In summary
President Trump’s deployment of California National Guard soldiers in spite of Gov. Gavin Newsom’s objections escalated tensions between the Republican administration and the Democratic state.
When he took office, President Donald Trump made every indication that California’s politics and policies were directly in his sights. He started with a list of so-called sanctuary jurisdictions, a designation that includes the entire state, and promised to defund them.
Since then, he has challenged California’s approach to the environment, health care, education and LGBTQ rights, mostly in federal court – there are four pending lawsuits titled “State of California v. Trump,” and another 16 that the state has joined against the president.
Last week, the conflict escalated when White House officials told CNN Trump was planning to cut federal funding to California. On Sunday, he sent in the troops.
Trump deployed hundreds of California National Guard soldiers in downtown Los Angeles as part of a rolling immigration enforcement action throughout Southern California that entered its third day.
The mobilization, made over the objections of Gov. Gavin Newsom and the mayor of Los Angeles, was the first time a president has called in the National Guard since 1965, when Lyndon Johnson ordered the Alabama National Guard to protect civil rights protesters marching from Selma to Montgomery.
“This is intentional chaos,” Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass said at a news conference. “There was no need to federalize troops. And so to have this here is really just a provocation and something that was not needed in our city.”
Tensions in the city ratcheted up again in downtown Los Angeles, where protesters on Sunday faced off with police officers who fired dozens of less-lethal rounds attempting to disperse people in the streets surrounding the 300 North Los Angeles Federal Building.
At least two self-driving vehicles were set on fire near the protest, and police continued to pepper the rally with rubber bullets well into the late afternoon.
At one point, a protester threw an object at the police skirmish line. In response, an officer fired a foam projectile from a 40 mm grenade launcher. The projectile missed the person who threw the object and struck a nearby woman in the head. She was sitting down when she was hit.
Bill Essayli, U.S. Attorney for the Central District of California – which includes Los Angeles – told KNBC-TV that immigration enforcement agents were under duress while conducting raids in Paramount and Compton.
“You have thousands of people forming and gathering in crowds, rioting, attacking our agents, throwing rocks, throwing eggs, throwing Molotov cocktails,” Essayli told the news station.
Protesters follow ICE agents
In Pasadena on Sunday, a group of local activists homed in on the AC Hotel in the city’s downtown, where they said they had located immigration enforcement agents along with their vehicles parked in the garage next door.
About 350 people gathered on the largest intersection bounding the hotel, holding signs that said “Not Here” and “F— ICE.”
“We got reports that the people staying here, the (U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement) agents that were staying here, were asking the workers and chefs and people that clean the rooms about their immigration status,” said Jose Madera of the National Day Laborer Organizing Network.
A restaurant employee in downtown Pasadena said the hotel workers left in the morning or never arrived, evinced by all the open parking on the street that would have been crowded on any other Sunday.
“A lot of people just didn’t show up to their job,” Airam Gurrola, 22, said.
Mercedes Woolsey of Pasadena said the departure of migrant workers from the hotel was a portent of what the U.S. would look like with fewer immigrant workers, and pledged to return to the protest at the hotel until immigration enforcement agents left.
“Be a menace, that’s all we can do,” Woolsey said. “We want to make sure that the AC Hotel knows that they decided to do this and we are not OK with that.”
At the Urth Caffé across the street, indoor and outdoor brunch service continued without interruption.
California Democrats condemn raids
The escalation by the Trump administration could be a turning point for a state with the third-most Trump voters in the country behind Texas and Florida.
Democratic politicians started the year quieter than usual resisting Trump’s immigration crackdowns, and with the state facing a multibillion-dollar budget deficit, lawmakers and Newsom were antsy about losing federal funding. That was especially true of Newsom, who was depending on a relatively harmonious relationship with the federal government to secure aid for Los Angeles wildfire recovery.
But California Democrats have since struck a more defiant tone. Last week they advanced numerous bills to discourage warrantless ICE visits to hospitals, schools and shelters. Over the weekend, they condemned the raids and sided with protesters, especially after federal agents arrested prominent union president David Huerta on Friday during a clash with protesters outside an immigration raid of a garment company’s warehouse.
Newsom sent a letter on Sunday afternoon to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth requesting that the administration withdraw the troops and questioning the legality of their deployment.
“There is currently no need for the National Guard to be deployed in Los Angeles, and to do so in this unlawful manner and for such a lengthy period is a serious breach of state sovereignty that seems intentionally designed to inflame the situation,” Newsom’s legal affairs secretary, David Sapp, wrote in the letter.
The governor had previously spoken to Trump on the phone for about 40 minutes on Friday night, a spokesperson said.
Assembly Speaker Robert Rivas, a Salinas Democrat, called the raids “an authoritarian assault on our immigrant communities.”
His counterpart in the state Senate, Healdsburg Democrat Mike McGuire, said the National Guard deployment “reeks of fascism.”
Workers brace for more sweeps
Marissa Nuncio, director of the Los Angeles-based Garment Worker Center, said garment workers were reeling after immigration enforcement agents detained 20 of them in a raid at Ambiance Apparel in the city’s Fashion District on Friday. The amassing of troops downtown made her members worry about a second raid.
The Garment Worker Center held a know-your-rights seminar on Saturday, one day after the raid.
Attendees “wanted to know, how can we stop this,” Nuncio said. “How can we resist these attacks on our community? They wanted to know if it’s safe to go to work, to go to church, to go to the clinic.”
Garment workers are particularly vulnerable because they are often employed in illegal production facilities that pop up and then disappear overnight. They’re paid by the piece, usually 5 cents to 12 cents per piece of clothing, a controversial practice that has drawn scrutiny from the Legislature.
Their weekly take-home pay is about $300, or $5.50 per hour, paid in cash.
“We feel the best we can do is inform workers of what’s going on,” Nuncio said, “and remind them that they have power in their rights.”
CalMatters reporters Sergio Olmos and Mikhail Zinshteyn contributed to this story.