Trump sends military to repress protests in Los Angeles: US empire's tactics come home

Donald Trump deployed the US military to repress demonstrations in LA, California, as protesters denounce ICE's abuse of immigrants. The oppressive tactics used by the empire abroad are coming home.

US President Donald Trump deployed the military to repress demonstrations in Los Angeles, California, as protesters flooded the streets to denounce the abuse of immigrants by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

Trump sent at least 700 Marines and 2,000 members of the National Guard.

This is the first time in 60 years that a US president has deployed troops to a state without the approval of its governor.

The office of California's Governor Gavin Newsom condemned Trump's move as an "illegal militarization of Los Angeles”, and filed a lawsuit seeking to block the president and Department of Defense from taking control of a California National Guard unit.

LA police shoot protesters and journalists

The police and troops in Los Angeles have been extremely aggressive. They have indiscriminately shot not only protesters, but also journalists.

In fact, a diplomatic scandal was unleashed after a militarized LA police officer shot an Australian journalist while she was transmitting live on TV. This led Australia's prime minister, Anthony Albanese, to publicly criticize the US government.

Other journalists in LA also reported being shot at by the authorities. This was not an isolated incident; it was an intentional tactic.

The empire’s violence comes home

What this demonstrates is how the brutally violent policies carried out by the US empire around the world -- in Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen, Syria, Libya, and Palestine, and all across Latin America -- eventually come home. Those repressive tactics are turned against people in the United States.

This is clear in the heavy militarization of the police. It is common for US police departments to have armored vehicles and military-grade equipment.

Furthermore, one of the main reasons there are so many immigrants in the United States is that the US government has destabilized many countries, particularly those of Latin America.

The US military has intervened in almost every country in Latin America and the Caribbean. Washington has sponsored dozens of coups and regime-change operations in the region, overthrowing and destabilizing democratically elected governments while propping up corrupt right-wing authoritarian regimes.

The US arms industry has also fueled violence in the region. US officials have admitted that practically all of the violence committed by drug cartels in Mexico is carried out with US weapons. The Mexican government has formally complained, because murderous cartels are constantly using US military equipment.

Trump has continued these aggressive interventionist policies. During his first term as US president, he sponsored violent coup attempts in Nicaragua in 2018 and Venezuela in 2019. These failed, but the US-backed coup succeeded in Bolivia in 2019.

Trump was not the first US president to impose illegal unilateral sanctions on Cuba and Venezuela (that is bipartisan imperialism). However, he tightened the suffocating economic blockades on both countries, which devastated their economies and caused high levels of outward migration.

Now in his second term, Trump is using very extreme rhetoric to dehumanize protesters who support the human rights of immigrants. It sounds like he is waging a war against his own country.

In a speech before US soldiers, Trump claimed he needed to use extreme force to supposedly stop the country from being “destroyed by invasion and Third-World lawlessness”.

In response to Trump’s colonial discourse, uniformed US soldiers cheered. It was a clear incitement to violence against immigrants and Latino US citizens, enthusiastically endorsed by the US military.

Foreign flags not allowed (except for Israel’s)

Trump harshly condemned protesters in Los Angeles because some waved the flags of foreign countries — particularly those of Mexico and Central American nations like Honduras, El Salvador, and Guatemala.

Millions of people in the United States have familial origins in those countries, including not only many immigrants but also people who have citizenship and permanent residency in the US.

However, the far-right US president claimed protesters waving the flags of Latin American countries constituted a supposed “full-blown assault on … national sovereignty”.

This is deeply ironic, because the US government has supported violent riots, coup attempts, and “color revolutions” in foreign countries, where US-sponsored insurgents often wave the US flag.

In 2019 and 2020, the US government backed violent riots in Hong Kong, which aimed to demonize and destabilize the People’s Republic of China.

Many of these US-backed insurgents, who were attacking police and destroying public property, were also waving US flags. Some rioters even printed out large banners asking Trump (who was in his first term as US president at the time) to “make Hong Kong great again”.

“President Trump, please liberate Hong Kong”, said insurgents who wanted the US military to intervene.

What is even more hypocritical, however, is that Donald Trump has no problem appearing at events with the Israeli flag. He does so regularly — and he said he is “proud to be the best friend that Israel has ever had”.

In fact, it is common for US politicians to display the Israeli flag in their congressional office in Washington — especially Republicans who are allied with Trump.

So the issue is not really about foreign flags. Rather, it is about the flags of certain countries that the US empire doesn't like.

This is especially the case for Palestine.

Trump admin arrests and deports law-abiding immigrants for protesting US-Israeli genocide in Gaza

Trump has boasted that he is doing everything he can to deport pro-Palestine protesters, including those with lawful residency.

Marco Rubio (who is probably the most powerful person in the US government after Trump himself, as he is simultaneously serving as secretary of state and national security adviser) boasted that the State Department canceled the visas of more than 300 people because they expressed support for Palestine and criticized Israel.

So the message from the Trump administration is very clear: If you protest against the US-sponsored genocide in Gaza, then you will be arrested and deported. Even if you have a visa and legal residency, it will be canceled by the US government.

In fact, the Trump administration ordered the arrest of a Palestinian graduate student at Columbia University, Mahmoud Khalil, who had a green card and was abiding by all US immigration law. He was not undocumented, but he dared to use his free speech rights to criticize a US-Israeli genocide against his people.

