Trump militarizes Los Angeles in an exemplary punishment for 'sanctuary cities' for migrants.

Special Envoy to Los AngelesAfter the batons and rifles, the most common sights on the streets around the Los Angeles Metropolitan Detention Center are the reflective vests and sleeves of the workers cleaning up the graffiti of "Fuck ICE" and "Fuck the immigration", the next day four days of protests in the city by the aggressive raids by immigration agents (ICE, with its acronym in angles).

A dozen of the 4,000 National Guard troops deployed by President Donald Trump guard the entrance to the detention center. One of the two police officers accompanying the group chats with one of the soldiers holding a plexiglass shield.And then they come…". Both speak in Spanish. Like most of the bricklayers who clean the walls of the buildings, they are Hispanic.

At the foot of the stairs where the military stands guard, a group of protesters has begun a prayer for the mothers of those detained by ICE during the past week. my house. But no, I see this and I think: in La Chingada"Enough is enough," says Rosa, a resident of the city, who suffered persecution years ago. the migration (immigration agents) despite being born in California.

The protest is intended to be peaceful, but the police deployment that floods the streets is planned for the evening, although last night ended without incident. This Tuesday afternoon, a peaceful gathering is expected in Gloria Molina Grand Park, several blocks from the detention center, on what will be the fifth day of protests in Los Angeles.

Militarization of the streets

"We will flood the area," warned ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) director Thomas Homan in an interview on Fox on the fourth day of protests. This California city is not only "flooded" by ICE officers, but the Donald Trump administration is militarizing the streets at a forced pace. In addition to the 2,000 National Guard officers already on the streets without the consent of Governor Gavin Newsom, the federal government announced Monday that it will send another 2,000 National Guard troops and 700 marinasThe steady stream of military personnel is a clear test of pressure on Newsom and Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass, both Democrats. "Let those on the other side of the ambush know that the government is not going anywhere." The Pentagon has also made public that it estimates the deployment of marinas and the National Guard will cost about $134 million.

Trump is doing the same thing with California. playbook As with universities like Harvard and Columbia: they used all possible artillery to try to quell any source of resistance and demonstrate their strength. In Harvard's case, it was through federal funding cuts and visa cancellations, and in Los Angeles, they brought out their rifles in the face of protests against the campaign of terror in the migrant and Latino community.

Although the National Guard has not acted so far and has only had a deterrent function, the gesture of sending in the military sends a clear message. 50% of the city's population is Latino, and in the entire state of California, they represent 40%, making them the largest ethnic group, above whites (30%). according to census data.

'Sanctuary Cities'

Flooding Los Angeles with military personnel is also an attempt to subdue one of the main Democratic strongholds in the country and one of the main sanctuary cities. The terms sanctuary city and sanctuary state are used to describe places in the United States where local police are not allowed to cooperate with federal police, making them safer for undocumented people. In their campaign of mass deportations, the cities and the sanctuary states have been one of the main targets. If Trump tried to turn Harvard and Columbia into two exemplary punishments for universities, he is now repeating the strategy with Los Angeles and the rest of the sanctuary cities.

The military deployment ordered by Trump is also seen as a test of how the federal government might take control of other sanctuary cities in the country. Washington, New York, and Chicago are other places where undocumented people have been able to live in relative safety so far. In the nation's capital, many Latino-majority schools and restaurant workers in the Dupont Circle neighborhood were raided by ICE in mid-May.

Trump, who had promised to carry out the largest deportation campaign in "history," has seen how the number of daily expulsions has been falling compared to the numbers of his predecessor, Joe Biden. Although the Republican based his electoral campaign on attacking the Democrat's border management, during the four years of his presidency, Biden expelled more migrants than Trump did in his first term. The alleged criminals being detained and expelled by order of the president are not enough to achieve record numbers, so at the end of May, orders were given to ICE to expand the target, As Axios reported,

Last week's raids at the Home Depot in Paramount, South Los Angeles, which marked the beginning of the protests, were a symptom of the pressure to increase the numbers: immigration agents began detaining people on their way to work or passing by. All with the goal of catching undocumented immigrants. ICE agents created a siege in the area, and every day there were more migrants who did not show up for work.

Clash with the Governor

Subjecting California to a military siege without the consent of its governor is yet another gesture of power in the series of clashes with Newsom. The Democrat has tried to turn his state into a sort of oasis in Trump's second reign. In January, the California Assembly set aside $25 million from the state budget to fund the "resistance" against the measures Washington would like to impose. In six months of the Trump administration, California has already spent $5 million and filed 23 lawsuits against the White House's actions. The latest is the legal challenge to the deployment of the National Guard against Newsom's consent.

Despite his desire to be a bastion of resistance, the Democrat has been balancing to avoid stepping too far on Trump's tail. During the tragic fires that ravaged Los Angeles in January, Newsom avoided attacking him directly to ensure that federal aid for victims arrived. California $8 billion in federal funding

Newsom had been making many concessions to the new administration, but the way the federal administration has handled the protests in Los Angeles has been the final straw director at the same time ICE must arrest Newsom if he is seen as torpedoing its campaign of mass deportations.