Gov. Abbott to deploy National Guard across Texas in response to protests

WASHINGTON

Gov. Greg Abbott said he will deploy the Texas National Guard to multiple locations across the US state to "ensure peace and order."

"Texas National Guard will be deployed to locations across the state to ensure peace & order. Peaceful protest is legal. Harming a person or property is illegal & will lead to arrest," Abbott said on X late Tuesday.

Texas Guard will use "every tool & strategy" to help law enforcement maintain order, he added.

Abbott also signed a law to ensure law enforcement officers can use "every tool available to combat criminals without being targeted by rogue prosecutors."

His move comes as protests against the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown intensify in Los Angeles and spread to more than a dozen US cities, including Dallas, Austin, Houston, and San Antonio.

Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass declared an overnight curfew in the heart of the city Tuesday evening.

President Donald Trump on Tuesday pledged to "liberate" the US' second-largest city during remarks delivered to army troops at Fort Bragg in the state of North Carolina, claiming the protests sparked by his mass deportation campaign are "a full-blown assault on peace, on public order and on national sovereignty, carried out by rioters bearing foreign flags with the aim of continuing a foreign invasion of our country."

Trump has deployed roughly 4,000 US National Guardsmen and 700 Marines to the streets of Los Angeles in defiance of warnings from California Gov. Gavin Newsom and Mayor Bass that the action would only serve to further inflame already-heightened tensions.

Protests erupted Friday after Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents raided local businesses and detained hundreds of people suspected of living in the US illegally. The Trump administration has continued to carry out the raids in defiance of the community's opposition.