Breaking: Federal Judge Halts Controversial Military Move – Sh0cking Decision Bars Former President From Activating Troops in Major US City Amid Rising Tensions 

A ruling ordering the administration to return control of the National Guard to the California governor would have taken effect on Friday, but an appeal was quickly filed.

Senator Padilla Forcibly Removed After Confronting Noem

Senator Alex Padilla, Democrat of California, was forced to the floor, handcuffed and removed by federal agents after interrupting a news conference by the homeland security secretary Kristi Noem on Thursday.

“Sir, sir.” “Hands up. Hands up. “I’m Senator Alex Padilla. I have questions for the secretary because the fact of the matter is, a half a dozen violent criminals that should —” “On the ground. Hands behind your back. Hands behind your back.” “If you let me — “All right. Cool — lay flat, lay flat.” “Other hand, sir. Other hand.” “I was there peacefully. At one point, I had a question. And so I began to ask a question. I was almost immediately forcibly removed from the room. I was forced to the ground and I was handcuffed.” “We had a great conversation.” “We’re all set up over there.” “Well, we will give you a few comments.” “Yeah let’s go.” “I know the Senator — we had a great conversation. Sat down and talked for 10, 15 minutes about operations in L.A., some activities of the Department of Homeland Security. And so I thought it was very productive. And I wish that he would have reached out and identified himself, and let us know who he was and that he wanted to talk. I’ll let the law enforcement speak to how this situation was handled, but I will say that its — people need to identify themselves before they start lunging at people that are doing press conferences.”

Here’s the latest.

A federal judge issued an order late Thursday blocking President Trump from deploying members of the California National Guard in Los Angeles, and ordered the administration to return control of the forces to Gov. Gavin Newsom.

The administration quickly filed an appeal to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Court, which temporarily stopped the ruling from taking effect while it considers the case.

The restraining order from District Judge Charles R. Breyer, which would have taken effect Friday at noon Pacific time, delivered a sharp rebuke to President Trump’s effort to deploy thousands of troops on the streets of an American city, a move that has contributed to nearly a week of political rancor and protests across the country.

“His actions were illegal — both exceeding the scope of his statutory authority and violating the Tenth Amendment to the United States Constitution,” Judge Breyer wrote of Mr. Trump’s orders.

The ruling came hours after images of a Democratic senator from California being grabbed and handcuffed by federal agents touched off another round of political furor. Unrest also flared on Thursday night at a privately run immigration detention center in Newark. And in Chicago, hundreds of people marched through the city in opposition to the Trump administration’s immigration raids and attempts to quell dissent.

Here’s what we’re covering:

Demonstrations: Protests against the ongoing workplace raids were expected to continue through the weekend, when a nationwide series of demonstrations on Saturday has been planned for weeks. The protests are set to coincide with a military parade in Washington taking place on Mr. Trump’s 79th birthday.

Prosecutors alerted: The Justice Department warned the offices of U.S. attorneys around the country, as well as the entire criminal division of the department, to be prepared to handle requests to file criminal charges, or conduct searches, related to the demonstrations set for this weekend. Read more ›

Troop deployment: Before a judge’s ruling late Thursday, the military said that by Friday evening, roughly 700 Marines were expected to join 2,100 National Guard troops that have been guarding federal property and personnel in Los Angeles. The commander overseeing the military operations said on Wednesday that the Marines were at a naval base south of the city. Judge

It is 8:15 p.m. in Los Angeles—15 minutes after curfew. Scores of police are by the Geffen Contemporary museum in a massive show of force. This has been a hot spot all evening, because National Guard troops have been stationed nearby at a V.A. facility. Now most protesters have moved on, but a few have stayed. Police are arresting the few who chose to stay, without incident.

A federal judge temporarily blocked the federal government’s mobilization of the California National Guard to protect immigration agents from protesters in Los Angeles.

Curfew is now in effect in downtown Los Angeles. L.A.P.D. are now arresting the few remaining protesters near the federal building. There are more members of the media than protesters here.

As of roughly 8 p.m., a crowd of at least 400 protesters has gathered outside the ICE detention center in Portland Thursday night. The air is ringing with fired-up, sometimes profane speeches blasting Trump, racism and fascism from protest leaders, along with spoken word poetry and song. Right now they’re chanting “Say it loud and say it clear, immigrants are welcome here!”

Richard Fausset and Mimi Dwyer spent hours in Los Angeles interviewing protesters and documenting the police response.

In L.A., the divide between peace and violence is in the eye of the beholder.

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People protesting against the detention of migrants by federal law enforcement at City Hall in downtown Los Angeles on Wednesday.Credit…Philip Cheung for The New York Times

Alfonso Santoyo was marching through the streets of Los Angeles with a boisterous crowd on Wednesday protesting the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown. Mr. Santoyo’s presence, and his voice, were his only weapons.

