Trump could send troops to more cities as protests expand

LOS ANGELES – Trump administration officials said Wednesday that they were prepared to deploy more troops and National Guard units to counter the growing number of demonstrations against the White House’s immigration crackdown, threatening to expand what California Gov. Gavin Newsom condemned as a “brazen abuse of power.”

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth told senators at an Appropriations Committee hearing on Wednesday that the same legal authorities the Pentagon used to send nearly 5,000 Marines and National Guard troops to Los Angeles in recent days could be employed in other cities “if there are riots in places where law enforcement officers are threatened.”

“We would have the capability to surge National Guard there, if necessary,” he said.

A spokesperson for the U.S. military’s Northern Command said that the Marines, who have arrived in the Los Angeles area, were receiving training on how to handle civil disturbances and not yet assisting the National Guard troops or federal immigration agents. Under Department of Defense policy, they can detain, but not arrest, people, and then they must hand them over to local officials as soon as possible.

The decision to deploy Marines and National Guard troops in Los Angeles was made without the consultation of Newsom, who in a nationally televised address Tuesday night urged Americans to stand up to Trump, calling it a “perilous moment” for democracy and the country’s long-held legal norms.

“California may be first, but it clearly won’t end here,” Newsom said, speaking to cameras from a studio in Los Angeles. “Other states are next. Democracy is next.”

California has requested a temporary order that would limit the National Guard and Marines’ presence in Los Angeles to guarding federal buildings. On Wednesday, the Trump administration filed its response, arguing that the state’s legal objections – including that the guard call-up order did not go through Newsom – are meritless. The Justice Department cited memos from the Vietnam War era, written by the future Supreme Court Justice William Rehnquist, for the idea that presidents have inherent power to use the military to protect federal buildings and functions against protesters, notwithstanding a 19th-century law that generally makes it illegal to use troops for law enforcement.

Newsom’s televised comments on Tuesday, the first night of a curfew in downtown Los Angeles, came as Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas said he would deploy National Guard troops ahead of expected protests across the state, a move that aligns with the governor’s long-standing calls for more aggressive action to stem illegal immigration.

The mayor of San Antonio, Ron Nirenberg, called the extra presence unnecessary and said the Trump administration’s approach was “theater and provocation.”

Protesters have gathered in a growing number of cities, including Atlanta; Austin, Texas; Boston; Chicago; Dallas; Denver; Las Vegas; Los Angeles; Minneapolis; New York; Omaha, Nebraska; Philadelphia; Santa Ana, California; San Antonio; San Francisco; Seattle; and St. Louis.

In Los Angeles, where the protests ignited last week, the police department said Wednesday that 203 people were arrested and charged with failure to disperse after the overnight curfew began downtown on Tuesday. More than a dozen other people were arrested and charged with curfew violations, according to the police.

Mayor Karen Bass of Los Angeles said that 23 businesses downtown had been looted on Tuesday and that graffiti had caused “significant damage” to property. Near Los Angeles City Hall on Wednesday, carpenters hammered plywood over windows at the request of small businesses worried that rogue protesters might violate the curfew, which the mayor expected to last several nights.

In many cities, the protests have been small and localized, although the number of arrests has been rising.

Police in New York City arrested 86 protesters on Tuesday night during an hourslong demonstration against Immigration and Customs Enforcement, according to an internal police report obtained by The New York Times.

In Chicago, where some demonstrators threw water bottles at police officers and vandalized at least two vehicles, police arrested 17 people during protests that drew thousands Tuesday, a department spokesperson said.

In all, more than 700 protesters in at least seven cities have been arrested since Friday in demonstrations against federal immigration raids, according to a New York Times tally.

The portrayal of the protests varied widely across the political spectrum, with Democrats strongly criticizing the deployment of U.S. troops to quell the demonstrations, arguing that troops should be used inside the United States only in the rarest and most extreme situations. Republicans have cast the protests as chaotic and violent and necessitating a forceful response.

Many Americans are likely to have caught glimpses on television or social media of demonstrators waving flags and parading with placards. Or of burning vehicles and tussles between protesters and police officers in Los Angeles and elsewhere. Where the public will come down on the demonstrations and federal response remains unclear, but curtailing illegal immigration is among the most popular Trump administration policies in opinion polls.

The Department of Homeland Security echoed the language of administration officials on Wednesday in describing the Los Angeles protests as “riots.” The department noted that ICE officials had arrested a man on an attempted murder charge and accused him of throwing a Molotov cocktail at law enforcement officers during the protests.

The department said the man, Emiliano Garduno-Galvez, is a Mexican national in the country illegally.

The language used to describe the demonstrations was a marker of the polarized interpretations of the events. Trump administration officials described some of the people arrested as “illegal aliens,” a term shunned by progressives.

The administration appears set on hastening the pace of immigration raids in the face of the demonstrations against them.

Mario Trujillo, a member of the Downey, California, City Council, in Los Angeles County, said at a news conference that federal immigration officials had raided a Home Depot and an LA Fitness location on Wednesday and arrested a man who was with his granddaughter in front of a church, Our Lady of Perpetual Help.

“These raids at Home Depots, restaurants, places of worship or schools are not keeping our community safe,” Trujillo said. “They are creating havoc and fear.”

Heightened tensions over the administration’s use of the military in domestic affairs seem likely to extend into the weekend, given Trump’s plans on Saturday for a parade in Washington to mark the Army’s 250th anniversary. The event will coincide with his 79th birthday.

On Tuesday, Trump warned that any protests at the parade would “be met with very big force.”

Activists are organizing protests on Saturday, in what they are calling the “No Kings Nationwide Day of Defiance.” The organizers said the protests are intended to “reject corrupt, authoritarian politics in the United States.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.