A group of Black and Latino civil rights leaders has condemned President Trump’s decision to deploy the military to Los Angeles, describing the move as a brazen abuse of power and blatant attempt to attack communities of color.
In a call with reporters, more than a half dozen civil rights leaders on Wednesday decried the decision to deploy thousands of members of the National Guard and Marines, which they said was a manufactured escalation intended to punish the president’s political enemies and intimidate people exercising their First Amendment rights.
Marc Morial, the president of the National Urban League, said Mr. Trump’s actions amounted to “military force under the guise of protecting federal property” that “raises serious questions about racial profiling, government overreach and erosion of our civil rights.”
Calling the moves an assault on “civil rights and democratic norms,” Mr. Morial said they “elevate the urgent need for us to stand up and defend communities, particularly Black and brown communities from unconstitutional overreach.”
Abigail Jackson, a White House spokeswoman, said in a statement that Mr. Trump was “fulfilling his promise to the American people to deport illegal aliens,” an agenda she said Americans “overwhelmingly” supported.
“Violently attacking federal law enforcement, setting cars on fire and throwing rocks at police vehicles is not ‘free speech’ despite what these Democrat activists seem to think,” Ms. Jackson said.
The Los Angeles protests have been sporadic and confined to a limited part of the area, but Mr. Trump has focused on pockets of violence and vandalism. On Wednesday, the White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, said that Mr. Trump supported peaceful protests. But he focused on the hundreds of people arrested among the thousands who took to the streets.
The leaders representing civil rights and pro-immigration groups also condemned violence, and spoke of troubling images they had seen in neighborhoods as federal immigration raids were carried out and as residents feared taking their children to school, to work, and even to immigration appointments.
“The fact is that people are being taken from our streets and our neighborhoods without due process,” said Frankie Miranda, the president and chair of the Hispanic Federation. “In essence, they are disappearing, not by organized crime, but by the hand of our own government.”
Janet Murguia, the president and chair of UnidosUS, a Hispanic advocacy organization, said that many immigrants had seen similar tactics in their home countries, and that it should concern all Americans.
“People may not think they have a stake in the fight over immigration, but they certainly have a stake in the evisceration of our basic rights and freedoms,” she said.
Damon Hewitt, the president and executive director of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, described Mr. Trump’s actions in Los Angeles as “a deliberate attempt to manufacture a crisis and use it as an excuse to normalize violence against communities of color. It is a direct assault on the civil rights movement and everything we fought for.”
The Rev. Al Sharpton, the civil rights activist and president of the National Action Network, pointed to the contrast of Mr. Trump’s recent decision to establish refugee status for Afrikaners, the white ethnic minority that ruled South Africa during apartheid, with its move to separate families that have come from Latino communities or nations.
The leaders, whose groups were unified during the 2020 protests set off by the murder of George Floyd, vowed solidarity once again.
“This is a civil rights issue,” Mr. Sharpton said, urging people not to let the administration divide the country by referring to some people as illegal. “This is about human rights.”
Erica L. Green is a White House correspondent for The Times, covering President Trump and his administration.
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