“It’s upsetting how they’ve portrayed the community as criminals,” said Mr. Santoyo, a 43-year-old postal worker whose parents came to the U.S. from Mexico as undocumented immigrants but eventually gained legal status. “It’s just upsetting to see that. Because we know it’s not the case.”

After an 8 p.m. curfew brought a ghostly quiet to much of downtown, a man in body armor stood in front of a building full of jewelry stores, smoking a cigarette down to the filter.

The man, who declined to give his name, wore a handgun on his thigh and carried a rifle that fires plastic projectiles. He pointed to nearby stores and buildings in L.A.’s jewelry district that had been broken into days earlier. Much like the 2020 demonstrations against police violence, he said, there always seemed to be bad actors among the peaceful ones.

Separating them out, he said, was pointless. He cited an Armenian proverb: “Wet wood and dry wood burn together.”

In Los Angeles this week, many protesters have marched peacefully. Others have thrown objects at the police, set cars ablaze and looted stores and restaurants. Police have responded aggressively, intimidating protesters with earsplitting explosives and mounted patrols, hitting them with batons, deploying tear gas and firing foam projectiles and rubber bullets into crowds.

The question of which side is justified, and which side is not, seems to have divided the country as much as the immigration issue. And Los Angeles has been transformed into a stage for a debate over the nature and meaning of American protest.

This week, the line separating peaceful protest from violent protest differed in the eyes of the beholder. Was Los Angeles a city in chaos, when many in the sprawling metropolis went about their day untouched by drama that was confined to scattered blocks? What was the appropriate language to accurately describe nights in which many protesters, like Mr. Santoyo, have been lawful, but others, who have often shown up after sundown, have decided to loot, smash and burn?

Law enforcement officers clashing with protesters on Wednesday.Credit…Philip Cheung for The New York Times

Did the Trump administration, which has deployed National Guard troops, and the Los Angeles Police Department overreact and pour gasoline on the fire? Or were their aggressive tactics necessary to prevent the situation from spiraling out of control, in a city still haunted by the bloody, fiery riot of 1992?

Critics say that President Trump is playing a dangerous game by militarizing the response. Gov. Gavin Newsom of California said in a speech that Mr. Trump’s deployment of the National Guard was “fanning the flames even harder.”

The crowd Mr. Santoyo was marching in on Wednesday night was eventually broken up by officers who fired foam projectiles and used flanking maneuvers and horses to send them running. Though protesters on previous evenings had attacked officers and police property, on this night, the crowd largely lived up to what has become a kind of trademark chant of the moment, often directed at law enforcement in their riot gear: “Peaceful protest!”

On Wednesday, they turned to that chant over and over again.

Before the march, the crowd had gathered in Pershing Square, where a number of speakers said that the most disturbing violence was being perpetrated by Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers, who in recent weeks have raided clubs, restaurants and workplaces around the country and have arrested people showing up for immigration-related court dates.

A speaker who identified herself as a teacher and daughter of immigrants said the mainstream media “is making it out to seem like we’re the violent ones,” while the violence, she said, was actually coming “from the National Guard, from the Marines, from L.A.P.D.”

They set out on a march that would eventually bring them to the foot of the iconic, Art Deco City Hall building, looming 27 stories high against a sea-blue sky. The mood was defiant and joyous. Insulting chants in Spanish were directed at “la migra,” or immigration officials. American flags and Mexican flags were flown, as well as a hybrid flag that incorporated both banners. A truck boomed Miley Cyrus’s L.A. anthem “Party in the U.S.A.,” then switched to an accordion-fueled corrido.

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Law enforcement officers keep watch as protesters march in front of City Hall in downtown Los Angeles.Credit…Philip Cheung for The New York Times

Some protesters said that the recent vandalism and property damage did not bother them, because it brought attention to the crisis affecting their friends and family. “They’re terrorizing our community,” Mr. Santoyo said of the immigration officers. “A couple of cars on fire means nothing to me.”

Aylan Francesco Mello, 33, a tech worker and Southern California native, watched from Gloria Molina Grand Park, a block-wide green space that extends northwest from City Hall and that had also begun to fill with protesters. He said his mother came to the U.S. illegally from Guatemala, and his father came legally from Brazil.

“This feels like a very personal thing to me,” Mr. Francesco Mello said. “I see myself in a lot of the people who are being persecuted.”

But he did not identify with the non-peaceful street crowds, which have often caused trouble after the peaceful protesters have gone home. “There’s very little overlap between the looters, the opportunists, and the protesters,” he said. “I feel like we’re almost talking about two different subjects.”

