Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass has announced a curfew for part of the United States’s second-largest city amid protests against President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown.
The curfew applies to 1 square mile (2.6sq km) of the downtown area, and will be in effect from 8pm on Tuesday to 6am on Wednesday (03:00 GMT to 13:00 GMT Wednesday), Bass said.
“Many businesses have now been affected or vandalised. Last night, there were 23 businesses that were looted, and I think if you drive through downtown LA, the graffiti is everywhere and has caused significant damages to businesses and a number of properties,” Bass told a news conference.
“So my message to you is: If you do not live or work in downtown LA, avoid the area. Law enforcement will arrest individuals who break the curfew and you will be prosecuted.”
Bass said she expected the curfew to remain in effect for several days, but stressed that the order only applied to a small portion of the city, which covers 502 square miles (1,300sq km).
“I think it is important to point this out, not to minimise the vandalism and violence that has taken place there – it has been significant – because it is extremely important to know that what is happening in this 1 square mile is not affecting the city,” Bass said.
“Some of the imagery of the protests and the violence gives the appearance that this is a city-wide crisis, and it is not.”
Bass’s order came as protests against the Trump administration’s raids on suspected undocumented migrants entered a fifth night in Los Angeles, and as demonstrations spread to dozens of other US cities, including New York, Chicago and Atlanta.
Trump’s immigration crackdown and deployment of the National Guard and Marines against protesters have drawn condemnation from California officials, who have accused the president of abusing his authority and fanning tensions.
In an address to Californians on Tuesday night, California Governor Gavin Newsom blasted Trump’s use of military force as a “brazen abuse of power”.
“That’s when the downward spiral began. He doubled down on his dangerous National Guard deployment by fanning the flames even harder, and the president – he did it on purpose,” Newsom said.
Newsom, who has filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration’s deployment of troops against his wishes, said the president had unleashed a “military dragnet” targeting “dishwashers, gardeners, day labourers and seamstresses” rather than violent criminals.
“That’s just weakness – weakness masquerading as strength. Donald Trump’s government isn’t protecting our communities, they’re traumatising communities, and that seems to be the entire point,” Newsom said. “California will keep fighting.”
“If some of us can be snatched off the streets without a warrant, based only on suspicion or skin colour, then none of us are safe,” he added.
“Authoritarian regimes begin by targeting people who are least able to defend themselves. But they do not stop there.”
Reporting from a vigil against the raids in Los Angeles, Al Jazeera’s Teresa Bo said that protesters are rejecting the Trump administration’s characterisation of the raids as being aimed at violent criminals.
“Many of the people we have spoken to here say that they are wrong – that they are working people who have come to this country to find a better life,” Bo said.
“That’s why most of the people who are here are extremely angry, and they are demanding an end to the raids.”
Bo said the activists she spoke to also stressed the need to keep the demonstrations peaceful.
“This is something that we’ve been hearing over and over,” she said.
“They say that the main reason they need to be peaceful is because violence gives Donald Trump an excuse to use the military, to the use National Guard on the streets of Los Angeles.”
Earlier on Tuesday, Trump doubled down on his decision to mobilise troops against protesters amid growing condemnation.
“Generations of army heroes did not shed their blood on distant shores only to watch our country be destroyed by invasion and third-world lawlessness here at home, like is happening in California,” Trump told US Army soldiers during a visit to Fort Bragg in North Carolina.
“As commander-in-chief, I will not let that happen. It’s never going to happen.”
Source: Aljazeera
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