The U.S. National Guard was stationed in and around downtown Los Angeles on Sunday, June 8th, after protests about recent immigration raids. Two days prior, ICE raided several locations, including a Home Depot in the majority-Latino city of Paramount. Soldiers used tear gas, pepper spray, and flash bangs to disperse the growing crowd outside of the detention center, where reportedly 118 arrested individuals were being held.
Despite not having the governor’s consent, President Donald Trump deployed nearly 300 National Guard troops at various places throughout the city on Sunday morning. He described the events as a “riot” and thanked the National Guard for supporting the ICE agents. “These Radical Left protests by instigators and often paid troublemakers, WILL NOT BE TOLERATED,” the President said on a Truth Social post.
Rosalyn Gonzalez-Montalvo, 15, is a teenager from metro Atlanta. When asked about how she felt about the protests in LA, she responded, “I feel like a lot of this is completely unnecessary and uncalled for. A lot of immigrants, like my parents, come to the U.S. to give their children a better life and to live that ‘American Dream’ that people idolize so much.”
Many were not fond of Trump’s National Guard deployment, including Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass and California Governor Gavin Newsom. In addition, Trump’s actions were labeled as “an alarming abuse of power” by the Democratic Governors Association.
“We didn’t have a problem until Trump got involved,” Newsom wrote on an X post. “This is a serious breach of state sovereignty — inflaming tensions while pulling resources from where they’re actually needed. Rescind the order. Return control to California.”
Events such as these are not only happening to citizens in Los Angeles, but they are also affecting teenagers nationwide. Gonzalez-Montalvo’s family is Mexican, and she says that partly because of the Trump Administration, her parents haven’t been able to return to the country. “Borders are way stricter and tighter now. My father recently lost his mother,” she said. “[He] couldn’t even travel back for the funeral because of these policies and because of how costly it is.”
17-year-old Chameli Govin is the daughter of Indian immigrant parents, and though the President’s recent immigration policies haven’t affected her or her close family directly, she sympathizes with those in danger. Along with many others, Govin condemns Trump’s decision to use the National Guard in LA saying, “The tactics Trump is using … are meant to intimidate the people of the U.S. and [is] kind of showing … the control he has over the people when in reality, the people should have control over their government.”
In the afternoon of June 9th, the fourth day of the protests, Trump sent an additional 2,000 National Guard troops and 700 Marines to the county after Newsom filed a lawsuit against the President. The lawsuit claims that Trump “violated the Constitution” by deploying “members of the California National Guard without lawful authority.”
Both teens expressed worry about something like this happening in Atlanta, especially in the areas with a higher Latino population. “If it can happen in a place like LA, it can happen anywhere,” Govin commented.
When asked about what she wanted for the future, Gonzalez-Montalvo passionately said she wanted more freedom; “to be able to live without the fear of being taken and separated. People see us as ‘aliens’ rather than normal humans with lives and families. It’s something that we’ve been battling for so long … but I genuinely want it to end for good because it’s affecting us more than people think.”
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