A man’s body was discovered in downtown Los Angeles in the early hours of Tuesday morning, in an area that was the site of violent clashes between demonstrators and authorities in response to Trump’s mass deportation policies.
A call to police came in at 1:30 a.m. that the body had been found in front of a T-Mobile store on West 3rd Street and Broadway, which had been looted in the chaos. The death remains under investigation, and cause of death has not yet been communicated by law enforcement. It is also unclear if the death is related to the looting of the store or the anti-ICE protest.
Protests in Los Angeles began on Friday, when demonstrators sought to impede ICE agents who were carrying out a vast operation throughout the city at several sites to detain migrants. The federal agency has refused to allow members of Congress to carry out their constitutionally mandated duty of inspecting their operations, with local Rep. Maxine Waters being denied entrance.
Tensions have since escalated, with President Trump federalizing the National Guard and deploying two thousand troops, the first time that a president has gone around the governor’s authority since the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960’s. On Monday, Trump also deployed 700 Marines, which is in apparent conflict with the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878, unless the president declares the riots in Los Angeles to be an insurrection, under the authority of the Insurrection Act of 1807.
While a number of White House officials have been using the word “insurrection” in statements about the situation in Los Angeles, the Insurrection Act has not yet been officially invoked. The last president to use that authority was George H.W. Bush in 1992, in response to Los Angeles riots that followed the acquittal of police officers for the beating of Rodney King.
