LOS ANGELES—Riots in protest of federal immigration operations, prompting President Donald Trump to deploy troops into Los Angeles, have precipitated a showdown between state and federal power.

Over the weekend, violence erupted as protestors broke off pieces of cinder blocks and cement structures to throw at law enforcement vehicles. They also tossed scooters and debris from freeway overpasses onto police cruisers, set vehicles ablaze, set off fireworks aimed at officers, and blocked roads.

Some masked protesters waved Mexican flags.

More than 2,000 California National Guard troops and 700 Marines are now in the Greater Los Angeles area. Trump on June 9 authorized an additional 2,000 National Guardsmen to be deployed and has said that they will stay “until there’s no danger.”

The protests continued into June 9 but were more subdued with an increased law enforcement and military presence.

The Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) arrested more than 150 protesters through the night of June 9; charges included attempted murder with a Molotov cocktail, assaulting a police officer with a deadly weapon, looting, and failure to disperse. Several police officers have been injured.

Trump’s National Guard deployment without a request from California Gov. Gavin Newsom has ignited a political and legal firestorm. Alleging Trump’s actions were illegal, California has filed suit and requested an emergency block.

A federal judge declined to issue an immediate block on June 10 and set a hearing for June 12.

ICE Operation

The protests began on June 6 after Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents conducted enforcement operations in the city. Federal agents detained several people at workplaces, including a Home Depot, and in LA’s Fashion District.

The Trump administration’s border czar, Tom Homan, has said that ICE agents were serving criminal search warrants at a Los Angeles worksite last week as part of a probe into customs fraud, tax evasion, and money laundering.

Speaking on “Dr. Phil,” Homan said 41 people were arrested and that the FBI, Drug Enforcement Administration, and IRS were also involved.

“We took a lot of bad people off the street that day,” he told NewsNation in another interview, noting that those enforcement measures were targeted, not a random sweep.

On June 7, protests erupted in Paramount, a neighborhood south of the city, and by that evening, Trump ordered the National Guard to be dispatched to the area.

Later that night, local police declared protests in part of downtown Los Angeles an “unlawful assembly.”

Escalating Unrest

The next day, against a backdrop of anti-ICE graffiti lining the walls of the Edward R. Roybal federal building, which houses the Department of Homeland Security and other federal agencies on Alameda Street, dozens of federal agents and troops, including the California National Guard, formed a defensive perimeter around the facility where protesters gathered at the entrance.

Several protesters concealed their identities wearing masks and gloves, and at least two symbols consisting of circled A’s were spray-painted on the federal buildings, similar to the symbol used by Antifa, a radical Marxist-anarchist group.

The protestors shouted over bullhorns expletive-laden anti-ICE speech and taunted police officers, carrying signs denouncing the ICE operations and the National Guard presence.

The federal troops were guarding federal property, while the LAPD manned skirmish lines on the streets surrounding it.

More than an hour later, as protesters refused to disperse as ordered, LAPD officers arrived on the scene in riot gear. Some of the protestors rushed toward the skirmish line, and officers backed away a few hundred feet, forming a solid line across a freeway overpass.

The LAPD fired flash bangs and other nonlethal weapons between themselves and the protesters to disperse the crowd.

Along Alameda Street, protesters blocked westbound traffic while some used their cars to create deliberate roadblocks. Dozens stayed on the scene, and some threw items, including water bottles, at LAPD officers.

On June 9, an Epoch Times photojournalist witnessed a mother dropping off her son, who appeared to be in his early 20s, on Commercial Street near the federal building.

The man said goodbye to his mother, told her he loved her, and closed the door to the van. As he walked away, the man put on gloves and a black balaclava mask and headed toward the police barricade.

Another protester waved his finger at police and shouted in their faces on the skirmish line.

By the afternoon of June 9, the crowd had thinned out to about 100 protesters. The front of the federal building was completely blocked off, with police outnumbering the protestors in that area.

Federal Versus State

After federalizing California’s National Guard to quell the riots, the Trump administration is now in a standoff with the Golden State over the handling of the unrest.

Trump invoked a rarely used law to call up 4,000 National Guard troops, saying that it was necessary to “address the lawlessness.” Newsom objected, saying the president’s move breached state sovereignty and would inflame tensions.

The state has filed a lawsuit against the administration, alleging that the deployment was illegal.

The president said that Los Angeles “would be burning to the ground” if he had not deployed the National Guard and Marines.

Trump has not ruled out invoking the Insurrection Act, which authorizes the president to deploy the military to suppress insurrections, enforce federal authority, and protect civil rights when state authorities fail to act.

“If there’s an insurrection, I would certainly invoke it. We'll see,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office on June 10.

“I could tell you there were certain areas of Los Angeles that you could have called it an insurrection. But these are paid insurrectionists. These are paid troublemakers. They get money.”

FBI Director Kash Patel said the agency is investigating “any and all monetary connections responsible for these riots.”

The Pentagon projected that the troop deployment to Los Angeles would cost $134 million over 60 days.

Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass on June 10 condemned the violence surrounding the anti-ICE protests.

“Let me be clear: ANYONE who vandalized Downtown or looted stores does not care about our immigrant communities. You will be held accountable,” she posted on social media platform X.

The mayor said her office has heard that the ICE operations could continue for a month or longer. Bass said she would call the president, asking him to stop the operations.

“It’s a sense of intimidation and fear that is just so unnecessary and so corrosive to our city,” Bass said at a press conference on June 10.

At least one Democrat has criticized the party’s response to the unrest.

“I unapologetically stand for free speech, peaceful demonstrations, and immigration—but this is not that,” Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.) said in a social media post on the evening of June 9.

His post included a photo of vehicles ablaze and flames filling the sky.

“This is anarchy and true chaos,” Fetterman said. “My party loses the moral high ground when we refuse to condemn setting cars on fire, destroying buildings, and assaulting law enforcement.”

Jack Phillips and Janice Hisle contributed to this report.