Rioters in downtown Los Angeles looted a prominent Apple store amid protests against ICE raids in the city.
Images from the scene show rioters in hoodies and masks ransacking the store Monday night. Dozens of people can be seen throughout the property before at least one individual began breaking a window in order to escape from the side of the building.
Protests have erupted in Los Angeles for the better part of a week as rioters sought to block ICE officers from carrying out deportation operations in the city.
The Trump administration ordered the National Guard to quell the unrest over the weekend, but the crackdown culminated in the president’s decisive action Monday to deploy a battalion of hundreds of U.S. Marines.
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An unknown number of stores have been ransacked in the days of rioting and protest, ranging from Apple and Adidas stores to small restaurants.
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President Donald Trump described the demonstrators as “violent, insurrectionist mobs” and praised the 2,000 National Guard troops for their role in restoring order after hoards of protesters clashed with law enforcement in Los Angeles.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom has decried the deployment of both the National Guard and the U.S. Marines to the city. Trump and other top administration officials have doubled down on the move, however.
“In Los Angeles, we believe that ICE, which is a federal law enforcement agency, has the right to safely conduct operations in any state, in any jurisdiction in the country, especially after 21 million illegals have crossed our border under the previous administration. ICE ought be able to do its job, whether it’s Minneapolis or Los Angeles,” Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth told lawmakers on Capitol Hill on Tuesday.
Trump himself took a more blunt approach in a post on social media, arguing Los Angeles would be “burning to the ground” if he hadn’t taken action.
“If I didn’t ‘SEND IN THE TROOPS’ to Los Angeles the last three nights, that once beautiful and great City would be burning to the ground right now, much like 25,000 houses burned to the ground in L.A. do to an incompetent Governor and Mayor – Incidentally, the much more difficult, time consuming, and stringent FEDERAL PERMITTING PROCESS is virtually complete on these houses, while the easy and simple City and State Permits are disastrously bungled up and WAY BEHIND SCHEDULE! They are a total mess, and will be for a long time. People want to rebuild their houses. Call your incompetent Governor and Mayor, the Federal permitting is DONE!!!” Trump wrote.
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