Federal prosecutors announced charges Wednesday against 12 people who allegedly engaged in violence during demonstrations against the Trump administration’s immigration policies.
The charges, part of an effort dubbed “Operation Bridge Too Far” by federal authorities, largely centered on demonstrations that erupted on a freeway overpass near an immigration detention center in downtown Los Angeles on June 8, the first day the National Guard was deployed to the city.
What started as a small, peaceful protest on Alameda Street exploded into a series of tense clashes between demonstrators and law enforcement. After National Guard members and U.S. Department of Homeland Security officials used tear gas and smoke bombs to try and disperse a crowd outside the detention center, more protesters flooded the area.
A number of Waymo self-driving vehicles were set on fire near Olivera Street, and a group of California Highway Patrol officers on the 101 Freeway were pelted with items from protesters on the overpass above. At times, they returned fire with less-lethal rounds and tear gas. At least one protester had previously been charged in state court with throwing a flaming item at a CHP vehicle from the overpass.
Authorities announced that 10 defendants charged in connection with the incident were in federal custody this week. Another is in state custody and expected to be handed over to federal authorities, and one remains a fugitive.
Among those charged tied to the June 8 protest are Ronald Alexis Coreas, 23, of Westlake; Junior Roldan, 27, of Hollywood; Elmore Sylvester Cage, 34, of downtown Los Angeles; Balto Montion, 24, of Watsonville; Jesus Gonzalez Hernandez Jr., 22, of Las Vegas; Hector Daniel Ramos, 66, of Alhambra; Stefano Deong Green, 34, of Westmont; Yachua Mauricio Flores, 23, of Lincoln Heights; and Ismael Vega, 41, of Westlake.
Prosecutors also charged Virginia Reyes, 32, and Isai Carrillo, 31, who they say are members of “VC Defensa,” an immigrant rights group that has been documenting raids in the region.
Yovany Marcario Canil, 22, of Boyle Heights, was charged with assault on a federal officer for pepper-spraying members of an FBI S.W.A.T. team who were inside a government vehicle leaving the site of a raid in the downtown L.A. Fashion District on June 6.
A protester lobs a large rock at CHP officers stationed on the 101 Freeway below.
(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)
“Acts of violence against the brave law enforcement officers who protect us are an attack on civilized society itself,” Atty. Gen. Pam Bondi said in a news release. “Anyone who engages in such disgusting conduct will face severe consequences from this Department of Justice.”
The FBI offered up to $10,000 for information leading to the arrest and conviction of 10 other unknown individuals accused of engaging in similar attacks from the overpass.
“A group of violent protesters threw rocks, pieces of concrete, electric scooters, and fireworks at officers and patrol cars” on the 101 Freeway, the FBI said.
Bill Essayli, the top federal prosecutor for the Central District of California, has aggressively pursued charges against those who clashed with law enforcement during protests against the Trump administration’s immigration raids over the last few months. On Wednesday, Essayli said that his office has charged 97 people with assaulting or impeding officers.
Of those, Essayli said, 18 have pleaded guilty and 44 are set to go to trial. His office has taken two defendants in misdemeanor assault cases to trial, but both ended in acquittals.
Earlier this year, a Times investigation found Essayli’s prosecutors have failed to convince grand juries to secure indictments in a number of protest-related cases.
Prosecutors face a much lower legal bar before a grand jury than they do in a criminal trial, and experts say it is rare for federal prosecutors to lose at that preliminary stage. Prosecutors in Chicago and Washington have faced similar struggles, court records show.
The defendants who have pleaded guilty in L.A. include a 23-year-old undocumented immigrant who hurled a molotov cocktail at L.A. County sheriff’s deputies during a June rally against immigration enforcement.
Gov. Gavin Newsom said Sunday that he intends to seek a court order in an attempt to stop President Trump’s deployment of California National Guard troops to Oregon.
Calling the president’s action a “breathtaking abuse of power,” Newsom said in a statement that 300 California National Guard personnel were being deployed to Portland, Ore., a city the president has called “war-ravaged.”
“They are on their way there now,” Newsom said of the National Guard. “This is a breathtaking abuse of the law and power.”
Trump’s move came a day after a federal judge in Oregon temporarily blocked the federalization of Oregon’s National Guard.
