Trump: without troops Los Angeles would burn. California sues president a second time to send marines

''Stun grenades and rubber bullets'' were thrown by US police at about a thousand protesters gathered in Los Angeles to challenge President Trump's immigration policy. This was reported by Cnn and Nbc, explaining that among the protesters were those waving Mexican flags and two upside-down American flags, as a sign of relief. The protesters shouted ''peaceful protest'' as they were attacked by officers, reports Nbc News.

The military task force is 'protecting federal personnel and property in the Los Angeles metropolitan area', said the US Northern Command, known as Northcom.

In total, for now there are 2,000 National Guard soldiers in the task force, called Task Force 51, along with 700 Marines, the military said. But President Trump authorised the deployment ofan additional 2,000 National Guard members to help respond to protests in Los Angeles over the president's immigration policies.

At the origin of the raids of migrants in Los Angeles, which have sparked protests in the Californian metropolis and now in many other American cities, there is aclear change of strategy imposed by the White House, unhappy with the numbers of migrants arrested and deported as of January to date, which are still considered too low. This is what the Wall Street Journal writes today, recalling the real headache that the heads of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the dreaded ICE, received at the end of May from Stephen Miller, Donald Trump's advisor and main architect of his anti-migrant policy, imposing an increase in the number of arrests.

"Go out there and arrest illegal aliens," Miller told ICE officials, urging them not to waste time preparing lists of migrants to be searched and arrested, instead going to the places - particularly shopping mall car parks - where migrants known to volunteer for day labour are found. According to the conservative newspaper's sources, Miller would also bet that if he went with a couple of officers to the streets of Washington he would arrest 30 migrants immediately. "Who thinks he can do that?" he also allegedly asked. In short, a change of strategy on the part of the White House, which until now had mainly emphasised the arrest and deportation of alleged criminals and gang members, what Trump called 'the worst of the worst'. But, Miller reminded the Ice leadership, the president has promised to deport millions of undocumented immigrants, regardless of their criminal record.

Trump federalised the National Guard to deal with the riots that broke out in Los Angeles in the wake of the government's crackdown on illegal immigrants. The last time the US president federalised the National Guard, i.e. took control of the reserve from the local governor, was in 1992 also in the California city. 

At the time, the measure was taken to quell riots provoked by the acquittal of four white police officers for the beating of the black motorist, Rodney King. In the riots, which went on for days and were among the most serious in recent US history, more than 60 people died, thousands were injured and thousands were arrested. Property damage was estimated at over a billion dollars.

It's the calm after the storm Monday in Los Angeles, after three days of protests and bitter clashes downtown between police and protesters with flags from Mexico and other Central American countries over the Trump administration's anti-migrant raids. The toll so far is150 people arrested, a couple of reporters hit by rubber bullets, several shops looted, several cars burned, including four self-driving taxis.

With scenes of urban guerrilla warfare in the city that will host the Olympics in 2028: on one side the agents - even on horseback - with tear gas, batons, non-lethal bullets, on the other the crowd, partly masked, throwing stones, bottles, a few molotov cocktails and even a motorbike at a police cordon. But the storm threatens to re-explode soon, spreading not only to other Californian cities, from San Francisco (60 arrests) to the capital Sacramento (march on the Capitol), but also to other American metropolises, risking to inflame the whole country. As happened after the killing of George Floyd by the police, when Trump tried in vain to use the Insurrection Act.

The protest against US President Donald Trump's immigration policy and the raids against migrants is spreading in the United States. After Los Angeles, where there were clashes with law enforcement, protesters took to the streets in several other American cities, including San Francisco, New York, Atlanta, Seattle, Dallas and Louisville.

According to CNN reports, police arrested 'several' people in New York and at least 150 people in San Francisco.

Elon Musk's apparent attempt at rapprochement after his stormy confrontation with Donald Trump. The Tesla patron posted on X a screenshot of a post by the president on Truth stating that California Governor Gavin Newsom and Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass 'should apologise to the people' for violent pro-migrant protests.

Musk appeared to fully support the Trump administration's stance on the situation in Los Angeles, even adding American flags to a JD Vance post in which the tycoon's deputy claimed that 'the president will not tolerate riots and violence'. Musk has long supported closing the borders, stopping illegal immigration and deportations, in line with the Trump administration.

"'If they spit, we strike'. This is a statement by the President of the United States regarding the catastrophic riots in Los Angeles, inspired by Gavin Newscum,'" Donald Trump writes in Truth.

'Insurgents,' he continues, 'have a tendency to spit in the faces of members of the National Guard and others. These patriots are told to accept it, it's just the way life is. But not in the Trump administration. If they spit, we hit, and I promise you they will be hit harder than they have ever been hit before. Such disrespect will not be tolerated!"

The tycoon has so far not invoked, although he has not ruled it out, the Insurrection Act, an 1807 law that allows the president to employ the military to suppress internal unrest or enforce federal laws within a state when state authorities are unable or unwilling to do so.

The Donald preferred to use a similar federal law that allows the president to 'federalise' National Guard troops in three circumstances: invasion or in danger of invasion; rebellion or danger of rebellion against the authority of the US government; or when the president is unable to 'enforce the laws of the United States' with regular forces. But the law also states that orders for such purposes 'shall be issued through the Governors of the States'.

The Insurrection Act and related laws were used during the civil rights era to protect activists and students who desegregated schools.

Dwight Eisenhower sent the 101st Airborne Division to Little Rock, Arkansas, to protect black students attending Central high school, after the state governor had activated the National Guard to prevent their entry.

George H. W. Bush used the Insurrection act to respond to the Los Angeles riots in 1992, after the acquittal of white police officers caught on camera beating the black motorist Rodney King.

National Guard troops have been deployed for various emergencies, including the Covid pandemic, hurricanes and other natural disasters, always in agreement with the governors. Even the UN has called for the protests not to be 'militarised', appealing to local, state and federal authorities to de-escalate, while Mexico's President Claudia Sheinbaum has asked American authorities to treat migrants 'with respect for human dignity'. In the meantime, however, the battle against illegal immigrants continues at the border with Mexico, where US troops have made the first arrests in the new military areas along 418 km of the border between New Mexico and Texas.