In a flagrant attack on the First Amendment, the Trump administration is doing everything it can to deport Khalil. Rubio admitted that it is because of his political views.

Moreover, the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) arrested Khalil without a warrant, in a clearly illegal act.

ICE targets children and law-abiding immigrants

The Trump administration’s use of ICE as a tool to arrest and deport pro-Palestine activists is just one example of how the agency has acted lawlessly, as a political tool of repression.

The Trump administration is blatantly violating US law to make the lives of immigrants hell.

There are many cases of legal residents in the US who have been abused and arrested by ICE.

In May, a father of four who had lived in the US for 12 years was detained by ICE — at his US citizenship interview!

In fact, a few days before the protests broke out, ICE detained undocumented immigrants who were abiding by US law and attending their check-in appointments. They were thrown into rooms in the basement of a federal building, crammed in with dozens of people, no beds, and little food and water.

Trump falsely claims that he is targeting criminals, but in reality ICE is primarily going after immigrants who have not committed any crimes.

ICE has been detaining high school students. In California, ICE detained a 9-year-old, who will now be deported to Honduras.

Moreover, ICE has arrested and deported immigrants simply for having tattoos. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) got access to internal documents that show that ICE is using random photos from Google to absurdly claim that tattoos of a star, a crown, or Michael Jordan are “gang symbols”.

In some cases, immigrants in the US have been deported and imprisoned in El Salvador, without charge or trial.

It should also be stressed that studies by social scientists have found that immigrants commit significantly fewer crimes than people born in the US.

ICE’s lawless reign of terror

The Wall Street Journal published a story that provides the shocking details of how, under Trump, ICE has essentially been acting as a lawless paramilitary group.

The Wall Street Journal is a conservative-leaning newspaper; it is by no means anti-Trump. Alongside Fox News, the Journal is owned by owned by News Corp, the right-wing media conglomerate founded and previously chaired by Rupert Murdoch, a billionaire oligarch media mogul who has strongly supported the Republican Party.

Despite its bias, the Wall Street Journal revealed how the Trump administration is acting viciously and lawlessly.

The cruelty is the point.

The newspaper reported that Trump’s top aide Stephen Miller, a far-right white nationalist, ordered ICE to deport as many immigrants as possible. The main target of these deportations is not criminals and gang members, the newspaper stressed.

The Journal wrote:

Agents didn’t need to develop target lists of immigrants suspected of being in the U.S. illegally, a longstanding practice, Miller said. Instead, he directed them to target Home Depot, where day laborers typically gather for hire, or 7-Eleven convenience stores.

…

ICE agents appeared to follow Miller’s tip and conducted an immigration sweep [on June 6] at the Home Depot in the predominantly Latino neighborhood of Westlake in Los Angeles, helping set off a weekend of protests around Los Angeles County, including at the federal detention center in the city’s downtown.

According to the Wall Street Journal, “There are no written directives, but [ICE] officers have been told to ‘do what you need to do’ to make more arrests”. This means going after hard-working immigrants and children.

The newspaper described the extremely aggressive tactics ICE is using, which clearly violate US law and basic civil liberties. It wrote (emphasis added):

Federal agents make warrantless arrests. Masked agents take people into custody without identifying themselves. Plainclothes agents in at least a dozen cities have arrested migrants who showed up to their court hearings. And across the U.S., people suspected of being in the country illegally are disappearing into the federal detention system without notice to families or lawyers, according to attorneys, witnesses and officials.

In Coral Springs, Fla., at least eight agents in tactical gear, shields and rifles surrounded a home with guns raised to arrest a father with no criminal history. In Irvine, Calif., ICE agents drove a phalanx of military vehicles in the Orange County suburb to arrest a person, though not for illegal immigration. They were seeking a resident’s son who had allegedly posted fliers alerting neighbors to the presence of ICE agents.

All of this demonstrates why there have been large protests in Los Angeles, and why they have spread to other major cities across the United States.

It is not only immigrants, but also many US-born citizens who are participating in these demonstrations. They are making it clear that they are not going to tolerate the government’s dehumanization of millions of people.

Trump: a billionaire scapegoating the poor while serving the rich

ICE’s abuse of immigrants is not new. It also happened under Democrats like Joe Biden and Barack Obama — whose brutality earned him the moniker “deporter-in-chief”.

However, Trump has taken the repression to a whole new level. His administration is giving ICE free rein, encouraging agents to do whatever they want, to violate US law, in order to terrorize immigrants.

Trump is also massively expanding the repressive parts of the state — while cutting spending on healthcare, education, and social programs.

Trump’s 2026 budget will increase the US military budget to more than $1 trillion, while giving significantly more resources to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).

DHS is notorious for its authoritarian repression. It also oversees ICE.

Trump is expanding the budget of DHS from $65 billion to $107 billion. That is an increase of 65%, in just one year.

This is all part of the US government’s strategy to scapegoat immigrants for problems that were actually caused by billionaire oligarchs — like Trump and his allies.

Trump chose 13 billionaires to fill his administration. The billionaire US president has surrounded himself with some of the richest oligarchs in the world.

These oligarchs and the big corporations they run barely pay any taxes — and Trump is cutting those taxes even further.

While Trump’s oligarch allies fuel poverty, homelessness, and extreme inequality, he scapegoats immigrants. He blames some of the poorest, most marginalized people in US society for its many problems, while serving the rich and powerful. It is a cynical class war.