AMY GOODMAN: We begin today’s show in Los Angeles, where President Trump has deployed the California National Guard in defiance of California Governor Gavin Newsom and Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass. This comes after protests erupted against ICE’s military-style raids in and around L.A. The Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth has also threatened to deploy 500 active-duty Marines from Camp Pendleton. White House adviser Stephen Miller labeled the ICE protests an “insurrection.” On Sunday, Trump warned this could be just the beginning of deploying troops on U.S. streets.

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: We’re going to have troops everywhere. We’re not going to let this happen to our country. We’re not going to let our country be torn apart.

AMY GOODMAN: Earlier today, Trump wrote on social media, “Looking really bad in LA. BRING IN THE TROOPS!!!” unquote.

California Governor Gavin Newsom plans to sue the Trump administration today. He wrote, quote, “Commandeering a state’s National Guard without consulting the Governor of that state is illegal and immoral,” unquote. This marks the first time since the 1960s a president has deployed the National Guard without a governor’s request.

Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders said Trump is, quote, “moving this country rapidly into authoritarianism.” California state Senator Scott Wiener said, quote, “This is what fascism looks like,” unquote.

On Sunday, police forces in Los Angeles fired rubber bullets, flashbang grenades and tear gas at protesters who gathered to condemn the ICE raids and deployment of the National Guard. Sunday night, L.A. police declared all of downtown Los Angeles an unlawful assembly.

Over the past week, federal immigration agents arrested about 118 people in the L.A. region. On Friday, agents also arrested David Huerta, president of the California branch of SEIU — that’s Service Employees International Union. He was charged with obstruction, needed to be treated at the hospital because of his injuries. He remains in custody.

On Sunday, Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass decried the ICE raids and the Trump administration’s response.

MAYOR KAREN BASS: What we’re seeing in Los Angeles is chaos that is provoked by the administration. When you raid Home Depot and workplaces, when you tear parents and children apart, and when you run armored caravans through our streets, you cause fear, and you cause panic. And deploying federalized troops is a dangerous escalation.

AMY GOODMAN: This comes as Trump’s border czar Tom Holman has threatened to have Mayor Bass and Governor Newsom arrested if they interfere with federal immigration enforcement. Homan spoke to NBC’s Jacob Soboroff.

TOM HOMAN: You cross that line, it’s a felony to knowingly harbor and conceal an illegal alien. It’s a felony to impede law enforcement from doing their job.

JACOB SOBOROFF: Do you — do you think that the mayor of L.A. is doing that?

TOM HOMAN: If she crosses that line, we’ll ask DOJ to prosecute. Do I think she’s crossed the line? I don’t think she crossed the line yet. But I’m telling you that the warning we’re sending is we’re not going to tolerate people attacking our officers.

AMY GOODMAN: On Sunday, police in Los Angeles made at least 27 arrests. Officers repeatedly fired rubber bullets at protesters. One hit an Australian journalist as she was reporting from the streets.

LAUREN TOMASI: After hours of standing off, the situation has now rapidly deteriorated, the LAPD moving in on horseback, firing rubber bullets at protesters, moving them on through the heart of L.A.

BYSTANDER 1: You just [bleep] shot the press!

BYSTANDER 2: Are you OK?

LAUREN TOMASI: Yeah, I’m good. I’m good.

BYSTANDER 1: Are you OK?

BYSTANDER 3: Are you OK?

AMY GOODMAN: In a minute, we’ll go to Los Angeles to speak with one of the people who helped organize the protests against the ICE raids. But first, on Sunday, Democracy Now! reached Janet Martinez, the co-founder of Indigenous Communities in Leadership, or CIELO, in Los Angeles to talk about the impact of the ICE raids and arrests.

JANET MARTINEZ: Around 34,000 Indigenous people live in Los Angeles County, which is around 40% of the Indigenous population, based on the census data alone, which we know is an undercount. So, for us, we know a lot of community members have been impacted by the recent raids by ICE all over Los Angeles. We’ve gotten calls from the Zapotec community, from the Mixtec community and K’iche’ communities that have been detained during these raids.

AMY GOODMAN: For more, we are joined in Los Angeles by Ron Gochez, community organizer with Unión del Barrio and a high school history teacher. His group helped organize some of the protests in Los Angeles.

