White House border czar Tom Homan said Tuesday that protests in Los Angeles are complicating immigration raids, making them more "difficult" and more "dangerous."
Homan was asked during an interview with NBC's “Nightly News” anchor Tom Llamas whether demonstrations had slowed Immigration and Customs Enforcement operations in the city.
"They're making it more difficult," Homan said, adding that federal officers are "going ahead" and making arrests daily.
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When pressed on the issue, Homan said the protesters were making the situation "more dangerous," and that ICE operations have continued daily throughout the protests.
"We've been running the ICE operation in Los Angeles every single day during this protest, and we're arresting a lot of bad people in that city. We're going to continue to do that," Homan said. "They're not going to stop us. They're not going to slow us down."
Dozens of people have been arrested in Los Angeles since President Donald Trump activated thousands of National Guard members in response to protests that began on Friday.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom has condemned Trump’s move as “purposefully inflammatory” and said that local law enforcement were equipped to handle anything that got out of hand.
Newsom and state Attorney General Rob Bonta on Tuesday asked a judge to bar the Trump administration from federalizing the National Guard and using hundreds of Marines to serve in a law enforcement capacity on the city’s streets. The judge scheduled a hearing on the matter for later this week.
Bonta on Monday sued to block Trump's order over the weekend federalizing 2,000 National Guard members without a request from Newsom, arguing that the president's move "violates the state’s sovereign right to control and have available its National Guard in the absence of a lawful invocation of federal power.”
