Donald Trump is planning to deploy Immigration, Custom, Enforcement (ICE) tactical units to five more US cities as he doubles down following riots in LA. According to reports, units could be sent to New York, Chicago, Seattle, Philadelphia and northern Virginia as the Trump administration continues to take a hardline on immigration.
Four of the five cities are Democrat strongholds whilst northern Virginia contains the Democrat enclave of Alexandria. Raids by Ice have sparked days of protests in Los Angeles that has seen Trump deploy the National Guard and active US Marines to “impose law and order”. Speaking before a Capitol Hill hearing Defence Secretary Hegseth defended the deployment of troops trained for overseas combat.
He said: “We ought to be able to enforce immigration law in this country,” Hegseth testified. “I think we’re entering another phase, especially under President Trump with his focus on the homeland, where the National Guard and Reserves become a critical component of how we secure that homeland.”
“In Los Angeles, we believed ICE had the right to safely conduct operations.
“We deployed National Guard and the Marines to protect them.”
The planning comes following an address by Californian Governor Gavin Newsom who blamed the Trump administration for stoking tensions and deploying troops unnecessarily.
In a social media post he said: “Look, this isn’t just about protests here in Los Angeles, when Donald Trump sought blanket authority to commandeer the National Guard. He made that order apply to every state in this nation.”
He went on to warn the American public that Trump’s action pose a threat to the nation’s democracy, amid calls by Trump and his closest allies for Governor Newsom to be arrested.
He added: “This is about all of us. This is about you. California may be first, but it clearly will not end here. Other states are next. Democracy is next. Democracy is under assault before our eyes, this moment we have feared has arrived.
“Authoritarian regimes begin by targeting people who are least able to defend themselves, but they do not stop there.
‘This is a president who in just over 140 days, has fired government watchdogs that could hold him accountable, accountable for corruption and fraud.
“He’s declared a war, a war on culture, on history, on science, on knowledge itself. Databases, quite literally, are vanishing.”
The scenes seen in LA have spread across the country to varying degrees, with demonstrations in New York seeing at least 45 people were arrested on Tuesday as thousands of demonstrators took to the streets.
Further demonstrations were seen in Denver, Atlanta and Chicago.