There’s so much to discuss, Ron. Can you describe the weekend? It didn’t even start with the protests. You had President Trump threatening to cut off aid to California, federal aid. You had the ICE raids. And then talk about what happened even before, then Trump announced that he would deploy the National Guard, and Hegseth said he’s put the Marines on high alert.

RON GOCHEZ: Yeah. Good morning. Thank you for having me today.

This weekend was marked with absolute and total violence, brutal repression and attacks, coordinated attacks against our community. ICE agents have been around all over Southern California, kidnapping people, tearing apart families. And we see this as an attack against our people. And so, that’s why you see young people, the community coming out and resisting this repression. We are tired, sick and tired of these attacks that are dividing and separating our families. And so, that’s why, when we have these protests, they have been peaceful. But when the repression comes from the state, whether it’s the sheriffs, the LAPD or, on Saturday, for example, in Paramount, California, it was the Border Patrol, it was brutal violence. They shot thousands of rounds of tear gas, of flashbang grenades, of all kinds of repressive instruments used against the community.

But what they didn’t think was going to happen was that the people would resist and would fight back. And that’s exactly what happened in Paramount and in Compton, California, where for eight-and-a-half hours, the people combated in the streets against the Border Patrol. And after eight-and-a-half hours of battle — and it was a battle, because there were people throwing back tear gas, people throwing anything that they could to defend themselves and to defend the workers that were being surrounded by over 100 Border Patrol agents. After eight-and-a-half hours, the Border Patrol, the sheriffs had to retreat. They had to retreat because of the fierce resistance of the community. And the hundreds of workers that were in the factories around them were able to escape. They were able to go to their cars and go home. That was only thanks to the resistance that allowed them to go home that night.

And so, that is one clear sign that if we organize ourselves, if we resist, we can defend our communities from ICE terror, from the Border Patrol or from any federal agency that wishes to separate our families. And so, because of that, while that was happening, while that resistance was happening, we saw President Trump give the order of the National Guard. And so, for us as Indigenous people to these lands, to this continent, this is nothing new. The military going after us is nothing new. The United States in this part of the country is the result of a military invasion of Mexico. And so, we know — we know what’s coming. It’s more repression. But what they have to know is that they’re also going to face more resistance from the community. We don’t want to be violent, and we don’t advocate for violence, but when they use brutal violence against our people — and kidnapping mothers and fathers from children is violent — when they do things like that, we have every right, every historic right, to defend our communities by any ways that we can, and we’re going to continue to do so.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Ron, you mentioned Paramount on Saturday. For those people who are not familiar with that town, south of Los Angeles. There’s also been a change in the Trump administration tactics. Originally, they claimed they were going after criminals. Now, increasingly, they’re being — they’re being pushed to increase the arrest numbers, so they’re hitting workplaces. So, could you talk about this change and how this is affecting the community?

RON GOCHEZ: Yeah. The fascist Trump administration is trying to lie and confuse the American people into supporting this repression, into supporting these immigration raids, by having the general public think that they’re going after criminals. But now what’s publicly known, what’s painfully clear, is that the majority of these raids are going after workers, working-class people. They’re not going after criminals. They’re going at Home Depots. They’re going at construction sites. You know, they’re going to factories where people are working, where they’re creating the resources necessary for this society to exist. And so, I think everyone now knows that it’s a lie. They’re going after anyone and everyone who has brown skin specifically. And, you know, they’re attacking pretty much anybody. You have the Asian community. You have Black immigrants under attack. You have anybody in this country who isn’t a white male, basically, who is under attack.

So, I think working people everywhere should see this as an attack on working-class people, and they should all unite in solidarity to repel these attacks against our community. And so, again, we’ve proven time and time again, when we organize ourselves, we can defend ourselves. At this moment, it’s 5:30 or so in Los Angeles, or 5:00 in the morning in Los Angeles. We already have people all over Los Angeles right now patrolling the streets of Los Angeles, looking for any ICE activity. That’s the work that we do on a daily basis to protect our communities. So, on one hand, there’s street protests, and those are important, but the other part is organized and coordinated resistance, by patrolling our streets, defending our streets. We can’t protect the entire city of Los Angeles, but in our neighborhoods, in our barrios, we can defend ourselves, and we are doing that.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And what is your sense of the response of California’s Governor Newsom and also the mayor of Los Angeles, Karen Bass, so far?

