Los Angeles police order immigration protesters in downtown to go home

Police declared all of downtown Los Angeles to be an unlawful assembly area and ordered protesters to go home on Sunday night after a third day of violence hit demonstrations against US President Donald Trump's immigration policy.

National guard troops, deployed by Trump at the weekend to help quell the protests in a move California governor Gavin Newsom called unlawful, guarded federal government buildings on Sunday.

The unrest in LA has become a major flashpoint in Trump's signature effort to clamp down on illegal immigration.

The Republican president has pledged to deport record numbers of people who are in the country illegally and to lock down the US-Mexico border, setting the border enforcement agency ICE (immigration and customs enforcement) a daily goal of arresting at least 3,000 migrants.

California state and local officials, mainly Democrats, accuse Trump of inflaming initially small-scale protests by mounting a federal response. He calls the protesters insurrectionists.

Several self-driving cars from Alphabet's Waymo were set ablaze on a downtown street on Sunday night.

Los Angeles police said some protesters had thrown concrete projectiles, bottles and other items at police. Police declared several rallies to be unlawful assemblies and later extended that to include the entire downtown area.

Police on horseback tried to control the crowds.

Demonstrators shouted “Shame on you!” at police and some appeared to throw objects, video images showed. One group blocked the 101 Freeway, a major downtown thoroughfare.

City police chief Jim McDonnell told a media briefing on Sunday night people had a right to protest peacefully but the violence he had seen by some was “disgusting” and the protests were getting out of control.

Police said they had arrested 10 people on Sunday and 29 the previous night, adding arrests were continuing.

Newsom, a Democrat, said he requested the Trump administration to withdraw its order to deploy 2,000 national guard troops in Los Angeles County, calling it unlawful.

He said in an interview with MSNBC he planned to sue the administration over the deployment, adding Trump “has created the conditions” around the protests. He accused the president of trying to manufacture a crisis and of violating California's state sovereignty.

Asked if the national guard was needed McDonnell said police would not “go to that right away”, but added, “Looking at the violence tonight, I think we've got to make a reassessment”.

In a social media post, Trump called on McDonnell to do so.

“He should, right now. Don’t let these thugs get away with this. Make America great again,” said Trump. 

The White House disputed Newsom's characterisation, saying: “Everyone saw the chaos, violence and lawlessness.”

Earlier on Sunday, about a dozen national guard members, along with department of homeland security personnel, pushed back a group of demonstrators outside a federal building in downtown LA, video showed.

The US northern command said 300 members of the California national guard had been deployed to three spots in the LA area.

Homeland security secretary Kristi Noem told the CBS programme Face the Nation the national guard would provide safety around buildings to people engaged in peaceful protest and to law enforcement.

In a social media post on Sunday, Trump called the demonstrators “violent, insurrectionist mobs” and said he was directing his cabinet officers “to take all such action necessary” to stop what he called riots.

Despite Trump's language, he has not invoked the Insurrection Act, an 1807 law that empowers a president to deploy the military to suppress events such as civil disorder.

Asked on Sunday whether he was considering doing so, he said: “It depends on whether there's an insurrection.”

Defence secretary Pete Hegseth said on Saturday the Pentagon is prepared to mobilise active-duty troops “if violence continues” in LA, saying Marines at nearby Camp Pendleton were on high alert.

Los Angeles mayor Karen Bass blamed the Trump administration for inciting tension by sending in the national guard. She also condemned protesters who became violent.

“I don't want people to fall into the chaos I believe is being created by the administration completely unnecessarily,” she told a press conference.

Vanessa Cardenas, head of the immigration advocacy group America's Voice, accused the Trump administration of “trumping up an excuse to abuse power, and deliberately stoke and force confrontations around immigration”.

Reuters