DHS vows immigration raids will continue as resistance mounts

In Los Angeles on Thursday, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem vowed that the Trump administration will not let up in its crackdown on immigrants without legal status or on demonstrators protesting on immigrants’ behalf.

“We’re going to stay here and build our operations until we make sure that we liberate the city of Los Angeles,” she said.

Noem spoke at a West Los Angeles federal building far from the small downtown area where protests have been concentrated. Calm has mostly returned to the area after two nights of a city-imposed curfew, and city leaders continued to dispute claims by the Trump administration that the city was ever under siege by violent mobs.

Noem addressed reporters shortly before a federal judge held a hearing to consider an emergency lawsuit filed by California Governor Gavin Newsom seeking to end President Trump’s deployment of 4,000 National Guard troops in Los Angeles. The troops, along with 700 active-duty Marines set to deploy in coming days, have been tasked with guarding federal buildings and protecting immigration agents while they fan out to make deportation arrests.

Newsom and Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass, both Democrats, have accused Trump of exploiting the protests for political gain and have called the deployment of military troops an unnecessary and provocative escalation. Secretary Noem said it will continue.

“We have more assets today than we had yesterday,” she said. “We had more yesterday than we did the day before. We are only building momentum.”

She said immigration agents were preparing to round up “literally tens of thousands of targets” in Los Angeles. It’s a scale of operations that has astonished even longtime immigration officials.

“First time I’ve ever seen it in my almost 30-year career,” Gregory Bovino, the Customs and Border Protection official leading his agency’s operations in Los Angeles, said at Noem’s press conference. “It’s actually breathtaking.”

But clear signs were also emerging that despite the return of calm to Los Angeles’ downtown streets, resistance to the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement and other policies may be just beginning. In an address earlier this week, Governor Newsom warned that “what we’re witnessing is not law enforcement, it’s authoritarianism.”

And on Thursday, Noem’s press conference was interrupted when U.S. Sen. Alex Padilla (D-CA) entered the room to confront her. As he shouted a question, he was dragged from the room, pushed to the ground, handcuffed, and briefly detained.

“If this is how the Department of Homeland Security responds to a senator with a question, you can only imagine what they’re doing to farm workers, to cooks, to day laborers” throughout California and across the country, he said to reporters later.

Sen. Padilla called on Americans to protest and said “we will hold this administration accountable.”

Large anti-Trump demonstrations are being planned in Los Angeles and in dozens of other cities Saturday. They’re being billed as “No Kings Day” protests. They’re scheduled to coincide with President Trump’s planned military parade in Washington, which is being held on Trump’s 79th birthday.

In some of the nation’s largest cities, including New York and Houston, officials are planning for the possibility of massive protest crowds.

In Texas, Gov. Greg Abbott called up 5,000 Texas National Guard troops and will also deploy 2,000 state troopers to help support local police.

“Texas will not tolerate the lawlessness we’ve seen in LA,” Abbott, a Republican and Trump ally, wrote on social media. “Anyone who damages property or harms a person will be arrested. Don’t mess with Texas.”