RON GOCHEZ: Yeah. We understand that they’re — you know, they’re against what’s happening. But we also have to say that talk is cheap. Governor Newsom can order the National Guard to stand down. If he’s against President Trump using them against us, well, he can order them to stand down. He has not done so. Here in the city of Los Angeles, Karen Bass is saying that she’s against the raids that are happening. Well, why are her police officers aiding and collaborating with ICE, with the Border Patrol to attack the community. If they are really there to serve and protect, as it says on their vehicles, then those rubber bullets and that gas that they’re shooting right now, they’re aiming at the wrong people. It shouldn’t be aimed at us. It should be aimed at the agents who are trying to kidnap the people in our community.

But, obviously, we know we cannot expect help or support from the police, from the sheriffs here in Los Angeles. Even though we live in a state that’s run by a Democrat as the governor, we have a Democratic Party mayor, we have Democratic Party councilmembers, we cannot expect for them to defend the people. Only the people will organize and defend themselves, and that’s what we’re doing right now.

AMY GOODMAN: Ron Gochez, this is a very interesting point, because it was being portrayed in different ways yesterday. When the LAPD moved in and was clearing people from away from — was it Alameda? — the federal building, in some media reports, they were saying they were clearing protesters away so that they wouldn’t be directly confronting the National Guard, which the mayor has criticized, you know, the National Guard in full — what they say, full “battle rattle.” But you’re saying that although Governor Newsom could — may sue today, he could actually tell the National Guard to stand down. And do you see any possibility of the LAPD confronting the National Guard, and maybe if Hegseth calls out the Marines, on the streets?

RON GOCHEZ: No, we don’t anticipate that at all. I have personally been physically removed from an ICE raid here in South Central Los Angeles by the LAPD. So, when the mayor says that the LAPD doesn’t collaborate with ICE or with federal agencies, it’s a total lie. While you may not have LAPD officers on the streets asking people for their citizenship or detaining people for immigration reasons, what you do have is the LAPD, the L.A. County sheriffs, the CHP or any law enforcement agency that’s here locally, they are collaborating. They are protecting the operations. They close down the streets around operations so that ICE can do their kidnappings of our people. And so, that is a direct collaboration. And here in Los Angeles, if it wasn’t for the repression of the LAPD, of the L.A. County sheriffs, you would have thousands of more people who would be resisting against these ICE raids. But it is the police, it is the sheriffs who are basically protecting the operations and protecting everything that’s happening against our community. So, do we anticipate, do we expect the police to join our side? No.

But what we do say, what we can say, is that a lot of those police officers here in Los Angeles, a lot of those sheriffs and a lot of those National Guardsmen and even Marines, if they come here, a lot of them are Mexican, are Central American, are the sons and daughters of immigrants. In fact, here in Los Angeles, there’s something like — there’s hundreds of LAPD officers who are DACA, meaning they’re undocumented, as well. And so, they have to see that they’re being used by the Trump administration to use violence against their own people. So, we, as Unión del Barrio, do call on them to stand down. Do not raise your weapons against your own people. These are your — this is like your mother, your auntie, your father, that you’re repressing. So, we do call on them to join us. Stand on the right side of history. Do not support the Trump administration. Support the people. Because what we’re doing is fighting for justice. We’re fighting for the righteous, the right to live and to exist and to work and to feed our families. There’s nothing extreme about that. We just simply want to work, we want to live, and we want to have a dignified life like anyone else deserves.

So, we’re seeing resistance right now, from the people in Gaza resisting and fighting for their lives, to us right here on our own historic homeland, our Indigenous land here. We’re fighting for our lives, as well. And we’re going to continue to do so, whether it’s the police, the National Guard. You know, we don’t want violence. We don’t want violence. But we also aren’t going to sit by and see our people be kidnapped and see our community be attacked by any federal agency or local law enforcement. We won’t do it.

AMY GOODMAN: Ron, what’s happening to those who have been detained? Angelica Salas, the executive director of the immigrant rights group CHIRLA, said lawyers don’t have access to people detained Friday. Have they been released? What’s their status? And do you know about the status of David Huerta, the head of SEIU, the Service Employees International Union? We heard he was sent to the hospital with injuries, and he’s been detained.

