National guard on US protests

DONALD Trump ordered 2 000 National Guard troops to the streets of Los Angeles at the weekend in what the White House said was an effort to quell “lawlessness” after sometimes-violent protests erupted over immigration enforcement raids.

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The US president took federal control of California's state military to push soldiers into the country’s second-biggest city, where they could face off against demonstrators. It is a rare move that Governor Gavin Newsom said was “purposefully inflammatory”.

The development came after two days of confrontations that had seen federal agents shoot flash-bang grenades and tear gas towards crowds angry at the arrests of dozens of migrants in a city with a large Latino population.

Footage showed a car that had been set alight at a busy intersection, while in video circulating on social media a man in a motorbike helmet can be seen throwing rocks at speeding federal vehicles.

In other scenes, demonstrators threw fireworks at lines of local law enforcement who had been called in to try to keep the peace.

“President Trump has signed a Presidential Memorandum deploying 2 000 National Guardsmen to address the lawlessness that has been allowed to fester,” White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said, blaming what she called California's “feckless” Democratic leaders.