Nationwide — Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass has imposed a curfew on a one-square-mile part of downtown L.A. in response to escalating protests towards President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown. The curfew, introduced Tuesday, runs from 8 p.m. to six a.m. and will stay in impact for a number of days. KTLA experiences that Bass made the announcement throughout a press convention, urging individuals to remain out of the affected space until they stay or work there.
“Final night time alone, 23 companies had been looted,” Bass mentioned. “Graffiti and property injury are widespread downtown. Legislation enforcement will arrest anybody who violates the curfew, and they are going to be prosecuted.” She emphasised that whereas the unrest is severe, it’s confined to a small space of a metropolis that spans over 500 sq. miles. “This isn’t a city-wide disaster,” she added, pushing again towards viral photographs suggesting in any other case.
The curfew follows 5 straight nights of demonstrations, sparked by aggressive ICE raids throughout Southern California. The Trump administration’s transfer to deploy a whole lot of Nationwide Guard troops and Marines has provoked outrage from state and native leaders. Demonstrations have since unfold to different main cities, together with New York, Chicago, and Atlanta.
California Governor Gavin Newsom condemned Trump’s navy escalation as a “brazen abuse of energy” throughout a Tuesday night time tackle. Newsom criticized the president for focusing on working-class immigrants like “dishwashers, gardeners, and seamstresses,” as an alternative of violent offenders, and accused the administration of intentionally traumatizing communities. He has filed a lawsuit trying to dam the troop deployments.
“If any of us may be seized off the road primarily based solely on suspicion or pores and skin colour, then none of us are actually free,” Newsom warned. “Authoritarian regimes all the time begin with essentially the most weak—however they by no means cease there.”
At a Los Angeles vigil, Al Jazeera’s Teresa Bo reported that protesters reject Trump’s portrayal of the raids as focusing on violent criminals. “These are working individuals looking for a greater life,” she mentioned. Activists on the scene repeatedly known as for nonviolence, stressing that any unrest would give Trump justification to additional militarize the streets.
