Protesters have clashed with security forces in the city of Los Angeles in the United States for a second day following reports of continued immigration raids, prompting warnings of prosecution from top government officials.
The confrontations on Saturday took place in the Paramount area of southeast Los Angeles after reports of more immigration detentions outside a home improvement store.
Dozens of green-uniformed security personnel in riot gear and gas masks lined up on the road strewn with overturned shopping carts, deploying tear gas as bystanders and protesters gathered on median strips and across the street.
Protesters jeered at the officers, and called on Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents to leave the area.
“ICE out of Paramount. We see you for what you are,” a woman said through a megaphone. “You are not welcome here.”
One handheld sign read, “No Human Being is Illegal.”
Some protesters hurled rocks, bottles and fireworks at the law enforcement officials, while pictures from the scene showed a car that had been set on fire.
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Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem posted a message on social media addressing the “LA rioters”, warning that interference with immigration enforcement will not be tolerated.
“You will not stop us or slow us down,” Noem said on the X platform. ICE “will enforce the law. And if you lay a hand on a law enforcement officer, you will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law,” she wrote.
US President Donald Trump’s border tsar, Tom Homan, said on Fox News that the National Guard would be deployed in Los Angeles on Saturday evening.
The protests began on Friday night after ICE agents conducted enforcement operations in the city and arrested at least 44 people on alleged immigration violations.
The raids quickly triggered protests and demonstrators blocked entrances and exits for the Edward R Royal Federal Building in downtown LA, where the detainees were being processed.
The protesters chanted, “Set them free, let them stay!”
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) said in a statement that “1,000 rioters surrounded a federal law enforcement building and assaulted ICE law enforcement officers, slashed tires, defaced buildings, and taxpayer funded property”.
Stephen Miller, an immigration hardliner and the White House deputy chief of staff, wrote on X that Friday’s demonstrations were “an insurrection against the laws and sovereignty of the United States”.
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On Saturday, he described the day’s protests as a “violent insurrection”.
The immigration crackdown is part of Trump’s pledge to deport a record number of people living in the country without documentation, as the White House set a goal for ICE to arrest at least 3,000 immigrants a day.
But people legally living in the country, including some with permanent residence, have also been caught up in the sweeping immigration crackdown, leading to legal challenges.
Al Jazeera’s Robert Reynolds reporting from Compton in Los Angeles, near the Paramount area, said that police on Saturday used tear gas and flashbang grenades to disperse the crowd, which had gathered outside a Home Depot after news spread that federal immigration officers were conducting raids there.
“The first confrontation started at a home repair warehouse where day labourers, many of whom are undocumented, gather to get jobs by the hour,” said Reynolds.
“ICE raided that. They arrested a number of people. They were seen being taken away in a white bus with US marshals markings on the side. After that, hundreds of people showed up more or less spontaneously, yelling at the police, demanding that they leave their neighbourhood, demanding that they leave the undocumented migrants alone,” he said.
“People expressing to us a deep sense of outrage that this is happening in the place where they live, their own neighbourhood,” Reynolds said.
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“There are police here now in quite large numbers in riot gear, who have been gradually pushing the remaining demonstrators back out of the street,” he added.
There was no immediate comment from ICE or the DHS on the protests and the reported immigration sweeps on Saturday.
The Democratic mayor of Los Angeles, Karen Bass, condemned the immigration raids in a statement on Friday.
“I am deeply angered by what has taken place,” Bass said. “These tactics sow terror in our communities and disrupt basic principles of safety in our city. We will not stand for this.”
ICE acting director Todd Lyons slammed Bass’s statement, claiming that the mayor had taken the side of “chaos and lawlessness over law enforcement”.
“Make no mistake, ICE will continue to enforce our nation’s immigration laws and arrest criminal illegal aliens,” Lyons said.
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), meanwhile, denounced the raids and referred to the immigration authorities as “masked goons”.
“We call on our elected officials to uphold their commitment to all Angelenos – immigrants and non-immigrants alike – by taking all action necessary to grind this oppressive and vile paramilitary operation to a halt and keep our city safe and whole,” the group said in a statement.
The confrontations in Los Angeles come after a “massive increase in the amount of arrests and the amount of enforcement being done by Immigration and Customs Enforcement,” said Marc Christopher, an immigration lawyer with Christopher & De Leon.
“In the past, what we’ve seen is immigration [enforcement] would focus on individuals who had maybe committed crimes or had been arrested, or something of that nature. Now it’s more indiscriminate,” Christopher told Al Jazeera.
