Downtown Los Angeles was under curfew early Wednesday morning after Mayor Karen Bass announced the nighttime restrictions, an effort to calm protests after days of demonstrations against the Trump administration’s immigration policies.
Ms. Bass announced the curfew at a news conference on Tuesday evening. She said that it would run from 8 p.m. to 6 a.m. and that she expected it to last for several days.
The mayor emphasized that the area under curfew was around one square mile, in a city of around 500 square miles, and was intended to prevent scattered episodes of looting and damage to businesses. Nearly 200 people were arrested on Tuesday in Los Angeles before the curfew went into effect, officials said, the most in a day since the protests began Friday.
Ms. Bass said that 23 businesses downtown had been looted on Tuesday and that graffiti had caused “significant damages” to property.
The curfew did not apply to residents of the area, homeless people, members of the news media or public safety personnel. In a message to residents, Leslie Ridings and Cassy Horton, founders of the Downtown Los Angeles Residents Association, said they were “grateful for the resident exemption.”
Some businesses closed early on Tuesday. After the restrictions began, some protesters lingered in the streets near a complex of federal buildings that have been a focus of protests, and the Los Angeles Police Department said it had made some arrests. But the area soon emptied, and streets that had been packed with demonstrators the night before were almost entirely clear.
Jesus Jiménez, Jill Cowan and Mimi Dwyer contributed reporting from Los Angeles.
