Several US cities braced for protests on Wednesday against President Donald Trump's sweeping immigration raids, as parts of the country's second largest city Los Angeles spent the night under curfew in an effort to quell five days of unrest.
The Governor of Texas, Republican Greg Abbott, said he will deploy the National Guard this week, ahead of planned protests. Protesters and police in Austin clashed on Monday.
Trump's extraordinary measures of sending National Guard and Marines to quell protests in Los Angeles has sparked a national debate on the use of military on US soil and pitted the Republican president against California's Democrat governor.
"This brazen abuse of power by a sitting president inflamed a combustible situation, putting our people, our officers and even our National Guard at risk. That's when the downward spiral began," California Governor Gavin Newsom said in a video address on Tuesday.
"He again chose escalation. He chose more force. He chose theatrics over public safety. ... Democracy is under assault."
Activists had also gathered in New York, Boston, Chicago, Dallas, Atlanta and elsewhere, rebuking the Trump administration’s tough stance against migrants and its aggressive round-up efforts, which Democratic leaders in California have criticized as contributing to a sense of fear across communities.
The protests took place as federal immigration raids continued nationwide on Tuesday, including a “targeted enforcement operation” in Los Angeles, according to Immigration and Customs Enforcement, as well as a raid at a meat processing facility in Omaha, Nebraska.
President Donald Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth authorised an estimated 700 Marines and more than 2,000 National Guard troops for deployment to Los Angeles, a move California Governor Gavin Newsom and Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass have sharply criticised as unnecessary.
“This is not an insurrection,” Bass said in an interview on Tuesday.
Los Angeles Police Department said on Tuesday that officers under its command, along with partner agencies, have arrested more than 300 people in connection with the protests since Saturday.
Democratic leaders have raised concerns over a national crisis in what has become the most intense flashpoint yet in the Trump administration's efforts to deport migrants living in the country illegally, and then crack down on opponents who take to the streets in protest.
Trump, voted back into office last year largely for his promise to deport undocumented immigrants, used a speech honoring soldiers on Tuesday to defend his decision.
He told troops at the army base in Fort Bragg, North Carolina: "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."
"What you're witnessing in California is a full-blown assault on peace, on public order and on national sovereignty, carried out by rioters bearing foreign flags," Trump said, adding his administration would "liberate Los Angeles."
US Immigration and Customs Enforcement on Tuesday posted photos on X of National Guard troops accompanying ICE officers on an immigration raid. Trump administration officials have vowed to redouble the immigration raids in response to the street protests.
The last time the military was used for direct police action under the Insurrection Act was in 1992, when the California governor at the time asked President George H.W. Bush to help respond to Los Angeles riots over the acquittal of police officers who beat Black motorist Rodney King.
(With input from agencies)