‘You think people are going to go quietly? F*** no!’
That was the furious promise from Chris Sanchez, a 25-year-old truck driver, as downtown Los Angeles burned for a fourth consecutive night in one of the most violent uprisings against immigration policies in U.S. history.
Holding her Chihuahua named Lulu, Mexican migrant nurse Cynthia Lopez said she wasn’t worried about being deported by officers trying to control the chaos, because she would be back in America within 24 hours.
All she would have to do, she said, is pay off ‘crooked’ border agents with a $10,000 bribe or get hold of a fake birth certificate in Puerto Rico.
She also accused the White House of stoking hatred against the ‘brown people’ who sell oranges and tamales across California.
The carnage in LA began on Friday when Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents carried out sweeping deportment raids, reportedly detaining 44 suspected illegal migrants.
After crowds began to gather at the sites of their operations, demonstrations erupted – and quickly escalated into violent confrontations.
Federal authorities insist that the actions were lawful. But the air was still thick with tear gas 72 hours on from President Donald Trump’s announcement that 2,000 National Guard troops would be deployed to the so-called City of Angels.
Holding her Chihuahua named Lulu, Mexican migrant nurse Cynthia Lopez said she wasn’t worried about being deported by officers trying to control the chaos, because she would be back in America within 24 hours
Cars parked on the street were in flames. Police in riot gear occupying intersections confronted groups of masked men, women and teenagers.
Rotor blades of helicopters whirred overhead and any quiet was broken by the sound of police flash-bangs tossed whenever crowds reformed.
The second biggest city in the United States had turned into a hellscape, and it was a scenario that many had witnessed there before.
Such dystopian scenes were eerily similar to the previous times that LA has exploded over issues threatening to break the nation apart. In 1992, it was the Rodney King verdict.
In 2020, George Floyd’s death. Now, in 2025, it’s a wave of immigration raids.
Flags from Mexico, Argentina and Uruguay flew as protesters called Trump a ‘f***ing buffoon’. They accused him of using brute force and a brash display of military might to spark terror in the migrant community.
Signs reading ‘kill ICE’ hung over streets where dumpsters burned and empty rubber bullet casings lay strewn.
Many bystanders were caught in the crossfire.
Three members of the press – including one this reporter knows personally – were shot.
Rocks, stones, electric scooters and anything else that the mob could lift were thrown at law enforcement.
LA police chief Jim McDonnell admitted on Sunday night that his officers were ‘overwhelmed’. Understaffed, they were facing down instigators seen carrying backpacks full of cinderblocks to use as projectiles.
On Monday night, 700 Marines were mobilized from Camp Pendleton 82 miles away in their first deployment on U.S. soil to control unrest since the Rodney King riots that ripped the city apart.
Their mission is to protect federal buildings that had been defaced with graffiti, pelted with bricks and covered in threatening signs.
‘You think people are going to go quietly? F*** no!’ That was the furious promise from Chris Sanchez, a 25-year-old truck driver, as downtown Los Angeles burned for a fourth consecutive night
Classroom assistant Mariah Perez, 21, from the San Fernando Valley, came out to show support for those who had been detained because she was ‘sad that people have to go through this’. ‘Our community does come together. lf one goes down, we all come as a team,’ Perez said
Noe Contreras, 16, a second-generation Angelino, watched the rioting with his cousin and her husband. His parents, who came to the U.S. before he was born, are still seeking legal status
A demonstrator with wounds from rubber bullets walks down the street in downtown Los Angeles on Monday afternoon
Police officers carrying zip ties and wearing helmets walk through downtown LA, ready to confront protesters
An officer holds out his baton to keep a line of protesters back in Los Angeles
An LA police officer falls to the ground as flash bangs and rubber bullets filled the air
Local leaders are enraged at what they see as Trump’s escalations.
In a letter on Sunday, California Governor Gavin Newsom called the Guard deployment ‘a serious breach of state sovereignty’, and yesterday posted on X that Marines should not be ‘facing their own countrymen to fulfill the deranged fantasy of a dictatorial President’.
As Trump ordered in another 2,000 National Guard troops, the situation near City Hall and Chinatown showed no signs of calming as the sun set.
The anger was still on full display in the bedlam stoked by ICE officers executing search warrants across the city and having arrested, according to Department of Homeland Security reports, a total of 118 immigrants.
Dozens of families began to gather outside the federal detention center where migrants were being held on Friday, chanting: ‘Set them free, let them stay.’
The crowds were still there on Monday night, and tensions have only risen since.
Protesters furious at immigration raids not only in LA but nationwide were running in all directions, throwing and shooting fireworks and deliberately provoking the lines of police into a reaction.
Some compared ICE officers to the Gestapo, the intelligence arm of the Nazi regime known for their brutal surveillance and repression of German civilians under Hitler’s rule.
It was clear that some of those in the uprising weren’t there to demonstrate against Trump’s hardline border policies; they were there purely to cause conflict and destruction.
Crowds formed to watch as though the insurgents setting Waymo cars ablaze and marching onto the 101 freeway were a spectator sport.
Many recorded the action on their cell phones and were even caught in the mayhem, being hit by rubber bullets or tackled by police. Videos spread on social media and network TV like the fires started by some of the worst agitators.
Leading Democrats insist that what’s going on is a ‘peaceful protest’ but it’s nothing but a free-for-all.
Downtown LA is normally chaotic for an entirely different reason during the late afternoon.
There would be few, if any, pedestrians on the sidewalk as thousands of commuters usually head home in their cars.
