Photos from LA this weekend have been compared to scenes from Grand Theft Auto, with cars torched, projectiles hurled at police, and protesters shot with rubber bullets.
It comes less than six months after deadly wildfires spread through California’s largest city, ripping through elite postcodes and burning down mansions.
Donald Trump has called to ‘send in the troops!’ to quell the disorder, even as the state governor blamed him for ‘inflaming tensions’, saying things were under control until he intervened.
State governor Gavin Newsom said he would be taking the president to court for ‘commandeering’ the state National Guard, which he called ‘illegal and immoral’.
He claimed Trump was ‘hoping for chaos so he can justify more crackdowns, more fear, more control’ and urged: ‘Los Angeles: don’t take Trump’s bait.’
The White House hit back as the row intensified, with spokesperson Abigail Jackon saying: ‘It’s a bald-faced lie for Newsom to claim there was no problem in Los Angeles before President Trump got involved.’
What are the protests in LA about?
They were sparked by sweeping immigration raids, as the president tries to fulfill his quota of arresting 3,000 suspected illegal migrants every day.
In his inaugural address, Trump said: ‘We will begin the process of returning millions and millions of criminal aliens back to the places from which they came.’
He is ramping up the raids as well as the rhetoric, sending ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) into workplaces thought to employ undocumented migrants.
Protests in LA began on Friday night and continued throughout the weekend.
A significant flashpoint was sparked by officials being seen outside a branch of Home Depot hardware store, in the mainly Latino suburb of Paramount.
As fears grew that they planned to raid the store, passing drivers began honking horns, as protesters gathered and the situation escalated.
Border patrol officials fired tear gas and flash-bang grenades at those gathered, who were themselves throwing rocks and other objects and demanding they leave the area.
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After seeing dramatic footage of the rioting here and elsewhere, Trump claimed police had lost control and National Guard troops should be sent in, something which further inflamed tensions, it was claimed.
LA is not the only US city to see protests in response to the immigration crackdown.
Protesters have come out against it nationwide, saying it will tear families apart and criticising a policy being rolled back which previously restricted officers’ abilities to arrest undocumented immigrants at ‘sensitive’ locations, such as schools, churches and hospitals.
Where are the protests in LA?
The main hotspots have been in downtown LA, Paramount, and neighbouring Compton.
Protests continued into Sunday evening in Paramount, with several hundred demonstrators gathered near a doughnut shop, and authorities holding up barbed wire to keep the crowd back.
Crowds also gathered again outside federal buildings in central Los Angeles, including a detention centre, where police declared an unlawful assembly and began to arrest people.
‘Un-American’
Desperate Housewives star Eva Longoria was among celebrities posting about the riots.
Sharing a post from Gavin Newsom describing the threat to deploy Marines as ‘deranged’, she added that it was ‘Un-American’ while also sharing a video of a woman being separated from her child during an ICE raid.
Meanwhile, Billie Eilish’s brother Finneas has claimed that he was tear-gassed by the National Guard at a ‘very peaceful’ protest in Los Angeles.
The singer-songwriter, 27, took to social media to detail his experience, sharing his message to more than four million followers on Instagram.
‘Tear gassed almost immediately at the very peaceful protest downtown – they’re inciting this,’ he wrote.
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