The president, who mobilized the California National Guard amid immigration protests earlier this year, has pursued the use of the military to fight crime in cities including Chicago and Washington, D.C., sparking outrage among Democratic officials in those cities. Local leaders, including those in Portland, have said the actions are unnecessary and without legal justification.
“The Trump Administration is unapologetically attacking the rule of law itself and putting into action their dangerous words — ignoring court orders and treating judges, even those appointed by the President himself, as political opponents,” Newsom said.
In June, Newsom and Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta filed a federal lawsuit over Trump’s mobilization of the state’s National Guard during immigration protests in Los Angeles. California officials are expected to file the court order over Sunday’s deployment using that existing lawsuit.
Newsom has ratcheted up his rhetoric about Trump in recent days: On Friday, the governor lashed out at universities that may sign the president’s higher education compact, which demands rightward campus policy shifts in exchange for priority federal funding.
“I need to put pressure on this moment and pressure test where we are in U.S. history, not just California history,” Newsom said. “…This is it. We are losing this country.”
Los Angeles city councilmembers sparred with Police Chief Jim McDonnell Tuesday over the LAPD’s handling of protests against President Trump’s immigration crackdown, with some challenging the department’s relationship with its federal counterparts.
The chief appeared before the council to discuss the LAPD’s attempts to control the protests that have erupted mostly in downtown Los Angeles every day since Friday, sometimes descending into chaos.
Mayor Karen Bass and other local officials have decried both the federal immigration raids that prompted the protests and the vandalism and violence that have broken out at some protests. Over Gov. Gavin Newsom’s objections, the Trump administration has sent the National Guard and Marines to L.A., which Bass lambasted as unnecessary. She said Tuesday that she is considering a curfew for downtown L.A., as the protests showed no sign of abating and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced that the military deployments would last at least 60 days.
McDonnell told the City Council that his officers arrested 114 people at protests Monday night — 53 for failure to disperse and 15 for looting. One person was arrested for assault with a deadly weapon on an officer and another was arrested for attempted murder. The LAPD arrested 27 people at protests on Saturday and 40 on Sunday.
In the testiest exchange of the afternoon, Councilmember Imelda Padilla asked the chief if the LAPD would consider warning city officials if it hears from federal law enforcement that immigration raids are coming.
“You’re asking me to warn you about an enforcement action being taken by another agency before it happens? We can’t do that,” McDonnell responded, noting that such a warning would amount to obstruction of justice.
“That would be completely inappropriate and illegal,” he said.
City Council President Marqueece Harris-Dawson said he disagreed with the chief on referring to agencies like U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement as “law enforcement partners.”
“If we know somebody is coming here to do warrantless abductions of the residents of this city, those are not our partners,” he said. “I don’t care what badge they have on or whose orders they’re under. They’re not our partners.”
In an interview after the meeting, McDonnell said his department must continue to cooperate with federal agencies on issues other than immigration enforcement. Since 1979, the LAPD has taken a strong stance against enforcing federal immigration law, prohibiting its officers from initiating contact with anyone for the sole purpose of learning their immigration status.
“All of the crimes we investigate, potentially could be in partnership with [federal agencies],” McDonnell said. “It is a partnership, and without that partnership, we wouldn’t be able to go into the World Cup, the Olympics … that require that we work with federal, state and local partners.”
Other councilmembers took aim at the chief over his officers’ shooting of rubber bullets during the protests.
“To see a reporter get shot with a rubber bullet … on live television does not add to the de-escalation,” said Councilmember Hugo Soto-Martínez, referring to an Australian reporter who was shot during a protest on Sunday. “We have to be mindful of the tactics being used by some LAPD members that is adding to the escalation.”
“Just like a few protesters can take away from the messaging, the same thing can be said about LAPD. It overshadows the response,” he added.
Councilmember Eunisses Hernandez said that some LAPD officers acted “out of line for the situation.”
“I have lawyers posting videos of them getting shot,” she said. “I’ve seen videos of non-lethals being fired at protesters more than 50 yards away.”
McDonnell replied that the LAPD is the best department in the country at holding its officers’ accountable for their actions. But he said he couldn’t speak about specific uses of force by his officers at the protests, since the situation was still developing.
On Tuesday, City Councilmembers Tim McOsker, Ysabel Jurado and Eunisses Hernandez signed a proposal asking various city agencies to provide information on the security infrastructure to “prevent unlawful entry by federal entities” at City Hall, council offices, public service counters, city-owned parking lots and other facilities.
