Los Angeles was waking Monday up to another day of high tensions with Donald Trump’s administration, the fourth since protests began over efforts by federal immigration authorities’ attempts to arrest illegal migrants in the city and a day after the president ordered in the national guard.
New rallies against US immigration and customs enforcement (Ice) detentions are planned, with the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) announcing an event “to demand justice for detained immigrants and an end to the ongoing human rights abuses by Ice”.
“We will not be intimidated. We will not be silenced,” the civil rights organisation said in a statement on its website.
Related: Los Angeles responds with roaring backlash to Trump’s dramatic escalation
The rally is set to demand the immediate release of David Huerta, a union leader who it said “was unjustly arrested and is still being held by the government, and all unjustly detained individuals”.
But the political rhetoric over the protests has not cooled. Trump’s “border czar” Tom Homan told Fox News early Monday that Ice “took a lot of bad people off the street”.
“We arrested a sexual predator, we arrested gang members, we arrested somebody that had an armed robbery conviction,” Homan said, without providing specifics. “We made LA safer … but you’re not hearing any of this. All you’re hearing is rhetoric about Ice being racist, Ice being Nazis and terrorists – and Governor [Gavin] Newsom feeds that, just like [Democratic US House minority leader] Hakeem Jeffries says he’s going to unmask Ice agents.
“We’re not going to stop.”
Homan also told NBC News that more raids are coming. “I’m telling you what – we’re going to keep enforcing law every day in LA,” he said. “Every day in LA, we’re going to enforce immigration law. I don’t care if they like it or not.”
The tensions between elected state and local officials and the federal government showed signs of escalating further after Newsom said he planned to sue the federal government and dared Trump to arrest him.
In an interview on MSNBC, Newsom said the lawsuit would challenge Trump’s federalizing of the California national guard without the state’s consent.
“Donald Trump has created the conditions you see on your TV tonight,” Newsom told the outlet. “He’s exacerbated the conditions. He’s, you know, lit the proverbial match. He’s putting fuel on this fire, ever since he announced he was taking over the national guard – an illegal act, an immoral act, an unconstitutional act.”
Federal law, he said, “specifically notes they had to coordinate with the governor of the state.
“They never coordinated with the governor of the state.”
On Fox News, Newsom said Trump is “reckless and immoral, and he’s taken the illegal and unconstitutional act of federalizing the national guard and putting lives at risk”.
Newsom added that he is confident that California’s legal challenge would succeed.