LA protests live updates: Trump maintains control of National Guard in Los Angeles for now after appeals court ruling

The Trump administration has given the personal data of immigrant Medicaid enrollees to deportation officials, the Associated Press reports.

The data includes the immigration status of millions of Medicaid enrollees, which could facilitate the identification of individuals to deport as part of his sweeping immigration crackdown.

An internal memo and emails obtained by The Associated Press show that Medicaid officials unsuccessfully attempted to block the data transfer, citing legal and ethical concerns. Nevertheless, two top advisers to Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. ordered that the dataset be handed over to the Department of Homeland Security, as the emails reveal.

The dataset consists of individuals living in California, Illinois, Washington State, and Washington, D.C., all of which permit non-U.S. citizens to enroll in Medicaid programs funded solely by state taxpayer dollars.

A spark from protests in Los Angeles, largely confined to pockets of the sprawling city’s downtown areas and two nearby communities, appeared to give officials the fire they were looking for to put the plan into action and boots on the ground.

Kilmar Abrego Garcia, whose mistaken deportation has become a symbol of Trump’s harsh immigration policies, will stand before a Tennessee judge on Friday for a court hearing to determine whether he can be released from jail pending trial on human smuggling charges. His lawyers have called the charges filed last week “preposterous.”

Before the hearing began in Nashville, Abrego Garcia’s wife told a crowd outside a church that Thursday marked exactly three months since the Trump administration “abducted and disappeared my husband and separated him from our family.”

Her voice choked with emotion, Jennifer Vasquez Sura said she saw her husband for the first time on Thursday.

She said, “Kilmar wants you to have faith,” and that he wanted his supporters and family to know that “I will be victorious because God is with us.”

Here’s what you need to know ahead of today’s hearing:

Cities across the United States are bracing for more demonstrations, especially on Saturday, when those opposing a weekend military parade in Washington to mark the U.S. Army’s 250th anniversary are expected to take to the streets.

“They’ve defied our courts, deported Americans, disappeared people off the streets, attacked our civil rights, and slashed our services,” the group No Kings, which is behind the day of action, wrote on its website.

A battalion of 700 U.S. Marines was expected to arrive on Friday in Los Angeles, marking an extraordinary use of military forces to support civilian police operations within the United States.

Troops have stood guard at a federal detention center in the city’s downtown, where many of the protests have taken place in a show of solidarity for immigrants detained inside.

The protests so far have been mostly peaceful, punctuated by incidents of violence and restricted to a few city blocks.

National Guard troops have also accompanied Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents on operations to detain immigrants.

Demonstrations have also taken place in as many as 40 U.S. cities this week, including New York and Chicago. The Independent has been tracking where demonstrations have occurred:

Democratic leaders in California have strongly opposed the ramping up of immigration enforcement since it began last Friday.

“Peace begins with ICE leaving Los Angeles,” said Mayor Karen Bass.

A third nighttime curfew, covering an area of over one square mile (2.5 square kilometers) in downtown Los Angeles, was enforced on Thursday night. The city spans 500 square miles and has a population of 4 million people.

Almost immediately, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer denounced the apprehension of Padilla during a speech on the Senate floor.

Eric Garcia and Andrew Feinberg report from Washington, D.C.

But even as polling shows that Americans largely to not support the sometimes-violent protests which have broken out in Los Angeles for the past several days, polling released this week indicates Americans are just as opposed to Trump’s handling of the situation — and are souring on his immigration agenda overall.

Anti-ICE protests that began in Los Angeles may have ignited a wave of demonstrations nationwide ahead of Saturday’s planned “No Kings” rallies.

Millions of people could attend the 1,900 rallies across 1,800 cities and all 50 states that are set to coincide with a D.C. parade for the U.S. Army’s 250th anniversary, which critics have billed as an extravagant birthday event for Trump.

“They’ve defied our courts, deported Americans, disappeared people off the streets, attacked our civil rights, and slashed our services,” the No Kings website reads. “The corruption has gone too far.”

Now, organizers suggest that the movement has been propelled by the pushback against the Trump administration’s immigration raids sweeping the country over the past week.

“We’ve seen hundreds of new events on the No Kings Day map since the weekend,” Ezra Levin, co-founder of Indivisible, one of the groups behind No Kings, told The Guardian.

“We’ve seen hundreds of thousands of people register for those events.”

After a week of unrest, more protestors took to the streets against the Trump administration’s ongoing nationwide workplace raids.

By Friday morning, the flare-ups have spread to more than 40 cities across the U.S., The Independent has uncovered.

But what sparked the demonstrations sweeping the nation?

White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller has decried “non-stop judicial tyranny” after a federal judge ruled that Trump acted illegally when he ordered the California National Guard to Los Angeles over the head of Governor Gavin Newsom.

The top Trump aide made the comments while sharing a post on X criticizing the ability of federal district judges to issue injunctions to block executive action.

Miller’s tweet came after a late-night decision by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals that the president could maintain control over the Guard through the weekend.