Moments later, at the corner of North Spring and West Temple streets, a line of mounted police armed with batons surged toward the crowd. Many of the protesters fled from the officers, terrified. The horses smashed some protesters into parked cars. Other protesters fell to the ground. One officer on horseback was seen hitting a protester with a baton. Bit by bit, the police began pushing the crowd away from City Hall.

The chant rose up again: “Peaceful protest.”

Over time the crowd splintered, but a large group of them headed back to Pershing Square just before the 8 p.m. curfew.

There were scenes of mischief and passion, mundane and surreal. A teenager draped in a Mexican flag jumped off his bicycle and hopped on top of a delivery robot. It froze, and chirped menacingly, its screen announcing, “STEP AWAY.”

Later, a large contingent of protesters marched to Koreatown, where they gathered peacefully at the corner of Western Avenue and Beverly Boulevard. They were outside the downtown curfew zone. Dozens of police officers came to scare them away. A woman dressed in flip-flops and a blue dinosaur costume pointed her phone at them, yelling, “Why are you doing this? You’re causing violence!”

An officer’s amplified voice told them that if they did not disperse, they would be in violation California Penal Code 409, which prohibits people lingering after such a warning while “at the place of any riot, rout, or unlawful assembly.”

The crowd ignored the warnings. A young woman in a green dress walked up to the frontline officers. She got close to one of them, and he pushed her. Then she walked down the line of officers, asking who was going to push her next.

Soon, the police had maneuvered around three sides of the crowd. More foam bullets were fired. The intersection was now largely empty. The woman in the green dress ran back into the space for a few moments, dancing defiantly with an American flag as officers held their rifles, loaded with foam projectiles, at the ready. But soon even she stepped aside.

The police had won the battle. But the protesters soon started to re-form on Western Avenue, near a laundromat one block north.

A strange scene from Los Angeles, city of culture on edge: two large contingents of police with batons have massed on Temple Street by the Geffen Contemporary, a branch of the Museum of Contemporary Art. They are a block from a spot where protesters have squared off against National Guard troops. An exterior wall of the museum is covered by a large mural by contemporary artist Barbara Kruger. In bold capital letters, it says: “Who is beyond the law? Who is bought and sold? Who is free to choose? Who does the time? Who follows orders? Who salutes longest? Who prays loudest? Who dies first? Who laughs last?” A police helicopter chucks overhead. It is 20 minutes to curfew.

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Credit…Richard Fausset/The New York Times

Rob Bonta, the attorney general of California, touted the state’s success in stopping the Trump Administration from expanding presidential power.

“They like to say there are rebellions or invasions or emergencies or insurrections, because that triggers more executive authority, and that’s really the end goal for them,” he said in a livestreamed news conference. “But unfortunately for them and fortunately for us, we are stopping them when they take unlawful actions.”

A shift I’ve noticed at these protests the last couple days has been the growing number of American flags. Some of them are upside down, and sometimes they are combined with other flags

At 7 p.m., a crowd of protesters marched to the Department of Veterans Affairs ambulatory care center downtown, where they stopped in front of a contingent of National Guard troops who were guarding the building. They were joined by Customs and Border Protection personnel in riot gear. Some of the protesters were confused as to why the National Guard had not left given the recent federal court ruling. They chanted, “National Guard out of L.A.

Gov. Gavin Newsom had tears in his eyes as he described to reporters encounters he has had with family members of those arrested by ICE agents. “That’s Donald Trump’s America,” he said, describing it as “indiscriminate cruelty.”

The Trump administration has filed a notice that it is appealing the judge’s order barring it from using California’s National Guard in Los Angeles and requiring it to return control of the troops to Gov. Gavin Newsom.

Governor Newsom said he would work with President Trump going forward, even as the two men face off over ICE raids and protests in Los Angeles. “I will work with anyone to advance the interests of 40 million Americans that I happen to represent here in California,” Newsom said. “I’ve always maintained an open hand, not a closed fist.

News that a judge ordered the Trump administration to return control of the National Guard to the state of California has spread to some of the protesters in downtown Los Angeles. Najee Gow, 27, held a Mexican flag and announced the news to the those around through a megaphone. They cheered in response.

Judge Breyer said that President Trump set a “dangerous precedent for future domestic military activity” by using a novel legal mechanism to take control of California’s National Guard without agreement from Governor Newsom.

The state of California “and the citizens of Los Angeles face a greater harm from the continued unlawful militarization of their city, which not only inflames tensions with protesters, threatening increased hostilities and loss of life, but deprives the state for two months of its own use of thousands of National Guard members to fight fires, combat the fentanyl trade and perform other critical functions,” he wrote

Gov. Gavin Newsom said that if his authority over the National Guard is restored, which is set to happen at noon tomorrow under the judge’s order, the troops would be redeployed to their prior duties, including border security. The Trump administration is expected to appeal the ruling.

