Curfew imposed for second night after hundreds arrested

A curfew is in place for a second night in Los Angeles after nearly a week of unrest in the city over US immigration raids.

Multiple people were arrested for violating the downtown curfew shortly after it came into effect at 20:00 local time (03:00 GMT), the BBC’s US partner CBS reported.

Nearly 400 people have been arrested in LA since protests began on Friday, including 330 undocumented migrants and 157 people arrested for assault and obstruction, including one for the attempted murder of a police officer.

Federal prosecutors have so far charged two men for throwing Molotov cocktails at police officers in two separate incidents.

A total of 4,000 National Guard troops and 700 Marines have been deployed to help quell the unrest. Some of those National Guard troops are now authorised to detain people until police can arrest them.

Hundreds of protesters marched to Los Angeles City Hall early on Wednesday evening before being dispersed by police.

As the overnight curfew began, LA Mayor Karen Bass wrote on X that it was designed to “stop bad actors who are taking advantage of the president’s chaotic escalation”.

She had earlier blamed the demonstrations on US President Donald Trump’s immigration raids, which she said “provoked” residents by causing “fear” and “panic”.

“A week ago, everything was peaceful,” she told a news conference on Wednesday.

“Things began to be difficult on Friday when raids took place.”

Bass suggested Los Angeles was “part of a national experiment to determine how far the federal government can go in taking over power from a local government, from a local jurisdiction”.

She has previously called on the administration to end the raids.

Overnight on Tuesday into Wednesday, Los Angeles police said they made “mass arrests” after a fifth day of protests over the immigration action.

In a series of statements, the city’s police department said that those detained included 203 people arrested for failure to disperse, 17 for curfew violations, three for possession of a firearm, and one for assault with a deadly weapon on a police officer.

Two officers were injured in the skirmishes, the statement added.

On Tuesday, Bass declared an overnight curfew within a relatively small area of the city’s downtown district, saying businesses were being vandalised and looted.

After the LA curfew came into force at 20:00 local time on Tuesday, police moved through downtown areas, firing rubber bullets to try to disperse crowds.

Explaining the curfew on Tuesday, Bass said she wanted “to stop the vandalism, to stop the looting”, saying the city had reached a “tipping point”.

The curfew order affects an area of about one square mile in the second-largest city in the US.

Police chief Jim McDonnell said: “Some of the imagery of the protests and the violence gives the appearance as though this is a city-wide crisis, and it is not.”

Pam Bondi, the US Attorney General, told reporters at the White House on Wednesday that the curfew “helped a bit”.

Elsewhere, the immigration raids have continued, alongside the National Guard troops.

The National Guard and Marine forces deployed to Los Angeles do not have the authority to make arrests, only to detain protesters.

“They are strictly used for the protection of the federal personnel as they conduct their operations and to protect them to allow them to do their federal mission,” said Maj Gen Scott Sherman, who is leading the deployment, on Wednesday.

Some 500 National Guard troops have already been trained to accompany agents on immigration raids and some troops have already temporarily detained people in LA protests, Sherman told US media outlets.

Those troops are authorised to detain people until police are able to arrest them, he said.

Trump’s row with state officials ramped up after he deployed troops to LA. The president has now vowed to “liberate” the city, but he has been accused by California Governor Gavin Newsom of an “assault” on democracy.

Trump earlier this week defended his decision to send troops, saying it was to prevent the city being “conquered by a foreign enemy”.

Newsom hit back at the president: “He again chose escalation; he chose more force.”

The California governor, who is seen as a potential presidential contender for the Democratic Party, warned that “other states are next”.

On Wednesday, Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth backed Trump’s move, telling a Senate hearing that sending the troops to Los Angeles was “lawful and constitutional”.

The military deployment to the LA area will cost $134m (£99m), the Pentagon said.

Trump described the protests as a “full-blown assault on peace and public order” while addressing troops at the Fort Bragg military base in North Carolina.

The Republican president said he plans to use “every asset at our disposal to quell the violence”.

Meanwhile, Trump’s political row with state officials has intensified. The president has described the protesters as “animals” and vowed that “this anarchy will not stand”.

He urged troops to boo the names of Newsom and Joe Biden, his presidential predecessor, during his Fort Bragg speech.

In televised remarks of his own on Tuesday night, Newsom again criticised the president’s rare deployment of the US military without a request from state officials. He accused Trump of a “brazen abuse of power”.

“California may be first – but it clearly won’t end here,” he said. “Other states are next. Democracy is next. Democracy is under assault right before our eyes.”

Trump has set a goal for border agents of at least 3,000 daily arrests as he seeks to ramp up mass deportations, a signature pledge of his re-election campaign.

Since assuming office, the president has drastically reduced illegal crossings at the US-Mexico border to historically low levels.

A CBS News/YouGov poll conducted in early June, before the protests kicked off, found 54% of Americans saying they approved of Trump’s deportation policy, and 50% approved of how he was handling immigration.

That compares with smaller numbers of 42% who gave approval to his economic policy and 39% for his policy on tackling inflation.