RON GOCHEZ: Yeah. What we know right now is there is no due process for the majority of the people. People who get detained, we have reports, and we have confirmed reports, that people who get picked up in the morning in Los Angeles, by the same day in the evening are already in Mexico City. That is confirmed. You cannot have due process in less than 24 hours. It’s absolutely impossible. And so, people are just being shipped immediately, you know, across the border and to many places. We have confirmed cases of Mexican citizens, Mexican nationals, who have been deported to Guatemala and dumped into Guatemala, a country that they have never been to and don’t belong in. And so, that’s what’s happening on the ground here in Los Angeles.

Yesterday or Saturday, I don’t know, today — it’s just been one long day of resistance for us. But, you know, elected officials have gone to the detention center, where hundreds of our people are being kept. And they demanded to be allowed to enter so that they can view the conditions that the people are living in, places like — these are basements that have no restrooms, and they have no sanitary conditions for the people. There’s not enough food and water for the people. Those are the reports that we’re getting. They were denied entry. They were not allowed to see inside, to see how these people are being treated.

So, it’s a real crisis right now for our community, and that’s why we don’t want to wait until our people are kidnapped and taken into detention to take action. That’s why we do community patrols every day in the morning around our communities to try to prevent our people from being kidnapped. And when we say “kidnapped,” that is the exact word that we need to use, because the state is using brutal violence to separate us, to take us against our will from our families, from our homes, from our jobs, and to take us somewhere else. So, that, by definition, is a kidnapping. And that’s what we’re fighting against, because we know that our people are not going to — they’re not going to have due process. If lawyers and elected officials aren’t being allowed to enter detention facilities to see their conditions that the people are living in, what makes us think that the people inside are going to have any type of human rights? We know that it’s not happening.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Ron, I wanted to ask you about President Trump’s calling in of the National Guard, the use of flashbang grenades, of rubber bullets, of tear gas against the protesters. A reminder that back on January 6th, when a mob stormed the Capitol and tried to prevent the certification of election, there was no use of flashbang grenades or of tear gas or of rubber bullets against that mob. And yet, here it has been used, and the president is claiming there’s an insurrection.

RON GOCHEZ: Yeah, we know that the violence is going to be against us, against our community. And, you know, sometimes people think, “Oh, well, you know, it’s not that bad. You know, it’s just a little bit of tear gas.” No, we saw — we’ve seen people be seriously injured. On Saturday, in Compton, California, when we were there on the frontlines of the resistance against the sheriffs and against the Border Patrol, we saw a guy standing in front of us who got hit in the face with a — I don’t know if it was a rubber bullet or what it was, but his face was completely split open, and he was just gushing blood everywhere. You know, these things can be lethal. If these rubber bullets hit you in the eye, if they hit you in the right place, they can absolutely be lethal.

And so, we understand that the violence that’s being used against us is lethal. We understand the violence is being used against us on a daily basis, whether it’s by the Border Patrol or the police. It’s violence against the community. And so, we have every right to defend ourselves, by any means necessary, because that is our — the livelihood, the well-being of our families is what’s at stake. Children have been gassed here in Los Angeles.

And so, whether it’s the National Guard, whether it’s local police, we have to resist this, because in Los Angeles, we clearly understand what’s happening. The Trump administration is trying to make an example of Los Angeles. Los Angeles is the heart of the Mexican and Central American community here in the United States. And so, they think that if they can break us, they can break anyone in the country. And so, we understand that, and that’s what we know. We cannot afford to fail. The resistance will continue. Whether they keep threatening us or not, we will continue. We will be peaceful every time that we can. But if we face violence, where we have to defend ourselves, we have every human right to do so, as well.

AMY GOODMAN: Ron Gochez, we want to thank you for being with us, high school history teacher, community organizer with the group Unión del Barrio, organizer of a number of the protests that have taken place in Los Angeles.

When we come back, this marks the first time in like 60 years a president has deployed the National Guard without a governor’s request. We’ll speak with a lawyer at the Brennan Center. Stay with us.

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AMY GOODMAN: “La Jura,” “The Oath,” by Chicano Batman, performing in our Democracy Now! studio.