NEW YORK, June 9 (Xinhua) -- Mayor Karen Bass of Los Angeles said on Monday that the Donald Trump administration and its immigration raids were to blame for inflaming tensions in the city.
In a televised interview, Bass sought to downplay the protests of the last few days. "This is not citywide civil unrest," she said on CNN. "A few streets downtown, it looks horrible."
She noted that most Angelenos have been living life as normal, away from the clashes focused in a relatively small area outside a federal office building and detention center downtown.
She promised that protesters who destroyed cars and threw things at police officers would be prosecuted, and said that the police were combing through video images of the clashes to identify people who had committed crimes.
Bass said that it was President Trump and his federal immigration authorities who had provoked the unrest by sending federal agents in tactical gear to workplaces in the city to detain and deport immigrants.
More than 1,000 protesters clashed and faced off with National Guard troops in downtown Los Angeles on Sunday during the latest demonstrations against immigration raids that swept across California over the weekend.
Xinhua reporters at the scene observed National Guard soldiers, along with agents from the Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Department of Homeland Security, repeatedly firing tear gas and smoke grenades to disperse the crowd. Some protesters and journalists were hit during the confrontation.
More protests are expected in Los Angeles on Monday, while other protests of the kind are planned elsewhere. The Service Employees International Union said rallies are to take place on Monday in Atlanta, Boston, Charlotte, Chicago, Denver, Harrisburg, New York, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Portland, Raleigh-Durham, Sacramento, San Francisco, Seattle and Washington, D.C. ■