Talking to reporters Thursday evening, Gov. Gavin Newsom of California said he was “gratified” by a judge’s decision to pause the deployment of the National Guard to Los Angeles. “Today is a big day for the constitution of the United States, for our democracy,” he said.

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Credit…Mario Tama/Getty Images

Law enforcement officers respond to reports of disturbance at migrant facility.

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Protesters used barricades to try to impede federal agents at Delaney Hall in Newark on Thursday.Credit…Victor J. Blue for The New York Times

Dozens of law enforcement officials from several policing agencies responded on Thursday to a private immigration detention center in Newark after reports of a disturbance inside.

Masked officers carrying plastic handcuffs and pepper spray could be seen entering the facility, known as Delaney Hall, just after 7 p.m., and people standing nearby reported smelling a pungent odor.

About an hour beforehand, a detainee at the facility had called a staff member of an emergency immigration hotline and said that a group had begun to rebel over dismal food conditions, according to Ellen Whitt, a volunteer who works at the hotline run by DIRE.

“People were hungry and got very angry and started to react and started to rebel against what was going on in the detention center,” Ms. Whitt said. “When we were on the phone with him, we could hear screaming and yelling in the background.”

The detainee said that people were trying to break windows and that, at one point, guards seemed to have abandoned their posts.

Delaney Hall is run by one of the country’s largest private prison companies, the GEO Group, which has a contract with the Trump administration to hold as many as 1,000 migrants at a time. Last month, a clash outside the facility led the Justice Department to charge Representative LaMonica McIver, a New Jersey Democrat, with assault. Ms. McIver, who has maintained her innocence, is scheduled to be arraigned on Monday and has said that she will enter a not-guilty plea.

A spokesman for the GEO Group referred questions to the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency.

Tricia McLaughlin, a spokeswoman for the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees ICE, said she was in touch with officials at the facility but was not able to offer an immediate comment.

Relatives with scheduled appointments on Thursday to visit detainees in Unit 4 of the facility said that they had not been permitted inside to visit. Many were still waiting out front when a fire truck and then police vehicles from several agencies, including the Newark Police Department and the Essex County Sheriff Department, pulled up.

“They weren’t letting visitors in,” said Raymond O’Neill, a Newark resident, who has joined regularly with other activists outside the facility, which has become a recurring flashpoint in President Trump’s immigration crackdown.

After the sun set, a K9 unit and agents with the Federal Bureau of Investigation, as well as officers from the Hudson County Sheriff’s Office, began arriving as protesters stood in front of the facility’s gate, as if to block entry or exit by the authorities.

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Protesters tried to impede federal agents from exiting Delaney Hall in Newark.CreditCredit…By Victor J. Blue

Just before 10 p.m., some members of the crowd dragged plastic construction barricades toward the gate. Soon after, groups of protesters began linking arms, blocking a van and an SUV from exiting through the gate. The vehicles left after the crowd was dispersed by officers who used pepper spray.

ICE entered into a $1 billion contract with the GEO Group to operate the facility, which began housing detainees last month. Democratic officials in New Jersey have opposed its opening, leading to a lawsuit, protests and a volatile clash outside the facility that led to the arrest of Newark’s mayor and charges against Ms. McIver.

In recent days, reports about unsanitary conditions inside began to percolate among immigration lawyers and activists.

Francisco Castillo, a Dominican immigrant who has been held at Delaney Hall since last week, said in a phone interview from the detention center on Tuesday that the facility was so overcrowded when he arrived that some detainees had to sleep on the floor. He said on Tuesday that the crowding issue had been recently resolved.

But he said detainees were being served dismal meals at irregular hours, an issue that was particularly affecting detainees who are diabetic and need to eat at regular times to control their blood sugar levels. He said detainees were often served small cartons of expired milk for breakfast. Dinners were sometimes not served until around 11 p.m., he said.

The living conditions grew so bad, he said, that a group of about 30 detainees had begun drafting a petition detailing the conditions that they could get to the public through their relatives and lawyers.

“Every day is a disaster with the food here,” Mr. Castillo, 36, who was detained by ICE at an immigration courthouse in New York City on June 4, said in Spanish.

At about 4:30 p.m. on Thursday, a woman who lives in Elizabeth, N.J., said she got a call from her partner, who has been detained at Delaney Hall since early last month. He was crying, she said, and described rising tension within the facility linked to frustration over food.

He had arrived in the country at 15 from Guatemala, she said, and is challenging an order of deportation.

The woman, who did not want to be identified because she feared it would lead to retaliation against her partner, said she told him to close the door to the 10-bunk dorm room where he is housed, and to kneel on the floor to avoid a conflict if officers entered.

