LA quiet as National Guard troops begin to arrive

Protesters walk the street near the site of a federal immigration raid in Los Angeles on Friday, June 6, 2025. Los Angeles was quiet Sunday morning as the first members of the National Guard arrived after President Donald Trump took the extraordinary action of ordering them to assist immigration agents who clashed with demonstrators. (Alex Welsh/The New York Times)

By Laurel Rosenhall, Orlando Mayorquín, Jesús Jiménez, Mimi Dwyer, Shawn Hubler and Livia Albeck-Ripka

Los Angeles was quiet Sunday morning as the first members of the National Guard arrived after President Donald Trump took the extraordinary action of ordering them to assist immigration agents who clashed with demonstrators.

Trump’s decision to order in the guard made rare use of federal powers to bypass the authority of California’s governor, Gavin Newsom, who called the move “purposefully inflammatory” Saturday night and added that there was “no unmet need.”

Overnight, Trump praised the National Guard for their work in Los Angeles, but Mayor Karen Bass told residents that the troops had not arrived. Protests against immigration raids were scheduled to continue Sunday, with one event at City Hall set for 2 p.m. Pacific time.

Trump issued the order Saturday as law enforcement officers faced off with hundreds of protesters for a second consecutive day in the Los Angeles area, in some cases using rubber bullets and flash-bang grenades. Newsom described Trump’s order as “purposefully inflammatory,” saying that the federal government was mobilizing the National Guard “not because there is a shortage of law enforcement, but because they want a spectacle.”

Bill Essayli, the Trump administration’s top law enforcement official in Southern California, said in an interview Saturday night that National Guard troops would arrive in Los Angeles County within 24 hours. At least 20 people were arrested Saturday, mostly in the largely Latino and working-class suburb of Paramount, in addition to the more than 100 people arrested at the protests Friday, Essayli said.

Protests had broken out in the LA area Friday and Saturday as federal agents mounted raids on workplaces in search of immigrants in the country without legal permission. The Los Angeles Police Department detained a number of protesters near the Metropolitan Detention Center in downtown Los Angeles on Saturday, but said demonstrations in the city were peaceful. Some of the protests that broke out in other areas, including Compton and Paramount, south of downtown Los Angeles, were more confrontational.

Demonstrators near a freeway entrance threw fireworks and rocks at police officers, who responded with volleys of rubber projectiles. Some took over an intersection after setting a car ablaze, while others hurled glass bottles filled with a substance that smelled like gasoline at a police line, as fires burned in the street.

Here’s what else to know:

— Workplace raids: The recent raids appeared to be part of a new phase of the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown, in which officials say they will increasingly focus on workplaces.

— Federal powers: Trump’s order is the first time since 1965 that a president has activated a state’s National Guard force without a request from that state’s governor, according to Elizabeth Goitein, senior director of the Liberty and National Security Program at the Brennan Center for Justice, an independent law and policy organization.

— Trading blame: Some of California’s Democratic lawmakers blasted Trump’s decision to send in the National Guard as an inappropriate use of power, while Republicans criticized the state’s political leadership over their handling of the protests.

— Latino communities: Some of the most active protests against immigration raids took place in Paramount, a small city some 25 miles southeast of the Hollywood sign that has for decades attracted Latino immigrants.