Trump sends military force to LA: 'Extraordinary' move from White House

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00:00Well, for more on this, France 24's International Affairs Editor, Philip Turrell, joins me on set.

00:04Hi, Philip. Really quite shocking images we're seeing coming out of the United States,

00:09and this also reflects a much deeper conflict, then, between officials in California and the Trump administration.

00:16We've got basically two different sides further and further away from each other.

00:23The Trump administration wants to arrest as many illegal immigrants as it can and remove them from the country.

00:32And the authorities in Los Angeles and elsewhere in California are refusing to give in to that

00:39and are criticizing what the Trump administration is doing.

00:42All of this basically boils down to one thing, Aaron, and that is that Los Angeles is a sanctuary town.

00:48It's been declared a sanctuary town by the federal authorities there who say that they cannot use local resources

00:56to investigate migrants as to what their status is,

01:00and that will also mean that information about their refugee status is not handed on to the police

01:06who cannot arrest someone for being an illegal immigrant.

01:09That has seriously annoyed the Trump administration,

01:11which has tried to limit federal funding for Los Angeles and for California.

01:16That has been shot down by the law courts.

01:19So what we're seeing here is Donald Trump and the authorities trying to flex their muscles by saying,

01:26OK, what we're going to do is we're going to send in the National Guard.

01:29We're going to arrest as many people as we can.

01:32And once again, that reflection by Donald Trump, that play on names,

01:37calling the governor of California, not Gavin Newsom, but Gavin Newscum,

01:41as Donald Trump called him during the recent fires that were in Southern California.

01:47So you can see that the knives are out between the Trump administration on one side

01:51and the authorities in California on the other.

01:54Philip, tell us more than about this mobilization of the National Guard.

01:59A lot of people on social media have been describing it as essentially federalizing the National Guard.

02:04How atypical then is this?

02:06Well, it's quite extraordinary for the president of the United States to call out the National Guard

02:12and call them into action.

02:14One of the last times this has happened was in 1992,

02:17after the verdict in the Rodney King trial, where Rodney King was beaten by four white policemen.

02:25And that was filmed by a man from his balcony.

02:29It was shown on television.

02:30It led to, after the acquittal of the four white policemen, to some of the worst ever rioting in Los Angeles.

02:37And it was the president of the time, George Bush Sr., who called out the National Guard

02:42to come in to try to quell the violence.

02:45But it's quite extraordinary that it would actually come an order from the White House to do that.

02:50Normally, it's the authorities, the local authorities, the governor,

02:53who would call out the National Guard in their districts, in their state, to deal with unrest.

03:01It's used also, the National Guard, for example, in natural disasters,

03:04like in the fires that we saw in California recently, and occasionally in civil unrest.

03:11But this is also quite rare.

03:12So the fact that Donald Trump is ordering a large number of National Guards to come to Southern California

03:21and to Los Angeles is seen basically as a provocation by the authorities there.

03:25As we were just hearing from some of the protesters, they say, well, look, we're protesting peacefully.

03:30We don't want the National Guard.

03:31We don't want the officials from ICE, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency,

03:38to come here and fire rubber bullets at us when we are protesting peacefully.

03:43And that's something that the authorities in Southern California have been saying.

03:46They've been saying, if you want to come out and protest, please do it peacefully.

03:49Don't cause trouble, because that is going to give the ICE officials and the National Guard

03:54a reason to be very heavy-handed on you.

03:57And for the moment, they don't have a reason to do that.

03:59One other point I think which is important to bring up here is that there have been certain areas

04:05that have been pinpointed around Los Angeles, particularly known for areas

04:11where there could be large numbers of illegal immigrants.

04:14One, for example, was in the District of Paramount, a suburb in the northern part of Los Angeles

04:20where there is a Home Depot do-it-yourself center.

04:25Many immigrants are known to gather there to look for work for the day.

04:31And customs officials have been known to go there to try to arrest as many.

04:35And, of course, when they see people running away, they'll know that that's someone they could also arrest.

04:38So this has seriously annoyed the authorities to say that, basically,

04:41this is a question that we need to deal with ourselves.

04:43It is not up to Donald Trump and to the administration in Washington

04:47to send in the National Guard to deal with it for us.

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