Man builds a barricade in Paramount, California during anti-ICE protest.

In the last three days thousands of protestors against ICE raids in Los Angeles have blocked streets and freeways and set cars on fire. Their actions have been a response to ICE raids, the mobilization of the National Guard, and the violent response protestors have faced.

Protestors have been facing severe repression from Los Angeles police, sheriff’s deputies, ICE, FBI and from the National Guard who have fired various sorts of crowd control weapons from tear gas and flash-bang grenades to rubber bullets. . Governor Gavin Newsome , criticizing Trump’s sending the National Guard to California against the state government’s wishes showed that he was a “dictator.” The story below was written on May 8. – DL

As widespread, militant protests against immigration raids have mounted in southern California, home to large immigrant communities, President Donald Trump has ordered the mobilization of 2,000 California National Guard troops, part of the U.S. Army, to suppress the demonstrations. Trump posted on social media, “These Radical Left protests, by instigators and often paid troublemakers, will NOT BE TOLERATED.” Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth said that if the violence continues. U.S. Marines at Camp Pendleton, 82 miles south of Los Angeles, would be deployed, though the Posse Comitatus Act forbids the use of the military as a domestic police force.

Trump’s act is a legal but extraordinary act, since the Guard is usually mobilized only at the request of the state governor and no president has done so on his own initiative since 1965 when President Lyndon B. Johnson sent troops to Alabama to protect civil rights demonstrators.

California Governor Gavin Newsome, a Democrat, said of the president’s action, “That move is purposefully inflammatory and will only escalate tension. This is the wrong mission and will erode public trust.” He said the Trump administration was deranged.

The protests in San Diego, Los Angeles, and New York are a result of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids on workplaces and immigrant communities by masked agents wearing military gear, carrying rifles, and accompanied by armored trucks. ICE’s goal now is to arrest 3,000 undocumented immigrants a day and one million this year. Police attempted to suppress the protests and dozens were arrested, put into unmarked vans and taken away.

“Our community is under attack and we are being terrorized. These are workers, these are fathers, these are mothers. And this has to stop,” said Angelica Salas, the executive director of CHIRLA, the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights in L.A.

Caleb Soto, of the National Day Laborer Organizing Network, said that the 70 to 80 arrested at one raid in L.A. had been “kidnapped” by masked men who had shown no arrest warrants.

“As Mayor of a proud city of immigrants, who contribute to our city in so many ways, I am deeply angered by what has taken place,” said Democratic Party Mayor Karen Bass of Los Angeles, referring to the recent raids. “My Office is in close coordination with immigrant rights community organizations. We will not stand for this.” Over a third of the population of Los Angeles, 1.5 million people, are immigrants and the city council voted to make L.A. a sanctuary city in 2024 but have refused to cooperate with immigration authorities since 1979.

“While the LAPD will continue to have a visible presence in all our communities to ensure public safety, we will not assist or participate in any sort of mass deportations,” Police Chief McDonnell said. And he added, the department would not attempt to determine anyone’s immigration status.

Protests took place at the sites of the raid, at federal immigrant detention centers, and federal administration buildings. Union activists came out to support the immigrants. David Huerta, California president of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), was arrested by the police at one such protest for allegedly blocking an ICE vehicle. His union says he was “peacefully observing” the raid. SEIU, which represents healthcare workers, janitors, social workers, and city and state employees, has 750,000 members in California.

Dozens of people have been arrested, some on serious federal charges.

In the Los Angeles suburb of Paramount, protestors barricaded streets as they confronted Border Patrol agents in military gear. The air was filled with teargas and pepper spray, protestors stoned ICE and police vehicles. Protestor Ron Gochez, an award winning public school teacher said that the protests were necessary. He called it, “A beautiful day of resistance.’

Suddenly, the resistance is real, in the streets, and fighting.

Dan La Botz