Squiz Shortcuts - The US immigration protests

Your Shortcut to… The US immigration protests

If you’ve caught any news recently, you’ll have seen footage of protests going on in the US city of Los Angeles. They’re in response to federal officers carrying out immigration raids, which is part of US President Donald Trump’s election promise to crack down on illegal immigrants. Political analysts say tensions around the issue of immigration have been rising in the US for months… So in this Squiz Shortcut, we’ll get into:

• what led up to this point

• what happened in the protests

• and where things are heading…

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What’s been going on in LA?
Thousands of people have been protesting against immigration raids by federal officers on workplaces, homes and sometimes churches across the country to track down people who are in the US illegally. 

When did the protests start?
Last Friday, after several search warrants were carried out in Los Angeles - around 120 people were taken into custody, and a crowd gathered that night outside the Metropolitan Detention Centre where they were being held. 

What happened?
Reports say the protests started out peacefully but they turned violent in some areas over the weekend… In those pockets, bottles and chunks of cement were thrown at police, cars and rubbish were set alight, and at one point, the crowd moved onto a freeway and blocked traffic. In response, police used tear gas canisters, flashbang grenades (which give off a loud bang and flash of light designed to disorientate people), and rubber bullets to disperse the crowds. You might’ve seen footage doing the rounds of a rubber bullet hitting Channel Nine reporter Lauren Tomasi during a live cross on Sunday.

Was she hurt?
She’s OK - she escaped with “a bloody big old bruise” but she said what she experienced was a “really volatile day on the streets of LA”. Since then, several other media crews have also reported being injured while covering the protests.

So, what’s this all about?
You might remember that one of US President Donald Trump’s big election promises was to crack down on what he calls illegal immigrants, and since he’s taken office for the second time, he’s been following up on that pledge. 

Why LA?
The raids are happening right across America, but according to research from the University of Southern California, 1 in 5 people in LA - the second largest city in the US - are either undocumented or living with an undocumented family member… And further adding to the tension in the city is the presence of thousands of National Guard troops and hundreds of Marines who were deployed there over the weekend…

Why are they involved?
They’ve been sent in by Trump to “uphold very strong law and order”. Just to explain the National Guard quickly; it’s a state-based military force that’s similar to our Reserves, with many volunteers. Each state maintains its own National Guard troops to respond to things like natural disasters or a national emergency - say, an invasion or a rebellion… and the Marines are trained military officers.

Is that an unusual move for a President to make?
Historically, yes - it’s normally reserved for extraordinary circumstances. California Governor Gavin Newsom and LA Mayor Karen Bass have both said that the situation was far from that; the demonstrations were confined to a few small areas, and national troops were unnecessary. But Trump sent them anyway, calling the protestors “insurrectionists”... 

What impact have the national troops had?
Both Newsom and Bass say that their presence has fueled the protests - despite the troops so far only being stationed in front of federal buildings to protect government property and immigration officers. They’re not actively involved in law enforcement - that’s left to the LAPD. So, reports are saying the move is a power play by Trump, and a clear message that he’s not willing to back down from his hardline stance on immigration. 

Why would he need to play that card?
Something to note here is that California is currently (and traditionally) a ‘blue’ state held by the Democrats. Both Newsom and Bass are Democrats, so there’s no love lost between them and Trump, a Republican President. And it goes both ways - Trump calls Newsom “Governor Newscum”, and before he deployed the national troops, he criticised Newsom on social media, saying he wasn’t doing enough to bring the protests under control.

So there’s tension on 2 levels…? 
Exactly - both in the communities where Trump has stepped up immigration raids, and politically, between the Trump administration and the Democratically held states resisting the President’s agenda. As we mentioned, LA isn’t the only place where immigration raids are happening.   

Where else are they going on?
They’re happening in the big ‘red’ border states of Texas and Florida, where Republicans are in charge, and police are helping. But the other places they’ve ramped up are in the states of New York and Illinois, which are blue. And in those states, as in California, there are laws against local authorities helping with immigration arrests. And because of that, Trump has gone so far as to call them “sanctuaries” for illegal immigrants - making them an even bigger target.

Who is carrying out the raids?
They’re being conducted by federal agents from a department called Immigration and Customs Enforcement (often referred to as ICE in reports). It falls under Homeland Security - so in other words, the agents are the immigration police and they’re responsible for enforcing US immigration laws. And not only that, they’ve got targets to meet… 

What sort of targets?
Trump has set the ICE a goal of arresting 3,000 illegal immigrants per day. And critics of the crackdown reckon because of that pressure, a lot of people legally living in the US have been wrongly targeted and locked up during the raids. Mayor Bass says the public manner in which the raids have been happening is designed to “sow terror” in Los Angeles, and this week we’ve seen the deep feelings they’ve created within the community boil over.

So, where to from here?
Well, the Trump administration is showing no signs of backing down. Trump has ordered the national troops to stay in LA for 60 days, and his ‘Border Czar’ Tom Homan says the ICE raids will continue daily despite the protests. 

Just back to the National Guard - is it the first time Trump has summoned them to a civil rights protest?
No… Back in his first term in office he called on states to use them after the Black Lives Matter protests broke out following the death of George Floyd - a black man killed by police officer Derek Chauvin during an arrest in 2020. But there was a key difference between then and now…

What’s that?
Back then, the states - including California - agreed the troops were needed. But in this case, Trump doesn’t have Governor Newsom’s consent. The last time this sort of situation happened was in 1965 when President Lyndon B Johnson made the decision to override the Governor of Alabama and sent the National Guard to protect black protestors marching for voting rights… In nearly all cases where the troops are deployed, they’re directed by the state governors, so the president stays out of it.

But not this time…
Nope… Trump is in command of the troops and says his administration is “not messing around”. He’s said on social media that if protestors spit on the troops, they’ll get hit, “and I promise you they will be hit harder than they have ever been hit before. Such disrespect will not be tolerated!”. As we mentioned, this all links back to his promise to stop illegal immigrants from both accessing America and living in it. During the election, he didn’t mince words about his plans for immigration either…

What did he say?
He said illegal immigrants were mainly responsible for the wave of gang violence in America and that those who crossed the border illegally were "poisoning the blood" of the country. Fixing illegal immigration was one of the pillars of his MAGA platform, and what we’re seeing is him delivering on that promise. And Newsom has been threatened with arrest if he interferes with any ICE raids.

So the national troops report to the President, but the LAPD answers to Newsom…?
Yep… How things unfold will depend on how far Trump is willing to push his authority. There are laws around the military getting involved in domestic affairs unless he invokes something called the Insurrection Act - and at the moment, a dwindling crowd of protestors doesn’t cut the mustard for that. Still, Newsom has continued to call for calm… 

What is he saying?
There’s a curfew in place in downtown LA and he’s urged protestors to abide by that, and not to give Trump any reason to escalate things... But there are plans for more demonstrations in other cities, particularly over the weekend.

What kind of plans?
Rallies are being organised in hundreds of cities across the US to coincide with a large military parade Trump is staging in Washington DC on Saturday to mark the US Army’s 250th anniversary… So things are still tense.

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Onto our Recommendations

Watching: The Netflix documentary series Immigration Nation. It follows the operations of ICE officers and the stories of some immigrants, and it takes a deeper look at the issue of US immigration…

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