Los Angeles police order immigration protesters in downtown to go home

LOS ANGELES (Reuters): Police declared all of downtown Los Angeles to be an unlawful assembly area and ordered protesters to go home on Sunday night after a third day of violence hit demonstrations against President Donald Trump's immigration policy.

National Guard troops - deployed by Trump at the weekend to help quell the protests in a move that California Governor Gavin Newsom called unlawful - guarded federal government buildings on Sunday.

The unrest in Los Angeles has become a major flashpoint in Trump's signature effort to clamp down on illegal immigration.

The Republican president has pledged to deport record numbers of people who are in the country illegally and to lock down the U.S.-Mexico border, setting the border enforcement agency ICE a daily goal of arresting at least 3,000 migrants.

California state and local officials, mainly Democrats, accuse Trump of inflaming initially small-scale protests by mounting a federal response. He calls the protesters insurrectionists.

Several self-driving cars from Alphabet's (GOOGL.O), opens new tab Waymo were set ablaze on a downtown street on Sunday evening.

Los Angeles police said some protesters had thrown concrete projectiles, bottles and other items at police. Police declared several rallies to be unlawful assemblies and later extended that to include the whole downtown area. Police on horseback tried to control the crowds.

Demonstrators shouted "Shame on you!" at police and some appeared to throw objects, video images showed. One group blocked the 101 Freeway, a major downtown thoroughfare.

City Police Chief Jim McDonnell told a media briefing on Sunday evening that people had a right to protest peacefully but the violence he had seen by some was "disgusting" and the protests were getting out of control.

Police said they had arrested 10 people on Sunday and 29 the previous night, adding arrests were continuing.