By JAMES GORDON FOR DAILYMAIL.COM
The Trump administration said 2,000 National Guard troops were headed to the city of Los Angeles on Saturday night amid a standoff between protesters and ICE agents.
The dramatic move came amid rising tensions between mobs of activists who set fires and threw rocks at immigration authorities as raids targeting illegal migrants took place across the city.
‘We are going to bring the National Guard in tonight,’ Tom Homan, President Trump’s point man on border security, said on Fox News on Saturday evening.
‘We are making Los Angeles safer. Mayor (Karen) Bass should be thanking us.’
But California Governor Gavin Newsom suggested the Trump administration was deliberately inflaming the situation and sending the National Guard would only make matters worse.
‘The federal government is moving to take over the California National Guard and deploy 2,000 soldiers. That move is purposefully inflammatory and will only escalate tensions,’ Newsom tweeted. ‘This is the wrong mission and will erode public trust.’
Minutes later, Trump himself warned Newsom and Mayor Bass to take charge of the situation in a post on his Truth Social.
‘If Governor Gavin Newscum, of California, and Mayor Karen Bass, of Los Angeles, can’t do their jobs, which everyone knows they can’t, then the Federal Government will step in and solve the problem, RIOTS & LOOTERS, the way it should be solved!!!’, Trump wrote.
Federal agents clashed with angry protestors in the Los Angeles area for a second day Saturday, shooting flash-bang grenades into the crowd just after 4pm, shutting part of a freeway amid raids on undocumented migrants.