Watch: Fox News crew kicked out of Los Angeles protests as tensions erupt over Trump’s National Guard deployment

Protests in Los Angeles spiraled into chaos on Sunday as thousands took to the streets in a fiery response to President Donald Trump’s controversial deployment of the National Guard. Demonstrators blocked major freeways, set self-driving cars ablaze, and clashed with law enforcement using tear gas, rubber bullets, and flash bangs to contain the unrest.

By evening, police declared the protest an unlawful assembly and began making arrests. Some protesters, refusing to disperse, hurled concrete chunks, fireworks, electric scooters, and rocks at California Highway Patrol officers stationed on the closed southbound 101 Freeway. Officers took cover under an overpass as tensions intensified.

Sunday marked the third and most volatile day of demonstrations against Trump’s immigration crackdown in Southern California. The arrival of around 300 National Guard troops only fueled outrage in the city of 4 million, with much of the activity centered in downtown Los Angeles.



Among the most widely shared moments online was a viral video showing a Fox News crew being kicked out of the protest site. Protesters were seen heckling the journalists, vandalizing their vehicle, and allegedly looting their equipment. The footage, circulating across social media, quickly sparked debate over media presence at politically charged demonstrations.


Elsewhere, the protests turned increasingly violent:

• A protester was arrested for throwing a Molotov cocktail at officers.
  
  
• Another was taken into custody for ramming a motorcycle into a police line.
  
  
• At least four self-driving Waymo vehicles were set on fire, sending massive plumes of smoke into the air as the electric cars exploded intermittently.
  
  

By late afternoon, demonstrators moved onto the 101 Freeway, bringing traffic to a standstill until officers forcibly cleared the roadway. Throughout the evening, flash bangs echoed through the streets as police imposed a citywide dispersal order and shut down several blocks of downtown.


The Los Angeles Police Department used crowd-control munitions to disperse what they described as an unlawfully assembled group. Dozens were arrested over the weekend. The federal immigrant arrest tally in the L.A. area climbed to more than 100, with some of those detained being protest participants. Among them was a prominent union leader, accused of obstructing law enforcement.

While large, the current wave of protests has not yet reached the scale of past uprisings in the city—such as the Watts Rebellion (1965), the Rodney King riots (1992), or the 2020 Black Lives Matter demonstrations—each of which prompted official requests for National Guard support.

This time, Trump’s direct federal activation of the Guard—without a request from California Governor Gavin Newsom—has sparked constitutional concerns and fierce political backlash, further fueling the unrest unfolding on L.A.'s streets.