Several Angelenos talked to Rolling Stone to dispel Trump’s bluster about the recent protests against ICE and his militarized crackdown

Last week, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers swarmed Southern California in concentrated raids of undocumented citizens that are still ongoing. Thousands of protesters have taken to the streets in Los Angeles (and in solidarity nationwide), giving President Donald Trump an excuse to send National Guard troops last weekend and move to deploy Marines to L.A.. 

Trump baselessly implied the protesters are “paid insurrectionists” during a press conference where he revealed he told California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) that “He’s doing a bad job, causing a lot of death and a lot of potential death. If we didn’t send out the National Guard – and last time, we gave him a little additional help – Los Angeles would be burning right now.” (No one has died during the L.A. protests.) 

Newsom has said the “chaotic” sweeps “to meet an arbitrary arrest quota are as reckless as they are cruel,” and that, “Donald Trump’s chaos is eroding trust, tearing families apart, and undermining the workers and industries that power America’s economy.” On June 10, L.A. Mayor Karen Bass (D) instituted an 8 p.m. curfew in downtown L.A. 

Rolling Stone spoke with several on-the-ground Angelenos, who dispute the notion that L.A.’s “on fire” or being overrun by vandals. 

Katharine Shropshire is the board chair of the grassroots organization Community Coalition. She says the Trump administration and allied politicians are spewing propaganda that inflames tension between citizens and law enforcement. 

“When you have federal national leaders from this administration talking about arresting our mayor, arresting our governor, when you have the president himself using the kind of rhetoric describing a reality that is nothing like what is happening on the ground right now, it just increases the tension,” she says. “Nothing here that they’re doing is about de-escalation. It is all about escalating a confrontation with the people of Los Angeles.”

‘L.A. Was Not on Fire’: Angelenos Speak on Trump’s ICE Raids and ‘Escalation’

Angelenos dispute Donald Trump’s claim that L.A. “would be burning down,” amid anti-ICE protests, if he didn’t send in the National Guard.

https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/los-angeles-not-on-fire-trump-ice-protests-national-guard-1235363990