Hong Kong authorities have urged residents to remain vigilant and prioritise safety when travelling to the United States due to ongoing immigration-related protests in Los Angeles.
Some Hongkongers living in California’s largest city criticised US President Donald Trump’s decision to deploy the National Guard, stating that it would likely escalate the situation further.
The US Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s operation against illegal immigrants in Los Angeles on Friday triggered days of demonstrations by local residents, leading to clashes with law enforcement officers.
Trump, who has made illegal immigration a prime focus of his presidency, ordered some 2,000 National Guard to Los Angeles during the weekend over the objections of Newsom and the city’s mayor, Karen Bass, who have accused him of manufacturing a crisis.
Late Monday, the US Pentagon ordered 700 members of the US Marine Corps to Los Angeles and an additional 2,000 National Guard members to quell the unrest. The extra contingent doubles the number of National Guard troops to more than 4,000.
The Hong Kong government urged residents to attend to personal safety in light of protests across the country.
“The government reminds Hong Kong residents who are planning to travel to the United States, or are already there, to stay aware of the local situation, increase their vigilance, prioritise their safety, avoid crowded areas, and pay close attention to local announcements regarding the latest developments,” a spokesman said on Monday.
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The Security Bureau’s website was updated with the warning, saying protests had “occurred across multiple cities including Los Angeles” since early June, resulting in “violent clashes and injuries”.
The government also reminded Hong Kong residents in the United States who required help to call a 24-hour hotline at (852) 1868, or reach out to the Immigration Department with its mobile app, among other means.
Some Los Angeles-based Hongkongers defended the need for the protests.
A 50-year-old university professor, who only gave his surname, Lam, said the scale of the social unrest was not even close to the Black Lives Matter movement of 2020 or the Rodney King protests of 1992, sparked by a court acquitting four police officers accused of beating an unarmed black man.
“The protests are very localised,” Lam said. “A little fire with one or two [self-driving] Waymo cars set on fire.”
Lam said protesters were expressing their anger at what Trump and the immigration authorities were doing.
“Many of them live with undocumented immigrants and have done so for years. They stand by them with compassion because they want to protect their neighbours and friends who have lived peacefully in the community for years,” he said.
Lam said he and some of his US-born colleagues had started to bring along their identity documents to avoid being mistakenly arrested.
“Even for us, because we do not look like a regular ‘white person’, we have started to carry a federal ID on top of our driving licence to show that we’re actually citizens,” he said.
“There have been a lot of mistaken arrests; we just want to be safe.”
A 29-year-old college lecturer from Hong Kong, surnamed Li, joined the protests as well as the rapid response networks to help defend immigrant workers against raids.
“While the mainstream media is demonising the protesters as ‘violent rioters’ defending ‘criminals’, what I saw instead were local community members looking to defend their families, friends and other communities from state violence,” Li said.
He said he had seen rubber bullets and tear gas being fired amid the clashes.
“I do not feel safe with the federal government overriding state authority to deploy the National Guard in Los Angeles, which further exacerbates the state-sanctioned violence that is already heightening,” he said.
Law, a 52-year-old Hongkonger who has lived in Los Angeles since 1991, expressed reservations about the deployment of the National Guard.
“I think it’s borderline unconstitutional,” said Law, who works in marketing and lives in Santa Monica.
“The only consequence I can see with the arrival of the National Guard is that there may be an escalation, which is the opposite of the intention.”