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Protesters dragged plastic barricades outside the main entrance of Delaney Hall.Credit…Victor J. Blue for The New York Time

In downtown Los Angeles, protesters have taken to the streets, although in much smaller numbers than Wednesday night. The crowd seems to be swelling by the minute. They are making multiple laps around City Hall. Police are watching closely from positions around government buildings. The mood is mellow but the night is young.

Judge Breyer wrote in his ruling that President Trump’s move to take over the National Guard violated the constitutional principle of states rights.

“It is not the federal government’s place in our constitutional system to take over a state’s police power whenever it is dissatisfied with how vigorously or quickly the state is enforcing its own laws,” he wrote. “Quite the contrary, the founders reserved that power, and others, to the states.”

Though the order does not rule on the Marines, as the state had hoped, it does go further with regard to the National Guard than California had even requested. The state asked for the military’s activity to be limited to guarding federal buildings — but the judge ordered control of the Guard to be returned to Gov. Gavin Newsom.

In his ruling, Judge Charles Breyer refuted a piece of the Trump administration’s rationale for calling up the National Guard, saying, “The protests in Los Angeles fall far short of ’rebellion.’”

“Individuals’ right to protest the government is one of the fundamental rights protected by the First Amendment, and just because some stray bad actors go too far does not wipe out that right for everyone.”

Gov. Gavin Newsom is expected to address journalists in San Francisco shortly after a federal judge ruled in his favor in his case against the Trump administration. The administration will have a chance to appeal.

A federal judge has blocked President Trump from deploying members of the California National Guard to Los Angeles and ordered the administration to return control of the forces to Gov. Gavin Newsom.

Protesters in Chicago return to the streets.

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Protesters gathered near Grant Park in Chicago on Thursday.Credit…Robert Chiarito

Seven days after the first protests broke out in Los Angeles, hundreds of demonstrators returned to the streets of downtown Chicago on Thursday evening to once again voice their opposition to President Trump’s immigration crackdown.

“Get up, get down, Chicago is an immigrant town,” the crowd chanted, waving Mexican flags and signs that read “ICE Out of Chicago.” Other signs, in Spanish and English, demanded an end to deportations.

The demonstrations sparked another round of protests that after starting in California have reached across the country. Chicago, which is about 20 percent foreign-born, with a large Mexican American population, has been particularly active.

The march was organized by the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights, an advocacy group. Other organizations, including the U.S. Palestinian Community Network, urged their supporters to attend.

Rush hour traffic came to a standstill in parts of Chicago’s Loop as the marchers passed Millennium Park and the Trump International Hotel and Tower, a skyscraper on the Chicago River that is a frequent target of protests.

Rick Lucas, a nurse at a hospital in Ohio, joined the protest while visiting Chicago for a conference.

“I’m concerned that ICE is going to come into our hospital, disrupt patient care and rip families apart,” Mr. Lucas said.

Chicago police officers on bicycles lined the curbs to separate protesters from passers-by, and blocked traffic to allow the protest to continue.

On Tuesday, during other large demonstrations in the city, Chicago police arrested 17 protesters, charging them with aggravated battery, reckless conduct and criminal damage to government property.

As the sun set Thursday evening near Foley Square in New York City, a small contingent of demonstrators protesting ICE’s actions clashed verbally with counter-protesters, who chanted “N.Y.P.D.” The demonstration on Thursday in Lower Manhattan was the smallest of the week, with a few dozen people present, some leaning against metal barricades while others waved Mexican flags.

At least 22 states join California in its effort to block Trump’s troop deployment.

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California National Guard vehicles departing a federal building in Los Angeles on Tuesday. Gov. Gavin Newsom of California sued President Trump over his deployment of the state’s National Guard without the governor’s approval.Credit…Philip Cheung for The New York Times

At least 22 states have joined a legal brief in support of California’s request for a court order blocking President Trump’s deployment of the state’s National Guard.

Mr. Trump has deployed nearly 5,000 National Guard troops and Marines to the Los Angeles area with members of the Guard accompanying federal immigration officers on raids across the city, an action that California officials have sought to stop with an emergency court order that would limit military troops to protecting a complex of federal buildings downtown where protesters have been gathering.

“The president is escalating events in Los Angeles not to prevent violence, but to stoke fear and division,” said Nick Brown, the attorney general of Washington State, whose office led the filing in federal court in California of what is known as an amicus brief. “It’s a deliberate enticement to chaos.”

“Washington State would act swiftly to protect our residents if the president did the same here,” he added.

Gov. Gavin Newsom of California has condemned the president’s deployment of the military in Los Angeles as a “brazen abuse of power.”

The amicus brief calls Mr. Trump’s move “unlawful, unconstitutional, and undemocratic.”

“Since 1792, when Congress first gave the president the authority to call forth the militia in limited circumstances, the president has only ever used it as ‘a last resort,’ when a state requests help to quell an insurrection, when necessary to enforce a federal court order, or when state and local law enforcement are unable to enforce the law,” the brief said.

