LA protests live: Trump declares Los Angeles ‘safe and sound’ after military intervention as rallies spread nationwide

The curfew imposed by the authorities in downtown Los Angeles Wednesday evening has been lifted.

For the second consecutive evening, LA Mayor Karen Bass ordered the curfew to be in effect from 8 p.m. Wednesday to 6 a.m. Thursday in the downtown area, home to City Hall, the Los Angeles Police Department headquarters and federal buildings.

A curfew imposed by Spokane Mayor Lisa Brown in Washington state is due to be lifted in about half an hour.

Thousands of Angelenos experienced their second evening of curfew on Wednesday as Mayor Karen Bass continued her crackdown on looters and vandals in downtown Los Angeles.

More demonstrations were scheduled for Thursday, almost a week after a string of ICE raids last Friday sparked a wave of unrest in LA. By Saturday morning, President Donald Trump caused fresh outrage after deploying the National Guard before eventually mobilizing the U.S. Marines days later.

While Los Angeles remains the epicenter of unrest, The Independent found that demonstrations had flared up in at least 37 cities across the U.S. Hundreds of arrests had been made nationwide by Thursday.

Here, The Independent breaks down what you need to know as LA – and other major cities – experience further unrest.

Los Angeles remains the epicenter of unrest after protests erupted in the wake of a string of raids by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents on Friday.

Now, demonstrations have been sparked across the country, with dozens reported in at least 21 states since Friday.

Data correspondent Alicja Hagopian and reporter James Liddell have mapped all the anti-ICE protests across the U.S.:

Donald Trump boasted that Los Angeles has been “safe and sound” for the past two evenings since he sent in the National Guard.

The president once again defended his decision to deploy military troops to quell the protests, which have continued for six days in LA and leaked out into other major cities across the nation.

Trump has said that California Governor Gavin Newsom should issue a groveling “thank you” with the president taking credit for “saving his a**.”

“Los Angeles was safe and sound for the last two nights. Our great National Guard, with a little help from the Marines, put the L.A. Police in a position to effectively do their job,” he wrote on Truth Social Thursday, despite the Marines not yet setting foot in LA at the time of writing.

“They all worked well together, but without the Military, Los Angeles would be a crime scene like we haven’t seen in years. Governor Gaven NewScum had totally lost control of the situation. He should be saying THANK YOU for saving his a**, instead of trying to justify his mistakes and incompetence!!!”

Police officers on foot and horseback dispersed crowds on Wednesday evening in downtown LA before Mayor Karen Bass enforced a second curfew in as many days Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth told a Senate hearing that military personnel could be sent to other cities if law enforcement were threatened as protests flare up from Seattle through to New York City Days after being mobilized by Donald Trump, a battalion of U.S. Marines is set to be stationed in Los Angeles within 48 hours While at the Kennedy Center’s premiere of Les Misérables, Trump again defended his decision to deploy troops and said that, if he didn’t, LA would be “burning to the ground right now.” Newsom taunted that Trump doesn’t understand the musical’s plot After a protest Wednesday afternoon outside an ICE office in Spokane, Washington, Mayor Lisa Brown imposed a curfew in the city’s downtown areaThe Independent has found that 37 cities where protests have sprung up since demonstrations began last Friday

A battalion of U.S. Marines is set to be stationed in Los Angeles within 48 hours after concluding training, which involved crowd control and de-escalation tactics.

They are set to join thousands of National Guard troops under the authority of a federal law known as Title 10. Both the National Guard and the Marines were mobilized at the orders of President Donald Trump.

The Marines were being held at a staging area in the Seal Beach area, about 30 miles south of LA.

Cuba’s Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez has accused the Trump administration of imposing immigration policies using “force and fear.”

Rodríguez called immigration Enforcement and Customs raids “xenophobic” and “racist.”

“Deployment of 4,700 marines and national guard personnel in #LosÁngeles constitutes the only way for the US government to continue imposing by force and fear an unpopular, xenophobic, and racist anti-immigrant policy, which disregards the history and socioeconomic foundation of that nation,” he wrote in a post on X Wednesday, which was translated from Spanish to English.

In another post on Wednesday, this time written in English, Rodríguez addressed the expansion of protests outside of LA, stating they are “evidence of failed immigration policy of current administration.”

Former California Governor and Hollywood action star Arnold Schwarzenegger has pushed back against the Trump administration’s claims that Los Angeles has become a “war zone.”

During Wednesday’s appearance on Jimmy Kimmel Live, the 77-year-old Republican said: “They make it out like it is a war zone… And the fact of the matter is, it’s maybe like 0.001 percent of the area of Los Angeles has problems.”

National Intelligence Director Tulsi Gabbard has peddled a theory that some of those protesting in Los Angeles against the Trump administration’s sweeping immigration raids are “clearly paid.”

Gabbard made the claims while speaking to Fox News’ Jessie Watters on Wednesday evening, adding that the demonstrations were “orchestrated.”