June 10 \u2013 This weekend, tensions boiled over in the Los Angeles area after a week of immigration sweeps in the region sparked violent protests against the Trump administration and the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency.<\/p>\n
President Donald Trump\u2019s decision to send 700 US Marines and 4,000 National Guard troops to the Los Angeles area to support the federal response to the unrest has opened a volatile chapter in his mass deportation campaign.<\/p>\n
The location of the raids and subsequent protests \u2013 a liberal-leaning city in a state controlled by Democrats \u2013 also gave the White House an ideal public foil as it seeks to show progress on removing illegal immigrants and instilling law and order.<\/p>\n
Governor Gavin Newsom, a Democrat and prominent critic of the president, wrote on X that the troop deployment was a \u201cderanged fantasy of a dictatorial President\u201d.<\/p>\n
The raids in America\u2019s second-biggest city are unfolding against the backdrop of an aggressive push to raise arrest and deportation numbers, as the administration has been disappointed with its current pace.<\/p>\n
ICE has ramped up its enforcement actions in recent weeks as it faces pressure to show progress on Trump\u2019s signature policy initiative.<\/p>\n
The agency arrested 2,200 people on 4 June, according to NBC News, a record for a single day.<\/p>\n
The network reported that hundreds of those arrested were enrolled in a programme known as Alternative to Detention, which allows for the release and monitoring of individuals not deemed an immediate threat.<\/p>\n
White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller, the man widely seen as the intellectual architect of the deportation policy, has repeatedly said the White House hopes that ICE can scale up to 3,000 arrests a day, up from 660 or so during the first 100 days of Trump\u2019s presidency.<\/p>\n
\u201cPresident Trump is going to keep pushing to get that number up higher each and every single day,\u201d Miller told Fox News in late May.<\/p>\n
Yet for much of the first 100 days of the administration, deportations were on par with, and at times below, those recorded during the last year of Joe Biden\u2019s presidency.<\/p>\n
The White House stopped publishing daily deportation figures early in 2020.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m not satisfied with the numbers,\u201d the administration\u2019s border tsar, Tom Homan, told reporters at the White House at the end of May. \u201cWe need to increase.\u201d<\/p>\n
Homan added that the Trump administration had \u201cincreased the teams a lot\u201d and that \u201cwe expect a fast increase in the number of arrests\u201d.<\/p>\n
Several senior ICE officials \u2013 including Kenneth Genalo, its top deportation official \u2013 have left their roles at the agency in recent months.<\/p>\n
In February, ICE also moved two top officials overseeing deportations, as well as the agency\u2019s acting director, Caleb Vitello.<\/p>\n
At the time of the more recent reshuffle, the agency characterised the move as organisational realignments that will \u201chelp ICE achieve President Trump and the American people\u2019s mandate of arresting and deporting illegal aliens and making American communities safe\u201d.<\/p>\n
The Department of Homeland Security said in a press release that the immigrants detained in the recent Los Angeles raids included individuals convicted of sex crimes, burglary, and drug related charges, among other offences.<\/p>\n
Local immigration advocates and community members, however, say that families have been torn apart and nonviolent immigrants detained.<\/p>\n
At a rally on Monday, Los Angeles City Councilmember Ysabel Jurado said that a Friday raid at a warehouse in the Fashion District \u201cwas not about public safety, it was a fear driven, state violence designed to silence, to intimidate, to disappear\u201d.<\/p>\n
While opinion polls show that Trump\u2019s immigration policies are popular with a majority of Americans, some of his backers have expressed concern about tactics.<\/p>\n
The co-founder of Latinas for Trump, for example, Florida State Senator Ileana Garcia, wrote on X that \u201cthis is not what we voted for\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cI understand the importance of deporting criminal aliens, but what we are witnessing are arbitrary measures to hunt down people who are complying with their immigration hearings \u2013 in many cases, with credible fear of persecution claims \u2013 all driven by a Miller-like desire to satisfy a self-fabricated deportation goal,\u201d she added.<\/p>\n
Federal authorities have conducted more frequent immigration raids across the US, in states that lean both towards Democrats and Republicans. Some Republican-controlled states, like Tennessee, have assisted federal authorities.<\/p>\n
\u201cCalifornia was willing to resist,\u201d said John Acevedo, an associate dean at Emory Law School, who studies free speech and protests in the US.<\/p>\n
Images of violence and resistance on the streets of Los Angeles gave Trump a catalyst for the deployment of the National Guard.<\/p>\n
Advertisement\u201dFor his base, it does quite a bit. It shows he\u2019s serious, and allows them to show he will use all means necessary to enforce his [immigration] rules,\u201d Prof Acevedo said.<\/p>\n
Protesters in Los Angeles \u2013 which calls itself a sanctuary city, meaning it limits co-operation with federal immigration enforcement \u2013 did not relish the role they believed the administration had chosen for their city.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is my people, you know, I\u2019m fighting for us,\u201d said Maria Gutierrez, a Mexican-American who protested for two days in Paramount, a city in LA County that saw protests after residents spotted ICE agents in the area.<\/p>\n
The unrest there involved looting and at least one car burning. Authorities used rubber bullets and tear gas.<\/p>\n
She said there are some protesting in LA, including those in the nearby city of Compton, that share a belief that they were protecting the city from immigration enforcement and saw the Trump administration\u2019s threats as a challenge.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
June 10 \u2013 This weekend, tensions boiled over in the Los Angeles area after a week of immigration sweeps in the region sparked violent protests against the Trump administration and the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency. President Donald Trump\u2019s decision to send 700 US Marines and 4,000 National Guard troops to the Los Angeles […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-116234","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","entry"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/116234","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=116234"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/116234\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=116234"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=116234"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=116234"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}