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Attorney General Pam Bondi has declined to say what the president was thinking about the possibility of invoking the drastic emergency powers of the Insurrection Act to respond to the Los Angeles immigration protests.
“Right now in California, we’re at a good point,” Bondi told reporters outside the White House, insisting controversial measures like sending federalized California National Guard troops and Marines are “working” to resolve the crisis.
“We’re not scared to go further,” Bondi added. “We’re not frightened to do something else, if we need to.”
The president was similarly vague when asked on Tuesday about his threshold for invoking the Insurrection Act, which would allow active-duty military members to break with the usual strict legal prohibitions on engaging in domestic law enforcement.
“If there's an insurrection, I would certainly invoke it,” Trump said during an Oval Office press conference. “We'll see.”
The Attorney General said Wednesday that the police response to aligned anti-immigration raid protests in other cities had been more encouraging than that of officials in Los Angeles.
“We’ve seen it in New York,” she said. “What happened in New York was very different. NYPD came in right away. NYPD came in and shut it down. We all believe in peaceful protest...There were peaceful protests happening in New York.
At least 25 rallies and demonstrations have broken out across the country in the wake of the conflagration in Los Angeles, in locales including New York, Dallas, Chicago, and San Francisco.
More than 300 people have been arrested over the Los Angeles protests, while at least 14 were arrested across protests in Austin and Dallas, more than 150 have been arrested in San Francisco, and at least 86 have been taken into custody in New York.
Even without the Insurrection Act, federal and state troops in Los Angeles are already edging closer to law enforcement roles in response to the protests, which kicked off late last week in response to immigration raids.
“Military troops are providing protection for federal law enforcement officers as they continue operations to remove the worst of the worst from Los Angeles,” the Department of Homeland Security told The Independent. “If any rioters attack ICE law enforcement officers, military personnel have the authority to temporarily detain them until law enforcement makes the arrest. The violence against ICE law enforcement must end.”
The state of California is suing the Trump administration, seeking orders barring the military from joining in immigration raids and challenging the overall deployment of the Guard against state leaders’ wishes.
“Federal antagonization, through the presence of soldiers in the streets, has already caused real and irreparable damage to the City of Los Angeles, the people who live there, and the State of California,” the state wrote in an emergency filing in federal court on Tuesday. “They must be stopped, immediately.”
Local leaders have also taken emergency measures, including a curfew for parts of downtown Los Angeles that was instituted on Tuesday following continued spurts of violence and occasional looting.
