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Rioters smashed windows of the Los Angeles Police Department’s (LAPD’s) headquarters on West 1st Street and faced tear gas that officials deployed downtown as agitators clash with authorities in the city.
Rioters were seen targeting the LAPD headquarters on Sunday night as violent demonstrations spread through LA over the weekend in response to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids.
President Donald Trump sent 2,000 National Guard troops to the area on Friday.
“California politicians must call off their rioting mob,” the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) said in a Monday morning post on X, along with video footage from the riots. “Federal law enforcement are working to protect and safeguard American citizens from criminal illegal aliens. Why is California’s governor siding with foreign criminals?”
The LAPD declared an “unlawful assembly” Sunday evening as protesters failed to disperse in the downtown area.
“Agitators have splintered into and through out [sic] the Downtown Area,” the LAPD’s Central Division wrote on X. “Residents, businesses and visitors to the Downtown Area should be alert and report any criminal activity. Officers are responding to several different locations to disperse crowds.”
Other video footage from the weekend shows protesters spitting on the American flag and setting it on fire while chanting “F Trump”; setting fire to vehicles; and throwing objects and fireworks at police.
The demonstrations have drawn different responses from local and national politicians, with Democrats supporting Americans’ right to protest and Republicans calling for law and order.
Democratic California Gov. Gavin Newsom, for example, said Trump had overstepped his boundaries when he deployed the National Guard to help with the anti-ICE riots, claiming “local law enforcement didn’t need help.”
“Let’s get this straight: 1) Local law enforcement didn’t need help. 2) Trump sent troops anyway — to manufacture chaos and violence. 3) Trump succeeded. 4) Now things are destabilized, and we need to send in more law enforcement just to clean up Trump’s mess,” Newsom wrote in a separate post on X.
Newsom arrived in Los Angeles on Sunday evening to oversee the response to the anti-ICE riots, meeting with state emergency officials.
“We’re here to keep the peace — not play into Trump’s political games,” Newsom wrote.
The administration is “bringing in folks to provide support so that we can do the fundamental duty of the government, which is to protect its law enforcement and its people from these violent assaults,” Pompeo said.
“We do all remember the summer of ‘20 when this got out of hand and the local law enforcement and governments just let the flames burn. This can’t happen this time, and you see President Trump and his team taking the actions that are both appropriate and necessary to protect people,” the former Secretary of State said.
Fox News’ Louis Casiano, Stephen Sorace and David Spector contributed to this report.
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