Division, distrust roil L.A. as federal troops arrive amid limited coordination with local police

U.S. Marines arrived in Los Angeles on Tuesday amid growing concerns about a lack of coordination and communication between local police and the federal forces.

The Trump administration has vowed to send 4,000 National Guard troops and 700 Marines to Los Angeles to protect immigration agents and federal buildings from protests, some of which have turned violent. But there remains something of a mystery about exactly where the forces are being stationed and exactly what they will do.

Local law enforcement sources said coordination between police and the feds has been limited, a distinct contrast to other times troops have hit the streets of L.A. including in 2020 during George Floyd demonstrations and amid the 1992 riots. Such a large federal force has raised eyebrows because most of the clashes have occurred in a relatively small part of downtown Los Angeles as opposed to scattered across the city. L.A. police commanders have at times felt stretched as they deal with rowdy crowds at night that vandalize and steal from buildings, the sources said, but they believe local authorities are much better equipped to bring order than outside forces.

Police stepped up arrests Monday night and sources said officials are considering a nightly curfew in some parts of downtown.

“The possible arrival of federal military forces in Los Angeles — absent clear coordination — presents a significant logistical and operational challenge for those of us tasked with safeguarding this city,” L.A. Police Chief Jim McDonnell said. “The Los Angeles Police Department, alongside our mutual aid partners, have decades of experience managing public demonstrations, and we remain confident in our ability to do so effectively and professionally.”

Local police have long vowed not to be involved in immigration enforcement activities. So they have little readout about where the actions are taking place.

“We never know when, we never know how long,” L.A. Mayor Karen Bass said of the raids during a news conference on Tuesday. “But that very notion creates such a terrible sense of fear in our city, and it’s just not right to do that to a population who’s trying to survive.”

Up to now, the LAPD, L.A. County Sheriff’s Department and local law enforcement agencies have dealt with street protests, a task for which officers received extensive training. National Guard troops have been seen protecting federal buildings. But Trump administration officials have repeatedly threatened to have troops take a more active role in policing during protests.

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem on Sunday wrote a memo to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth urging military forces to arrest civilians during L.A. protests, according to reporting by the San Francisco Chronicle and CBS News.

Adding to the confusion, a top military official told The Times on Tuesday that the Marines would have no arrest power; they would only be involved in building protection.

Trump and other administration officials have repeatedly said erroneously that large parts of Los Angeles have been hit by violence and unrest.

“They’re not a city of immigrants, they’re a city of criminals,” Noem told Fox News.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials said hundreds of people have been taken into custody during the raids since Friday. But it’s not clear exactly how many people have been arrested. An immigrants rights leader in Los Angeles said about 300 people have been detained by federal authorities in California since sweeps began last week.

Angelica Salas, director of the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles, said her group used interviews with family members, conversations with elected officials and direct reporting from the ground to confirm detentions.

“Our communities are being terrorized. We’re in a state of terror. People are outraged at what’s happening,” she told the Los Angeles City Council on Tuesday.

“I have never seen anything like this,” added Salas, who has worked in immigrant rights for 30 years.

Bass and other officials argue Trump is trying to sow violence with the raids and deployment of the National Guard.

“I feel like we’ve all been in Los Angeles a part of a grand experiment to see what happens when the federal government decides they want to roll up on a state or roll up on a city and take over,” she added.

There have been intense but isolated clashes between protesters and law enforcement for several days in downtown Los Angeles.

Monday’s protests were largely calmer than Sunday’s melees, which left a trail of foam bullets around the city’s center, buildings vandalized, Waymos set ablaze and many protesters injured from the munitions. Nearly two dozen businesses have been burglarized amid the unrest in recent days including one in which a suspect used a power saw to gain entry.

Assemblymember Mark González, who represents downtown, said the violence and destruction in Little Tokyo and parts of downtown was “completely unacceptable.”

“Tagging historic landmarks, launching fireworks at officers and terrorizing residents is not protest — it’s destruction,” he said. “If you’re out here chasing clout while our neighbors are scared and storefronts are boarded up — you’re not helping, you’re harming. You’re playing right into Trump’s hands and undermining the very movement you claim to support.”

As midnight approached on Monday, officers used less-lethal munitions and tear gas as they clashed with a few dozen people who remained in downtown Los Angeles. Earlier in the day, a crowd of several hundred rallied in front of the federal building.

Officers moved in the late afternoon to push the throng away from the buildings that had been the focus of Sunday’s protests and steadily pushed them into Little Tokyo, with the crowd thinning with each push.

Officers were shooting flash-bangs and less-lethal munitions, while the protesters tried to erect a barrier with recycling bins. At least one car window was shattered, sending glass shards shooting into the crowd.

Law enforcement sources told The Times that authorities are analyzing dozens of videos of people throwing bricks, scooters and other heavy objects toward officers during protests. They’re working with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms to identify several young men who recently smashed windows at LAPD headquarters and tossed incendiary devices inside.

On Tuesday morning, Kazumi Tsuji, who owns a business in Little Tokyo, walked around her shop and the surrounding buildings with a handful of burning sage. She passed by a scrawl of fresh graffiti spray-painted overnight.

“It’s to keep away the evil spirits,” she said of the sage. “I’m OK with protests, but setting fires, destroying businesses, all of that seems like people who just want to start chaos.”

While her shop was not damaged, around the corner, what appeared to be masked teenagers smashed a glass door with a skateboard near Shoe Palace. Property manager Frank Chavez showed a Times reporter footage of the individuals bashing a security camera around 10:30 p.m. Despite the damage, nothing was missing from the building, he said.

“We just cleaned Little Tokyo about two weeks ago,” he said. “The whole community came together and now here we are.”

Nearby, a small bean bag projectile lay on the floor near a shattered store window at Cafe Dulce. A security guard, who declined to give his name, said that the bean bag was fired at protesters by police and shattered the window.

Several businesses, including the Downtown Jewelry Exchange, in the Jewelry District were broken into overnight. On Tuesday morning, tenants in the large jewelry store that houses multiple retailers in an old theater lifted up broken display cases.

“There is a lot of anxiety, frustration in downtown right now,” Raz Tatanian, a jeweler who is a tenant at a nearby building, said. “These are the actions of opportunistic hoodlums who don’t care about the immigrants.”

Early Tuesday, foot traffic was sparse on South Broadway with several storefronts closed amid the protests. A T-Mobile store that was burglarized during the demonstrations was boarded up with wood planks.

The El Pollo Loco on Broadway and 3rd Street has been closed for the past two days and reopened Tuesday at 9 a.m., said Britney Abila, who has been working as a cashier at the location for the past year.

“It’s been very scary for my cookers especially,” she said, adding that they were fearful about the raids and the resulting protests.

Times staff writers Seema Mehta, Clara Harter, Summer Lin, Rachel Uranga, Laura J. Nelson and Andrea Castillo contributed to this report.