(Los Angeles) Donald Trump blows on embers after three days of sometimes violent clashes in Los Angeles, while the Democratic authorities of California endeavor to counter the military deployment ordered by the American president.
“If they spit, we hit, and I promise you that we will hit like never before,” wrote the 78 -year -old Republican on Monday on his Truth social network for those he calls “insurgents”. He had already used this incendiary expression on Sunday, even more striking in English (“If they spit, We Will Hit”).
According to American media, a battalion of several hundred active soldiers of the Marine Corps could be deployed very soon in the second largest American city, after Donald Trump has already sent, against the opinion of the local authorities, the troops of the National Guard, a body of reserve.
Photo Ringo Chiu, Agence France-Presse Archives
A man goes by bike in front of a Waymo Fire vehicle in Los Angeles on June 8, 2025.
Carcasses of burned cars, buildings covered with insults for the anti-immigration police, police patrols … The Californian megalopolis, where a large Hispanic population resides, bears the traces of the clashes on Monday when demonstrators tried to intervene in the face of the muscular arrests of immigrants led by the federal immigration police (ICE).
“I saw my father handcuffed, hampered at the waist and the ankles. It was very traumatic, ”said Julian press conference on Monday, presenting herself as the daughter of Mario Romero, arrested by the ICE.
“Excess of power”
If for the most part Los Angeles started the week normally, the city center was prohibited for rallies, following these overflows which led in two days out of 56 arrests.
Photo Ringo Chiu, Agence France-Presse Archives
Protesters come up against the police in the streets of Los Angeles, California, on June 8, 2025.
California prosecutor Rob Bonta announced on Monday to prosecute Donald Trump in justice, believing that his choice to mobilize the national guards, that is to say soldiers, without the downstream of the governor, “violated” the Constitution.
This deployment, unheard of since 1965, is an “excess of scandalous power”, wrote Governor Gavin Newsom in a statement, accusing the president of “provoking chaos intentionally”.
In a short exchange with journalists on Monday in the White House, the Republican rejected the fault of overflows on “professional agitators” and “insurgents”, but did not say if he would declare a state of “insurrection” strictly speaking, which would give him extremely extended powers.
Photo Brendan Smialowski, Agency France-Presse
President Donald Trump addresses the media about clashes in Los Angeles, on the White House field.
He also defended his decision to send the National Guard as “excellent”.
The Democrat mayor of Los Angeles, Karen Bass, assured that the perimeter of clashes concerned only “a few streets” in the city center.
Authoritarian slope
To believe Donald Trump, the Californian metropolis would have been “striped the card” if he had decided to send the National Guard, a reserve body under double guardianship of federal power and states.
Gavin Newsom, considered a potential candidate for the White House, is one of the favorite targets of the Republican, who launched on Monday that it would be “great” to stop him, without knowing if it is a provocation or real intention.
Photo David Ryder, Reuters archives
Police attack demonstrators who block a street with a barricade in the center of Los Angeles, on June 8, 2025.
The governor, who had challenged the federal government on Sunday to pass the handcuffs, reacted by denouncing an “authoritarian” slope.
About 300 of these 2000 members of the National Guard, a force often mobilized during natural disasters, had arrived in Los Angeles on Sunday morning.
Their mission, strictly speaking, is not to maintain order, but to protect federal officials proceeding to arrests of migrants.
“We do not want to see more militarization of the situation,” asked the UN on Monday.
Mexican authorities explained that forty Mexican nationals were arrested on Friday and Saturday during ICE operations.
In the other major Californian city, San Francisco, the police announced that they had arrested sixty people after a demonstration against the anti-immigration policy of the government degenerated.
Referring to an “invasion” of the United States, Donald Trump erected the fight against illegal immigration in absolute priority of his second term.