Another protester hit by rubber bullets shows off his battle injuries on the streets of LA
Police in riot gear occupying intersections confronted groups of masked men, women and teenagers
But the lines of rush hour traffic have been replaced in recent days with people darting around on e-scooters and cars performing provocative donut manoeuvres in front of police.
I was there, and what I saw over the weekend was something far more destructive than the worst carnage of the riots 33 years ago or those in 2020 when Black Lives Matter activists left parts of the city in ruin.
Broken glass covered the streets of downtown LA as people stood up to the police. Those on the ground – supporting detainees being deported back to their home countries – blamed Trump for being antagonistic and trying to start a ‘civil war’.
One woman was handcuffed by police for refusing to disperse. She started screaming: ‘It’s like I am living in some kind of alternate universe. What have we become?’
Moniece, a military veteran in her 30s who served in the Army for eight years and deployed to Iraq, said President Trump ‘won’t stop at anything’ and considers himself to be above the law.
As evidence, she said the Commander in Chief had ignored the wishes of Governor Newsom to keep the National Guard away, instead activating the troops under Title 10 and bypassing state control.
Wearing a bandana over her face, the descendant of Latino immigrants declined to give her surname, and described seeing the troops on the street as ‘historic’.
She would ‘never forget’ her heritage, she said, adding: ‘What’s happening right now is an injustice to everyone.
This is not liberty and justice for all. This is not why I signed up for the military.’
Trump was ‘villainizing immigrants’, and she urged him to ‘reconsider everything you’re doing’.
A cop with a gun filled with non-lethal rounds gets ready to fire it at the unruly crowds
The California National Guard holds back encroaching protesters with plastic riot shields
A parked car is turned into an inferno during clashes between law enforcement and anti-ICE protesters
The Los Angeles Police Department has arrested busloads full of protesters in an effort to regain control of lawless rioters and assert their authority
‘I know you’ve got a big ego but, based on what I’ve seen with your grandkids, you probably have a heart in there somewhere.’
Truck driver Chris Sanchez told the Daily Mail that he had been sheltering undocumented friends in his home to help them avoid detection.
He said that ICE – the agency at the center of the firestorm – was targeting the weak and ‘profiling everyone just by the way you look as if this is not a free country.
‘People are scared out of their minds wondering if they’re going to make it home safe or make it to work at all.’
His message to Trump?: ‘Look back at our history and how our country was built.
‘We took this land,’ he said in reference to California, ‘not only from the Indians but from Mexico.’
And he added defiantly, ‘You think people are going to go quietly? F*** no!’
Classroom assistant Mariah Perez, 21, from the San Fernando Valley, came out to show support for those who had been detained because she was ‘sad that people have to go through this’.
‘Our community does come together. lf one goes down, we all come as a team,’ Perez said.
‘People are fighting for their rights and freedom of speech. It’s good to see that everyone’s together and fighting for what they know is right.’
Noe Contreras, 16, a second-generation Angelino, watched the rioting with his cousin and her husband.
His parents, who came to the U.S. before he was born, are still seeking legal status.
‘They have a lawyer that’s helping them out but it’s taken like a long time. My mom, she did cross the border illegally but my dad came with a work permit.
‘We’re here to support people like our parents,’ he told the Daily Mail. ‘They came here to give us a better life, something that we probably wouldn’t have gotten over there in Mexico.’
Contreras speaks from experience. In 2009, his family home was raided by ICE and some relatives were deported to Mexico.
He found it distressing to hear of ‘all these other families that are getting separated. This harassment and abuse is horrible.’
Native American Katherine Guerrero, 44, who works at a private Catholic school as a campus minister and diversity, equality and inclusion practitioner, said that she had embedded herself with the protestors as a volunteer ‘frontline medic’.
She described treating a young woman who was hit in the neck at close range with a rubber bullet, and compared the military presence to ‘imperialism’ and ICE to the Gestapo in the Nazi Third Reich.
‘This is straight up fascism,’ Guerrero said.
‘They say they’re taking the criminals to make streets safer. This isn’t about the criminals. This isn’t about making things safe. This is racist.’
‘There’s no due process. This is all illegal. This is all unconstitutional,’ she told the Daily Mail, adding that Trump was a ‘f***ing buffoon’.
Cynthia Lopez, 52, a Certified Nursing Assistant, was born in Mexico and moved to the Golden State with her family aged two.
She has permanent residency with a Green Card but ‘chose’ not to become a citizen.
The show of force comes as 700 Marines are on their way to Los Angeles along with 2,000 more National Guard troops
Officers had told demonstrators earlier in the evening that the area was under an unlawful assembly order and warned them to either disperse and head home, or risk arrest
It was clear that some of those in the uprising weren’t there to demonstrate against Trump’s hardline border policies; they were there purely to cause conflict and destruction
Immigration authorities, Lopez claimed, could ‘kidnap me right now, off the street right now and take me, for no reason at all’ but she was out with her Chihuahua anyhow ‘standing up for my rights’.
‘If they deport me, l’ll be back tomorrow because I’m going to pay off the crooked border patrols $10,000,’ she said.
‘The other way is to get a Puerto Rican birth certificate for $10,000.
‘We’re everywhere in California – selling oranges, selling flowers, tamales, everything, because we’re hard workers.’
She wished for a day when a great leader would step up because Trump ‘just hates us’.
‘My theory is because we are powerful people,’ Lopez said, ‘and he doesn’t like it.’
