California governor threatens to sue Trump

On another day of high tension in Los Angeles yesterday, the governor of California threatened to sue Donald Trump's administration in response to the deployment of the national guard to mostly peaceful protests over immigration raids.

- Edward Helmore

Federal agents clashed with demonstrators in Los Angeles on Sunday as police used teargas and "less-lethal munitions" to disperse crowds of people protesting mostly peacefully against immigration raids in the city and Trump's deployment of the California national guard - a decision taken against the will of the governor, Gavin Newsom, and the state's other elected leaders.

Yesterday new rallies against US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) detentions were planned for noon in downtown Los Angeles, with the American Civil Liberties Union announcing an event "to demand justice for detained immigrants and an end to the ongoing human rights abuses by Ice".

The civil rights organisation said: "We will not be intimidated. We will not be silenced." The rally was set to demand the immediate release of David Huerta, a union leader who it said "was unjustly arrested and is still being held by the government, and all unjustly detained individuals".

However, the political rhetoric over the protests has not cooled.

Trump, who congratulated the national guard troops for a "great job" even before they had arrived in the city, posted on his Truth Social platform yesterday that deploying them was a "great decision", saying the city would have been "completely obliterated" otherwise.