“I have a lot of family members who migrated here. Some of them legally, some of them illegally.”
He said that he firmly believed that immigrants in the country without legal permission who commit serious or violent crimes should be put through the criminal justice system and be deported if eligible.
But, he added: “The majority of our immigrants do not fit that category”.
“They are our cooks, our gardeners, our nannies, our hotel workers. That’s what my mom and dad did.”
The standoffs over the immigration raids have created difficult optics for local law enforcement agencies whose officers and deputies have clashed with protesters and have at times deployed flash-bang grenades, projectiles and other crowd-control measures.
In Paramount, a city about 25km south of downtown Los Angeles with a large Latino population, demonstrators at the weekend hurled objects at federal and local law enforcement officers.
Luna said on Monday NZT that his deputies had “tried everything to de-escalate the situation” and at one point declared an unlawful assembly.
After some in the crowd attacked deputies with broken cinder blocks, rocks, bottles and pepper spray, “we unfortunately had to respond”, he said, adding that several people were arrested in connection with the attacks.
Sheriff’s deputies also confronted demonstrators a few kilometres west in the city of Compton.
“We do not engage in civil immigration enforcement,” Luna said.
But he acknowledged that the line may seem to be “getting fuzzy” for some Angelenos because the deputies have clashed with protesters while “our federal partners are out running their operations”.
“When they call us for help,” he said of federal law enforcement officers, “just like anybody who would call us for help when they’re being attacked, we respond.”
He added: “You may disagree with what’s happening, and you absolutely have a right to protest peacefully. But the minute you commit an act of violence or you start destroying property, that’s where we and local law enforcement will get involved.”
Federal law enforcement has “made it clear that they’re going to continue these immigration enforcement investigations”, the sheriff said.
And as the weekend has worn on, Luna said, “the level of violence from some protesters is becoming more extreme”.
The Los Angeles Police Department has also responded to the unrest.
Officers helped disperse a crowd in downtown Los Angeles on Saturday NZT after federal officials fired pepper balls at hundreds of protesters.
They were deployed yesterday to a protest in downtown Los Angeles that started near the federal building.
In a statement, the department said its officers would protect the rights of all peaceful protesters but that “acts of violence will not be tolerated”.
Jim McDonnell, the chief of police, has also sought to make clear that his agency was not involved in civil immigration enforcement.
“I ask people in the community to trust the LAPD that we’re not there for that purpose,” he said.
The chief has said that his department has a decades-old policy banning officers from stopping residents only to determine their immigration status.
Los Angeles police officials said they had made at least 10 arrests yesterday in connection with the protests, after making 29 the day before.
McDonnell said that “the people who are out there doing the violence” are not the same people “legitimately out there exercising their first-amendment rights”.
He noted that some protesters have shot commercial-grade fireworks at officers, which he said can be fatal.
“This violence that I’ve seen is disgusting,” he said.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
Written by: Matt Stevens
©2025 THE NEW YORK TIMES
