Los Angeles law enforcement agencies have responded to demonstrations over federal immigration raids this weekend, but they have also tried to make clear that they themselves were not carrying out immigration sweeps.
That has required a careful balance. And local law enforcement officials such as the Los Angeles County sheriff, Robert Luna, know that many of the residents they serve, as well as their own colleagues, have family histories like those of the people being targeted by President Trump’s immigration raids.
Sheriff Luna grew up in an unincorporated part of East Los Angeles that was patrolled by the department he is now in charge of. And so for him, the whole situation “does hit home.”
“I come from an immigrant family,” Sheriff Luna said in a telephone interview on Sunday. “I have a lot of family members who migrated here. Some of them legally, some of them illegally.”
He said that he firmly believed that undocumented immigrants who commit serious or violent crimes should be put through the criminal justice system and be deported if eligible. But, he added: “The majority of our immigrants do not fit that category. They are our cooks, our gardeners, our nannies, our hotel workers. That’s what my mom and dad did.”
The standoffs over the immigration raids have created difficult optics for local law enforcement agencies whose officers and deputies have clashed with protesters and have at times deployed flash-bang grenades, projectiles and other crowd-control measures.
In Paramount, a city about 16 miles south of downtown Los Angeles with a large Latino population, demonstrators on Saturday hurled objects at federal and local law enforcement officers.
Sheriff Luna said Sunday that his deputies had “tried everything to de-escalate the situation” and at one point declared an unlawful assembly. But after some in the crowd attacked deputies with broken cinder blocks, rocks, bottles and pepper spray, “we unfortunately had to respond,” he said, adding that several people were arrested in connection with the attacks.
Sheriff’s deputies also confronted demonstrators a few miles west in the city of Compton on Saturday.
“We do not engage in civil immigration enforcement,” Sheriff Luna said. But he acknowledged that the line may seem to be “getting fuzzy” for some Angelenos because the deputies have clashed with protesters while “our federal partners are out running their operations.”
“When they call us for help,” he said of federal law enforcement officers, “just like anybody who would call us for help when they’re being attacked, we respond.” He added: “You may disagree with what’s happening and you absolutely have a right to protest peacefully. But the minute you commit an act of violence or you start destroying property, that’s where we and local law enforcement will get involved.”
Federal law enforcement has “made it clear that they’re going to continue these immigration enforcement investigations,” the sheriff said. And as the weekend has worn on, Sheriff Luna said, “the level of violence from some protesters is becoming more extreme.”
The Los Angeles Police Department has also responded to the unrest. Officers helped disperse a crowd in downtown Los Angeles on Friday after federal officials fired pepper balls at hundreds of protesters, and they were deployed Sunday to a protest in downtown Los Angeles that started near the federal building.
In a statement, the department said its officers would protect the rights of all peaceful protesters but that “acts of violence will not be tolerated.”
Jim McDonnell, the chief of police, has also sought to make clear that his agency was not involved in civil immigration enforcement.
“I ask people in the community to trust the L.A.P.D. that we’re not there for that purpose,” he said. The chief has said that his department has a decades-old policy barring officers from stopping residents only to determine their immigration status.
Los Angeles police officials said they had made at least 10 arrests Sunday night in connection with the protests, after making 29 on Saturday.
Chief McDonnell said that “the people who are out there doing the violence” are not the same people “legitimately out there exercising their first-amendment rights.”
But he noted that some protesters have shot commercial-grade fireworks at officers, which he said can be fatal.
“This violence that I’ve seen is disgusting,” he said.
Laurel Rosenhall contributed reporting from Los Angeles and Soumya Karlamangla contributed reporting from San Francisco.
Matt Stevens writes about arts and culture news for The Times.
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