LOS ANGELES — A small group of protesters and onlookers gathered outside a federal immigration detention center in downtown Los Angeles on Sunday morning and faced off with more than two dozen California Army National Guard troops who had arrived several hours earlier.

While the protesters chanted and filmed with their cellphones, the Guard members stood silent, armed with long guns and riot helmets in front of a half-dozen military vehicles. They declined to say where they were deployed from.

“Migrants are not criminals!” chanted Estrella Corral, 39, a social worker from Pasadena who was carrying a homemade bilingual sign. “Los Angeles is our home. We are demanding the immigrants who are detained be set free!” she shouted.

Corral, who had been protesting since Friday, defended the gatherings as largely peaceful and condemned President Donald Trump’s deployment of Guard forces as “a show.”

“They’re escalating,” she said of the administration and Trump. “He’s trying to make immigrant communities seem criminal.”

Cars honked and played anti-Trump songs, while drivers passing by shouted at the troops: “Don’t be fascists!”