanking ICE officers every single day who wake up and make our communities safer.”
The Department of Defense jumped on social media to try to say how fortunate the country is to have a National Guard on the scene, which knows how to fight wars. They bragged that among the troops sent to Los Angeles were the 79th Infantry Brigade Combat Team, a team with special training in waging battles during a war.
Progressive lawmakers are among those who see the sending of the Guard into Los Angeles and the moves against demonstrators across the country as a sign of increasing authoritarianism and even fascism in the U.S.
Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders said the order by Trump reflected “a president moving this country rapidly into authoritarianism” and “usurping the powers of the United States Congress.”
The fear created by the Trump anti-immigrant campaign is pervasive. Fear has spread across the country.
The Rev. Primo Racimo, pastor of St. Margaret of Scotland Episcopal Church in Chicago, told People’s World that Filipino immigrants with green cards, all legal residents of the country and some of whom are among his parishioners, are fearful. He said that they are now afraid to leave the country to visit relatives back home.
“Several have now been grabbed as they re-enter the country and have been held in detention for days before being released. Immigration rights activists are fearful that even by helping people find apartments, they can be accused of anything and everything up to and including human trafficking.”
MAGA Republican lawmakers, as expected, backed the president. House Speaker Mike Johnson, a staunch Trump ally, endorsed the president’s move, doubling down on Republicans’ criticisms of California Democrats.
“Gavin Newsom has shown an inability or an unwillingness to do what is necessary, so the president stepped in,” Johnson said. The speaker said he did not consider calling in the Marines as inappropriate, despite the blatant illegality of such a move, except in cases of insurrection.
Many online have noted that nothing protesters have done so far even remotely compares with what Trump supporters did when they attacked the Capitol in 2021, causing destruction, injury, and deaths.
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