Trump deploys military force to LA over immigration protests

US President, Donald Trump, has signed a presidential memorandum deploying 2,000 national guardsmen to Los Angeles to disperse protests that began in response to immigration raids, the White House said last night.

This is even as the US State Department has instructed consulates worldwide to resume processing visa applications for international students admitted to Harvard University, reversing guidance issued last week ordering such requests to be rejected, according to Xinhua News Agency, citing The Washington Post report.

On the military deployment, California Governor, Gavin Newsom, called it “purposefully inflammatory” and warned it would only escalate tensions amid the ongoing protest.

The development came after two days of confrontations between immigration authorities and demonstrators, during which federal agents fired flash-bang grenades and tear gas toward crowds angry at the arrests of dozens of migrants in a city with a large Latino population.

Republicans lined up behind Trump yesterday to dismiss warnings by Newsom and other local officials that the protests had been largely peaceful, and that the deployment was against their wishes and would exacerbate tensions.

“I have no concern about that at all,” Republican House Speaker, Mike Johnson told ABC’s “This Week” when asked, adding that Newsom “has shown an inability or unwillingness to do what is necessary there, so the president stepped in.”

As for threats by Defense Secretary, Pete Hegseth on Saturday, to send in active-duty Marines on top of the Guard troops, Johnson said he did not see that as “heavy-handed.”

“We have to be prepared to do what is necessary,” he argued.

Federal authorities “want a spectacle. Don’t give them one. Never use violence. Speak out peacefully,” Newsom had posted on X late Saturday.

“We agree that if you’re being violent, you should be arrested, but this is not what’s happening,” California Congresswoman, Nanette Barragan, told CNN yesterday.

“We are having an administration that’s targeting peaceful protests … The president is sending the National Guard because he doesn’t like the scenes.

“It’s up to us to stand up for our people,” said a Los Angeles resident whose parents are immigrants, declining to give her name.

“Whether we get hurt, whether they gas us, whatever they’re throwing at us. They’re never going to stop us. All we have left is our voice,” she said as emergency services lights flashed in the distance,’’ the Democrat said.

Trump congratulated the National Guard for “a job well done” shortly before midnight on Saturday in a post on Truth Social, before the troops appeared to have been deployed.

The National Guard — a reserve military — is frequently used in natural disasters, such as in the aftermath of the LA fires, and occasionally in instances of civil unrest, but almost always with the consent of local politicians.

Law professor Jessica Levinson said Hegseth’s additional threat to send in Marines from nearby Camp Pendleton appeared symbolic thanks to a legal restriction on using the US military as a domestic policing force in the absence of an insurrection.

“The National Guard will be able to do no more than provide logistical and personnel support,” she said.

US to resume processing Harvard visas

Meanwhile, the US State Department has instructed consulates worldwide to resume processing visa applications for international students admitted to Harvard University, reversing guidance issued last week ordering such requests to be rejected, according to Xinhua, citing The Washington Post report.

The report, citing a cable sent by the department, said the new directive rescinded one issued on Thursday, less than an hour before a judge blocked the Trump administration from restricting international students from entering the country to attend Harvard.

“Consular sections must resume processing of Harvard University student and exchange visitor visas,” the report quoted the cable as saying.

The cable came after the Trump administration’s second attempt to block visas for foreign students who plan to study at Harvard.

Trump had last week, signed proclamation to suspend visas for new foreign students at Hravrad University for six month initial period.

The government had stated that the university has seen a drastic rise in crime in recent years but failed to discipline at least some categories of conduct violations on campus.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation, FBI, has long warned that foreign adversaries take advantage of easy access to American higher education to steal information, exploit research and development, and spread false information.

“Harvard has failed to provide sufficient information to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) about foreign students’ known illegal or dangerous activities, reporting deficient data on only three students.

“Harvard is either not fully reporting its disciplinary records for foreign students or is not seriously policing its foreign students,” the government said.

“Harvard has also developed extensive entanglements with foreign adversaries, receiving more than $150 million from China alone. In exchange, Harvard has, among other things, hosted Chinese Communist Party paramilitary members and partnered with China-based individuals on research that could advance China’s military modernization.

The Chinese Communist Party has sent thousands of mid-career and senior bureaucrats to study at the U.S. institutions, with Harvard University, considered the top “party school” outside the country.

“Xi Jinping’s own daughter attended Harvard as an undergraduate in the early 2010s.  Harvard has failed to adequately address violent anti-Semitic incidents on campus, with many of these agitators found to be foreign students.’’

Trump said that while the US wants foreign students in its institutions, he believes that the foreign students should be people “that can love our country.”

He said further:  “We want to have great students here. We just don’t want students who are causing trouble. We want to have students. I want to have foreign students.

“We have people who want to go to Harvard and other schools; they can’t get in because we have foreign students there. But I want to make sure that the foreign students are people who can love our country.

“We are still waiting for the foreign student lists from Harvard, so we can determine, after a ridiculous expenditure of billionaire of dollars, how many radicalised lunatics, troublemakers all, should not be let back into our country.’’