Attorneys general for the following states also joined the brief: Arizona, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont and Wisconsin. The office of Gov. Laura Kelly of Kansas also joined.

“We should all be shocked by President Trump’s decision to federalize and deploy California’s National Guard without the consent of California’s governor,” Charity R. Clark, the Vermont attorney general, said in a news release. “The president’s actions are illegal and un-American. Vermont proudly stands with California in fighting for the rule of law and defending states’ sovereign rights.”

Ms. Clark called the president’s move “an unlimited claim of presidential authority” and said it could put states at risk by taking Guard members away from being on call for other emergencies, such as responding to natural disasters.

On Thursday, Los Angeles City Attorney Hydee Feldstein Soto and her co-counsel, Democracy Defenders Fund, also filed a brief in support of California’s request to block the troop deployment.

The filing points out a disproportionate response by the Trump Administration, noting that the number of troops sent to Los Angeles to manage protests involving about 1,000 people was nearly equivalent to the number of police for the entire city of Houston, with its population of 2 million.

“The military’s unsought and dangerous deployment in downtown Los Angeles should not be allowed to stand,” the brief says.

Senator Alex Padilla said on MSNBC that he thought his removal from a news conference Thursday was “excessive” and “an overreaction.” He had been escorted into the briefing room by federal agents, Padilla said, while he waited for a scheduled meeting with U.S. Northern Command to begin. He stood in the back, listening, until “the political rhetoric got to be too much to take,” he said. “So I spoke up.”

How many people have been arrested in the nationwide anti-ICE protests?

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Law enforcement officers guarding arrested protesters in downtown Los Angeles on Wednesday night.Credit…Philip Cheung for The New York Times

Authorities have now arrested more than a thousand people nationwide in protests against the intensifying immigration crackdown by federal agencies.

After beginning as a backlash to workplace immigration raids last week in Los Angeles, the demonstrations have spread to cities across the country. Many protests have passed without incident, but some have been marked by vandalism and by confrontations that turned violent and led to injuries to demonstrators and officers.

Here’s how many people have been arrested, according to statements from law enforcement officials.

In Los Angeles, the epicenter of the protests, the Los Angeles Police Department, the California Highway Patrol and the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department have arrested about 580 people.

Federal agents arrested at least 14 more people during protests in the Los Angeles area.

In San Francisco, the police have arrested at least 244 people since the protests began over the weekend.

In New York, at least 127 people have been arrested during several days of protests against the federal immigration crackdown.

In Chicago, at least 17 people have been arrested.

In Philadelphia, at least 15 people have been arrested.

In Denver, at least 18 people have been arrested.

In Austin, Texas, at least 13 people have been arrested.

In Seattle, at least 10 people have been arrested.

In Brookhaven, Ga., a city near Atlanta, six people have been arrested.

One person was arrested and accused of hitting a police car during a protest in Dallas.

On MSNBC Thursday evening, Senator Alex Padilla of California said he identified with the protesters rallying against federal immigration raids in Los Angeles but condemned scattered instances of violence. Padilla, whose parents are immigrants from Mexico, said he had been active in pro-immigration protests in California as a college student.

Missouri joins Texas in assembling National Guard troops.

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President Trump this week sent National Guard members to Los Angeles.Credit…Alex Welsh for The New York Times

Missouri on Thursday became the second state to call on National Guard troops to respond to protests against the Trump administration’s stepped-up immigration raids.

After Texas earlier in the week announced plans to deploy troops, Gov. Mike Kehoe, a Republican, activated the Missouri National Guard on Thursday as a precaution to civil unrest, according to the governor’s office.

“While other states may wait for chaos to ensue, the State of Missouri is taking a proactive approach in the event that assistance is needed to support local law enforcement in protecting our citizens and communities,” the governor said in a news release.

The executive order signed by Mr. Kehoe listed Kansas City, Springfield and St. Louis as areas where protests “have created or may create conditions of distress and hazards to the safety, welfare and property of the citizens and visitors.”

On Tuesday, Gov. Greg Abbott, the Republican governor of Texas, ordered the deployment of troops ahead of planned protests. More than 5,000 troops are available to join 2,000 state police officers at protests where local police will also be present, according to his office.

“Texas will not tolerate the lawlessness we’ve seen in L.A.,” the governor said in a message posted online.

Protests have erupted in recent days against immigration raids ordered by President Trump, who sent National Guard troops and Marines to Los Angeles. That move has been strongly opposed by many local leaders including Gov. Gavin Newsom of California, a Democrat, who has accused the president of “trying to gin things up to create problems.” Mr. Newsom’s administration has filed a lawsuit to stop the deployment of federal troops to California.

He has also said he would deploy the state’s National Guard himself if necessary.

Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, a Republican, offered to send his state’s troops to help quell protests in California, according to a report in The Miami Herald.

“Given the guard were not needed in the first place, we declined Governor DeSantis’s attempt to inflame an already chaotic situation made worse by his party’s leader,” a press officer for Mr.

Judge blocks Trump’s use of National Guard to deal with protesters.

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Members of the California National Guard in downtown Los Angeles this week.Credit…Philip Cheung for The New York Times

A federal judge on Thursday temporarily blocked the federal government’s mobilization of the California National Guard to protect immigration agents from protesters in Los Angeles. He ruled that the Trump administration had illegally taken control of the state’s troops and ordered them to return to taking orders from Gov. Gavin Newsom.

In an extraordinary 36-page ruling, Judge Charles Breyer of the Federal District Court in San Francisco severed Mr. Trump’s control of up to 4,000 National Guard troops, hundreds of whom are already deployed in the streets of Los Angeles on his orders. The judge said the administration’s seizure of them violated required procedures in a federal statute.

President Trump’s “actions were illegal — both exceeding the scope of his statutory authority and violating the Tenth Amendment to the United States Constitution,” Judge Breyer wrote. “He must therefore return control of the California National Guard to the governor of the state of California forthwith.”

The directive takes effect at noon Pacific time on Friday. That gives the Trump administration an opportunity to ask the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit to block it from taking effect beyond that point. The administration immediately filed a notice that it was appealing Judge Breyer’s decision.

The ruling, which accused Mr. Trump of setting a “dangerous precedent for future domestic military activity,” was the latest in a series of judicial rebukes to Mr. Trump’s expansive claims of wartime or emergency powers over matters ranging from deporting people without due process to unilaterally imposing widespread tariffs. Court rulings blocking his actions as likely illegal have enraged the White House.

Judge Breyer’s ruling on the National Guard went beyond what California had asked for. While the state’s lawsuit had contended that Mr. Trump’s mobilization of the National Guard was illegal, its specific motion was for a temporary restraining order limiting military forces under federal control to guarding federal buildings in the city and no other law enforcement tasks.

Judge Breyer blocked Mr. Trump from using California’s National Guard at all. But he also rejected a request by the state and Governor Newsom to restrain a separate group of active-duty Marines, which the administration has also mobilized to counter the protesters.

Read the Judge’s Ruling

A federal judge temporarily blocked the federal government’s mobilization of the California National Guard to protect immigration agents from protesters in Los Angeles.

Read Document 36 pages

Pete Hegseth, the secretary of defense, mobilized 700 Marines from a base in California to participate in suppressing protests, and the state had wanted the judge to restrict them from accompanying immigration agents on the workplace raids that sparked the protests. But the active-duty troops so far have merely been staged in a neighboring county and have not gone into the city.

Judge Breyer said it would be inappropriate to issue any order restricting the Marines’ actions when they have not done anything that would violate the Posse Comitatus Act, which generally makes it illegal to use federal troops for law enforcement on domestic soil. He said that the state would need to return within a week to try to turn his temporary order into a longer-lasting injunction, allowing time for events to develop.

“As of now, the court only has counsel’s speculation of what might happen,” the judge wrote.

Standing in front of the California flag at a news conference in the lobby of a state courthouse after the ruling, Mr. Newsom hailed the decision.

“Today was really about a test of democracy,” he said. “We passed the test.”

Mr. Newsom said that he would direct National Guard members to resume the duties that they were carrying out before they were redirected by Mr. Trump, which included border control and forest management to reduce wildfire risk.

“They will be back under my command,” he said, “and Donald Trump will be relieved of his command, at noon tomorrow.”

The press offices of the White House and the Justice Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Complicating matters, the judge issued his directive to the Trump administration to relinquish control of the National Guard in the form of a temporary restraining order, a short-term tool that is normally not appealable, unlike a more durable preliminary injunction.

Sometimes, however, courts treat consequential temporary restraining orders as injunctions and permit appeals of them anyway. If the Ninth Circuit rejects the appeal, the executive branch could then file an emergency appeal to the Supreme Court — where Republican appointees hold a six-to-three supermajority — seeking to block the judge’s move.

Judge Breyer, who was nominated by President Bill Clinton in 1997, had telegraphed his focus on the legality of Mr. Trump’s calling up the National Guard at a hearing earlier on Thursday.

The statute President Trump cited as the authority for his move says that such orders must go “through” governors. But Mr. Hegseth instead sent the directive to the general who oversees the National Guard, bypassing Governor Newsom.

At the hearing, the Justice Department lawyer, Brett Shumate, argued that Mr. Hegseth had complied with the National Guard call-up statute. But even if he hadn’t, Mr. Shumate said, Mr. Trump had the legal authority to order the National Guard into federal service anyway.

