Los Angeles mayor declares curfew in downtown amid immigration protests

WASHINGTON

Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass declared an overnight curfew in the heart of the city Tuesday evening in a bid to prevent another night of clashes between protesters opposed to US President Donald Trump's ongoing immigration raids and security forces.

"I issued a curfew starting tonight at 8pm for Downtown Los Angeles to stop bad actors who are taking advantage of the President's chaotic escalation. If you do not live or work in Downtown L.A., avoid the area," Bass wrote on X. "Law enforcement will arrest individuals who break the curfew, and you will be prosecuted."

The curfew will run through 6 am local time Wednesday and will last "for several days," Bass said at a separate press conference. It will only be in effect within a roughly one square mile (kilometer) area in downtown that includes the Edward R. Roybal Federal Building and City Hall.

Earlier Tuesday, Trump pledged to "liberate" the US's second largest city during remarks delivered to Army troops at Fort Bragg in North Carolina, claiming the protests sparked by his mass deportation campaign are "a full-blown assault on peace, on public order and on national sovereignty, carried out by rioters bearing foreign flags with the aim of continuing a foreign invasion of our country."

He also said California Gov. Gavin Newsom and Bass are "incompetent, and they paid troublemakers, agitators and insurrectionists. They're engaged in this willful attempt to nullify federal law and aid the occupation of the city by criminal invaders."

The president attempted to walk back those comments as well as the broader claim that the protesters are being paid when asked by reporters about his remarks.

"I didn’t say the governor or the mayor. I said somebody's paying them, I think. And if they're not, they're just troublemakers. What can I tell you? But I believe somebody's paying them," he said.

Trump has deployed roughly 4,000 US National Guardsmen and 700 Marines to the streets of Los Angeles in defiance of warnings from Newsom and Bass that the action would only serve to further inflame already-heightened tensions.

A federal judge denied Newsom's request for a restraining order to block what Newsom described as Trump's "unlawful militarization of Los Angeles." Senior District Judge Charles Breyer with the Northern District of California instead set a Thursday hearing on Newsom's request.

Protests erupted Friday after Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents raided local businesses and detained hundreds of people suspected of living in the US illegally. The Trump administration has continued to carry out the raids in defiance of the community's opposition.

Critics of the raids say ICE is going after law-abiding undocumented immigrants, a vital part of the community and the local economy, rather than the criminals that Trump pledged to deport while campaigning last year to return to the White House.