President Donald Trump has sent thousands more troops to deal with violent protests in Los Angeles as unrest continues for a fourth day.
The protests erupted on Friday after ICE, federal immigration officers, carried out raids and arrested large numbers of people in areas with large Latino populations.
Demonstrations began peacefully, but the situation quickly descended into chaos after self-driving cars were set alight, a major freeway was shut down, and there were reports of looting.
Hundreds of Marines were sent in temporarily on Monday while more National Guard troops arrive in LA.
California Governor Gavin Newsom said he intends to sue the president for sending the National Guard in, calling it a ‘provocation’.
But despite the threat of legal action Trump has decided to send another 2,000 National Guard troops to the scene.
Pentagon chief spokesman Sean Parnell said: ‘At the order of the President, the Department of Defense is mobilising an additional 2,000 California National Guard to be called into federal service to support ICE (and) to enable federal law-enforcement officers to safely conduct their duties.’
The battalion activation represents a notable escalation in Trump’s utilization of the military.
They were deployed after Trump was asked if he would send Marines said during a roundtable: ‘We’ll see what happens.’
‘I think we have it very well under control,’ he said.
‘I think it would’ve been a very bad situation, it was heading in the wrong direction – it’s now heading in the right direction.’
Governor Gavin Newsom told The New York Times that the Marines deployment was a ‘provocation’ and that there was no need for them because the National Guard troops already there were not given much to do.
California leaders earlier on Monday sued Trump for deploying the soldiers, after the president suggested that his border czar Tom Homan should arrest Newsom.
‘I would do it if I were Tom. I think it’s great,’ Trump told a reporter on Monday.
‘Look, I like Gavin Newsom. He’s a nice guy. But he’s grossly incompetent.’
State Attorney General Rob Bonta announced that he and Newsom were ‘suing to put a stop to President Trump’s unlawful, unprecedented order calling federalized National Guard forces into Los Angeles’.