Sporting a light-blue bow-tie, Judge Breyer interrupted the Justice Department’s lawyer repeatedly and at one point waved a small copy of the Constitution in the air. Some of his pointed replies drew laughs from the packed courtroom of more than 100 people.

When it came, his ruling was scathing.

The state of California “and the citizens of Los Angeles face a greater harm from the continued unlawful militarization of their city, which not only inflames tensions with protesters, threatening increased hostilities and loss of life, but deprives the state for two months of its own use of thousands of National Guard members to fight fires, combat the fentanyl trade, and perform other critical functions,” he wrote.

No president has deployed troops under federal control over the objections of a state governor since the Civil Rights era, when Southern governors were resisting court-ordered desegregation.

Since being federalized and deployed, some National Guard troops have accompanied ICE agents on raids while others have primarily stood outside federal buildings in downtown Los Angeles during protests.

The legal face-off comes amid escalating political tensions between the Trump administration and the California governor. After Mr. Trump’s border czar, Tom Homan, threatened to arrest Mr. Newsom, Mr. Trump endorsed the idea on Monday, saying, “I’d do it.” Mr. Newsom on Tuesday said in a televised speech that “democracy is under assault right before our eyes.”

Mr. Newsom, after the ruling, forcefully rebuked the tactics that Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents have employed to arrest and deport undocumented immigrants, describing conversations with children who had been separated from their parents and family members whose relatives had suddenly disappeared without a trace.

“That’s Donald Trump’s America,” he said, calling it “indiscriminate cruelty.”

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June 12, 2025, 7:07 p.m. ET5 hours ago

Dionne Searcey

At least two cities have imposed curfews to calm protests, but the measures can have mixed results.

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Law enforcement officers in downtown Los Angeles on Wednesday, where an 8 p.m. curfew appeared to have helped maintain relative calm after nights of protests.Credit…Philip Cheung for The New York Times

Unrest stemming from protests over immigration raids in Los Angeles appeared to have calmed somewhat after a curfew was put in place in a small section of the city.

And as protests against deportations have sprung up across the country, at least one other city, Spokane, Wash., has followed suit with a curfew. But emergency curfews can have mixed results, experts said, chilling free speech and movement and leading to even more arrests.

Mayor Karen Bass first issued a curfew for Los Angeles on Tuesday, lasting from 8 p.m. until 6 a.m. local time across a patch of the sprawling city that included Skid Row and Chinatown. The order was aimed at keeping “bad actors” off the streets, she said, and excluded law enforcement officers, people traveling to and from work, residents of the curfew area and the members of the news media.

On Wednesday night, the streets were relatively calm in the hours after the curfew began, with few protesters and few Marines or National Guard members present, though groups of protesters gathered outside the curfew zone. Ms. Bass said the curfew would continue on Thursday.

In Spokane, Wash., where 30 people were arrested during a demonstration on Wednesday, Mayor Lisa Brown declared a state of emergency and ordered a curfew from 9:30 p.m. until 5 a.m. local time. The curfew exempted people leaving a soccer game that began after the restrictions were announced, among others.

In Los Angeles, movie and concert venues canceled programming because of the curfew. Alamo Drafthouse, a cinema, said it would refund patrons who had bought tickets to screenings that were canceled after the theater closed early.

But curfews can have mixed results, and President Trump, in remarks to reporters on Thursday, credited the presence of National Guard troops — not the curfew — for clearing the streets in Los Angeles on Wednesday night.

In the days after the police killing of George Floyd in 2020, numerous cities, including Los Angeles, imposed emergency curfews that were sometimes violated, prompting even more arrests, including for curfew violations.

Back then, protesters in many cities complained that the curfews fueled aggressive behavior from law enforcement. For example, in Minneapolis, the city where Mr. Floyd was killed, police officers fired rubber bullets at curfew violators and at members of the news media, who were exempt from the restrictions. Several cities were sued over claims that the curfews were unconstitutional.

Karen Pita Loor, a clinical professor of law at Boston University, said officers could use curfews to sweep up large numbers of protesters.

The curfews, she said, are “effective at chilling speech, assembly and movement, and maybe that’s what we’re seeing in Los Angeles.

 

Why the pro-Palestinian movement features at some immigration protests.

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A Palestinian flag at a rally in Chicago on Tuesday.Credit…Jamie Kelter Davis for The New York Times

At a protest in St. Louis on Wednesday called “March to Defend Immigrant Rights,” participants chanted, “From Ferguson to Palestine, occupation is a crime!” invoking unrest in Ferguson, Mo., over police brutality in 2014 and Palestinian freedom.

The scene encapsulated how the left’s decades-long embrace of intersectionality — the concept that all oppressed people are linked — gives the protest movement large numbers of supporters but also can create a cacophony of messages.