I could hear the echo of booms as protests raged, though many in LA unaware of unrest

 I could hear the echo of booms as protests raged, though many in LA unaware of unrest

Many waking up in the Los Angeles area are startled by the news of the National Guard arriving here.

There have been protests on multiple days this week, all in areas where immigration raids were happening. But the LA area is huge and these protests were fairly isolated in small pockets of the city.

The county has nearly 10 million residents and covers 4,000 sq miles.

Many of my friends around town were going about their normal Saturday nights unaware of the unrest or Trump's rare move of using presidential authority to go around the governor to deploy troops here.

The areas where the protests happened both Friday and Saturday were isolated to a part of downtown LA and to Paramount, a small city in south Los Angeles County where raids were happening.

Paramount is a heavily Latino area where 82% of residents are Hispanic, external.

I live close to that area and could hear the echo of "booms" as protests raged.

The National Guard last came for unrest in 2020 - amid protests after George Floyd's death - but it was not a deployment made under presidential authority.

Our mayor made the request to our governor for troops to help quell the unrest. Troops more recently came here for a natural disaster after the LA fires raged earlier this year.