“As this Federal political theater plays out, the safety of City facilities must be given special consideration for the sake of both City employees and the public,” the proposal said.
A phalanx of police officers on horseback surround a person who has been knocked to the ground and repeatedly pummeled with batons.
An Australian TV news reporter winces in pain as she’s shot by a rubber bullet while wrapping up a live broadcast.
A crowd milling above the 101 Freeway lobs rocks and chunks of concrete down on California Highway Patrol officers detaining protesters, prompting a volley of flash-bang grenades.
Those incidents and others captured on video have gone viral in recent days as immigration protests reached a boiling point in Los Angeles.
Leaders at the LAPD and the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department have long maintained that they have no role in civil immigration enforcement. And yet the region’s two largest police agencies are suddenly on the front lines of the Trump administration’s crackdown, clashing in the street with demonstrators — most peaceful and some seemingly intent on causing mayhem.
Waymo taxis burn on Los Angeles Street as thousands protest ICE immigration raids throughout the city.
(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)
LAPD Chief Jim McDonnell condemned the actions of those carrying out the “disgusting” violence.
“This thing has gotten out of control,” McDonnell said at a news conference Sunday when asked whether he supported President Trump’s deployment of National Guard troops. After news broke Monday that the president was sending hundreds of Marines to the city, McDonnell said that without “clear coordination,” adding more soldiers to the mix creates “a significant logistical and operational challenge for those of us charged with safeguarding this city.”
Sheriff Robert Luna told The Times that deputies are prepared to support federal agents in certain circumstances — even as the department maintains its official policy of not assisting with immigration operations.
“They start getting attacked and they call and ask us for help, we’re going to respond,” Luna said.
Both publicly and behind the scenes, the situation has led to tensions with Los Angeles officials who have questioned whether local law enforcement is crossing the line with aggressive crowd control tactics — or being put in a lose-lose situation by Trump, who has cast blame on the LAPD chief and others for not doing enough.
“The federal government has put everybody in the city, and law enforcement in particular, in a really messed up situation,” said City Council President Marqueece Harris-Dawson. “They started a riot, and then they said, ‘Well, you can’t handle the riot, so we’re sending in the military.’”
Los Angeles police officers push back protesters near a federal building in downtown Los Angeles on Monday.
(Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times)
The LAPD said in a statement that officers made a combined 50 arrests on Saturday and Sunday, mostly for failure to obey a dispersal order. They also arrested a man who allegedly rammed a motorcycle into a skirmish line of officers, and another for attempted murder with a Molotov cocktail.
Five officers were injured while policing the protests, the department said, while five police horses also suffered minor injuries. The department said officers fired more than 600 so-called less lethal rounds to quell hostile crowds.
Although the LAPD has changed the way it handles protests in recent years — moving away from some of the heavy-handed tactics that drew widespread criticism in the past — the city still pays out millions for crowd control-related lawsuits every year.
As of Monday, Internal Affairs had opened investigations into seven complaints of officer misconduct, including the shooting of the Australian TV news reporter, said LAPD Deputy Chief Michael Rimkunas, who runs the department’s professional standards bureau.
Additionally, he said, the department’s Force Investigations Division, which reviews all serious uses of force, was investigating two incidents “because of possible significant injury,” including one incident in which a protester was struck in the head with a rubber bullet.
“We’re continuing to review video and monitor the situation,” he said.
The high-profile incidents caught on video — combined with mixed messaging by L.A. officials — have created opportunities for the White House to control the narrative.
On Saturday, Mayor Karen Bass told reporters that the protests were under control, while the LAPD chief publicly lamented that his department was overwhelmed by the outbursts of violence. Trump seized on those comments, writing in a post on Truth Social that the situation in Los Angeles was “looking really bad.”
“Jim McDonnell, the highly respected LAPD Chief, just stated that the protesters are getting very much more aggressive, and that he would ‘have to reassess the situation,’ as it pertains to bringing in the troops,” Trump wrote on the right-wing social media platform shortly after midnight on Monday. “He should, RIGHT NOW!!! Don’t let these thugs get away with this. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!!!”
Protesters clash with police downtown near the VA Outpatient Clinic on Sunday in Los Angeles.
(Luke Johnson / Los Angeles Times)
On the streets over the weekend, local cops often found themselves playing defense while confronting unruly crowds.
