Protesters braved the rain Feb. 5 to demonstrate in downtown Los Angeles against the immigration policies of President Donald Trump. It was the fourth day in a row pro-immigrant demonstrations took place downtown.
Photo by Lorenzo Gomez
Wave Wire Services
LOS ANGELES — Protests against President Donald Trump’s crackdown on illegal immigration continued for a fourth straight day Feb. 5 in downtown Los Angeles, with demonstrators blocking streets and interfering with traffic.
Several hundred people rallied near City Hall, prompting the Los Angeles Police Department to issue a traffic advisory for the area of Spring Street, First Street and Broadway.
That came one day after high school students believed to be from Marshall and Garfield high schools, and possibly other campuses, staged a walkout and march through downtown Los Angeles. Some of the students gathered on the Main Street overpass of the Hollywood (101) Freeway and eventually rallied near Olvera Street then marched toward City Hall.
Police reported that the demonstration was peaceful, although students were marching in traffic lanes.
The student demonstrations came one day after an hours-long rally, march and protest in downtown Los Angeles that also focused on the 101 Freeway overpasses downtown. That gathering was for the most part peaceful, but turned unruly in the early evening after police declared an unlawful assembly and tried to move the crowd away from the freeway.
Some protesters were seen hurling rocks and bottles toward officers who had formed skirmish lines and pushed the crowd to the north.
While many people in the crowd — which was at least 1,000 people strong by mid-afternoon Feb. 3 — had dispersed after the unlawful assembly was declared, a core group remained and marched through streets near Chinatown and Olvera Street.
As the protests lingered, police eventually detained an unspecified number of people. Reports from the scene indicated as many as 200 people were detained. It was unclear if any of the people were actually arrested, with most believed to have been detained and released. CBS2 reported one person was arrested for alleged possession of a firearm.
The protest was part of a multi-city “A Day Without Immigrants” demonstration in opposition to President Donald Trump’s call for mass deportations of people in the country illegally.
Demonstrators initially assembled Feb. 3 on the steps of City Hall.
Around 11 a.m., they began marching along First and Spring streets. The group eventually made its way to the area near Crypto.com Arena, where they gathered at an intersection, waving flags and chanting. The group then made its way back north, joined by hundreds more participants and other people in vehicles who joined in the procession through downtown.
The LAPD declared an unlawful assembly at around 4:45 p.m. The call came after officers claimed that people in the crowd began to throw bottles and rocks at them.
“They were warned, they were identified and they were advised that if they do not leave, and if they converge again and continue this illegal activity they will be cited and in some cases arrested,” LAPD Cmdr. Lillian Carranza told CBS2.
Katherine Sanchez, 18, and a senior at Burbank High School, attended the protest outside City Hall with her parents and sister. She held a sign that read, “Ur racism won’t end our strength.”
“It’s very heartwarming,” Sanchez told the Los Angeles Times.
By early afternoon, about 1,000 protesters had swarmed the Spring and Main street overpasses of the Hollywood Freeway, with police on standby to prevent them from trying to walk onto the highway — as many did Feb. 2 during a similar protest.
LAPD formed skirmish lines and working to move protesters away from the overpasses of the Hollywood Freeway during rush hour.
As the crowd moved away, a motorist performed a series of spinouts at the intersection of Alameda and Cesar Chavez, as the crowd cheered. There were no reports of injuries.
The protests against Trump’s immigration policies began Feb. 2.
Protesters gathered on Olvera Street in downtown Los Angeles in what police called a non-permitted demonstration. The crowd swelled to a few thousand as the group marched to City Hall, with many eventually making their way onto the Hollywood Freeway near the Alameda Street exit.
Thousands of protesters blocked traffic on the freeway and clashed with law enforcement before dispersing in the evening. Footage from the scene showed boisterous protesters walking on both sides of the freeway shortly after noon, many waving U.S. and Mexico flags and holding signs criticizing ICE.
The LAPD, which had earlier called the demonstration peaceful, reported that Spring Street, Main Street, Los Angeles Street, Arcadia Street and the Santa Monica (10) Freeway were experiencing major gridlock by the afternoon.
Downtown Los Angeles was already experiencing traffic delays in the area around Crypto.com Arena, where a number of streets were closed for the Grammy Awards.
Police briefly opened the freeway in both directions around midday, when the demonstration had moved back onto surface streets. However, protesters managed to get back on the freeway, leading to another shut down.
The California Highway Patrol stated, “Accessing state highways or roads to protest is unlawful and extremely dangerous because it puts protesters, motorists and first-responders at great risk of injury.”
Video posted later showed a few demonstrators spraying graffiti on the freeway walls and appearing to vandalize at least one car that was stopped in the middle of the crowd.
Since taking office on Jan. 20, Trump has acted on his campaign promise to increase deportations, with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement conducting raids in major cities. Immigration was a major focal point of his campaign, with Trump vowing to conduct mass deportations, expelling people in the country illegally — particularly those charged or convicted of crimes.
He vowed to deploy the military as part of that effort.
In an interview last month, Trump called illegal immigration “an invasion of our country,” and vowed to carry out his deportation plans regardless of cost.
“It’s not a question of a price tag,” Trump told NBC News shortly after his election. “It’s not — really, we have no choice. When people have killed and murdered, when drug lords have destroyed countries, and now they’re going to go back to those countries because they’re not staying here. There is no price tag.”
Trump has insisted that voters — including Latinos — support his call for legal immigration only.
“They want to have borders,” Trump said. “And they like people coming in, but they have to come in with love for the country. They have to come in legally.”
According to Reuters, despite Trump’s strong stance on immigration and deportations, his first presidential administration saw fewer people deported than during the term of his Democratic predecessor, Barack Obama. More people were deported under President Joe Biden in 2024 than during any single year of Trump’s first presidency, Reuters reported.
