Mayor Karen Bass of Los Angeles said on Monday that the Trump administration and its immigration raids were to blame for inflaming tensions in the city.
In a televised interview, Ms. Bass sought to downplay the protests of the last few days. “This is not citywide civil unrest,” she said on CNN. “A few streets downtown, it looks horrible.”
She noted that most Angelenos have been living life as normal, away from the clashes focused in a relatively small area outside a federal office building and detention center downtown. She promised that protesters who destroyed cars and threw things at police officers would be prosecuted, and said that the police were combing through video images of the clashes to identify people who had committed crimes.
Ms. Bass said that it was President Trump and his federal immigration authorities who had provoked the unrest by sending federal agents in tactical gear to workplaces in the city to detain and deport immigrants.
“Why were there raids?” she asked. “We had been told that he was going to go after violent criminals. It wasn’t a drug den; it was a Home Depot.”
Ms. Bass was referring to one of several immigration raids conducted on Friday that prompted days of protest, including at a Home Depot in the nearby city of Paramount, Calif., where day laborers regularly gather in search of work.
She said it appeared that the Trump administration was deliberately trying to sow chaos in the city, and then generating more backlash by sending in National Guard troops.
“What was the reason that the president had to take the power from the governor and federalize the National Guard?” she asked. “The night before this action was taken, there was a protest that got a little unruly, late at night. It was 100 people. Twenty-seven people were arrested. There wasn’t a reason for this.”
Nicholas Bogel-Burroughs reports on national stories across the United States with a focus on criminal justice. He is from upstate New York.
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