Cmdr. Oscar Barragan in the L.A. County Sheriff’s Department’s Special Operations Division described the scene Sunday when his unit responded to a protest near a Home Depot in Panorama. While rumors of a raid targeting migrant workers at the store spread on social media, Barragan said the real issue was a federal immigration office nearby that was being used as a staging area.
“Social media took over and a false narrative started growing and it just grew out of control,” he said.
Barragan said there were “people launching mortars at us and rocks and things” as the scrum moved west toward the 710 Freeway and the Compton border. He said some people put nails and cinder blocks in the street trying to block the police response.
“It got pretty hairy,” Barragan said. “They just kept launching every type of firework you can imagine and it was consistent.”
He said local law enforcement tolerates protests — but has to step up to restore order when things start to get out of hand.
“The sheriff has made it clear that we allow the peaceful protests to occur, but once violence occurs we’re not gonna tolerate it,” he said.
On Sunday outside the Metropolitan Detention Center, a group of roughly 100 protesters spent hours chiding California National Guard members and Department of Homeland Security officers near the entrance to the immigration jail, calling them “Nazis” and urging them to defy orders and defend the public instead of a building.
At one point, a Homeland Security officer approached one of the more vocal demonstrators and said he “didn’t want a repeat” of Saturday’s violence, urging protesters to stay off federal property and clear a path for any vehicles that needed to enter. But around 1 p.m. on Sunday, guardsmen with riot shields moved to the front of the law enforcement phalanx on Alameda and charged into the protest crowd, screaming “push” as they rammed into people. They launched tear gas canisters and smoke grenades into the street, leaving a toxic cloud in the air.
A protester is hurt near the 101 Freeway in clashes with law enforcement in downtown Los Angeles on Sunday.
(Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times)
It left an enraged crowd of protesters, who had otherwise been peaceful all morning, for the LAPD to contend with.
After National Guard troops and Homeland Security officers retreated to the loading dock, LAPD officers found themselves in an hours-long back and forth with protesters on Alameda. Officers used batons, less lethal launchers and tear gas to slowly force the crowd of hundreds back toward Temple Street, with limited success.
The LAPD repeatedly issued dispersal orders from a helicopter and a patrol car loudspeaker. Some members of the crowd hurled water bottles and glass bottles at officers, and the windshield of a department vehicle shattered after it was struck by a projectile.
One officer grabbed a sign from a protester who was standing near a skirmish line, broke it in half and then swung a baton into the demonstrator’s legs. Another officer was seen by a Times reporter repeatedly raising his launcher and aiming at the heads of demonstrators.
In one particularly wild moment, two people riding motorcycles inched their way to the front of the protest crowd, revving their engines and drawing cheers. At some point, they got close to the LAPD’s skirmish line and skidded out.
Both were handcuffed and led away, their feet dragging across asphalt covered in shattered glass and spent rubber bullets. LAPD later alleged at least one of the motorcyclists rammed officers.
The tensions spilled into Monday.
City workers repair broken windows on Spring Street at Police Headquarters.
(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)
At police headquarters, where city workers were spotted boarding up the ground-level windows, a row of officers in riot gear began assembling outside. With some government offices urging their employees to work from home, the surrounding streets were emptier than usual. Those who came downtown kept their heads down as they hustled past the now-ubiquitous “F— ICE” graffiti.
Gov. Gavin Newsom said Monday afternoon that Trump had ordered another 2,000 National Guard troops to the city, doubling the previous total. In response, the governor said, he had worked with other law enforcement agencies on a “surge” of an additional 800 state and local law enforcement officers “to ensure the safety of our LA communities.”
McDonnell said at a news conference that the department was seeking to strike a balance between “dealing with civil unrest on the streets, [while] at the same time trying to protect peaceful protests.”
Some community leaders were left deeply unsatisfied with the police response.
Eddie Anderson, a pastor at McCarty Memorial Christian Church in Jefferson Park, argued that the LAPD was effectively doing the work of protecting Trump’s immigration agents.
“We asked them to pick a side: Are they going to pick the side of the federal government, which is trying to rip apart families?” Anderson said. “Donald Trump would like nothing more than for Angelenos to resort to violence to try to fight the federal government, because his whole scheme is to try to show L.A. is a lawless place.”
Times staff writers David Zahniser and Matthew Ormseth contributed to this report.
