President Trump said Monday that the city would have been “completely obliterated” if he had not deployed the National Guard.

President Trump responded by sidestepping the state’s Democratic governor and deploying 2,000 National Guard members to the city. He portrayed the demonstrations as an existential threat to the country, and called the protesters “insurrectionists,” in what may become a rationale for him to invoke the Insurrection Act.

Downtown Los Angeles has been declared an unlawful assembly area following protests that erupted this weekend over the Trump administration's immigration crackdown.