As more troops enter Los Angeles, dueling narratives over how to keep the peace
| Los Angeles
As protests on the streets of Los Angeles sparked by migrant arrests entered a fourth tense day, California Gov. Gavin Newsom and President Donald Trump ramped up their sparring over the president’s unilateral decision to deploy thousands of National Guardsmen.
On Monday, California sued the administration over what it called an illegal federal action that infringed on Governor Newsom’s authority. Its lawsuit asserts that Mr. Trump acted unlawfully when he invoked the threat of a “rebellion” to justify sending in troops. States normally request National Guard support during emergencies such as natural disasters; unilateral actions by Washington are exceedingly rare.
In a further escalation, the Trump administration said Monday it would double the number of Guard troops to 4,000, and that it would also deploy a battalion of U.S. Marines to Los Angeles, in support of the National Guard. The move recalls a 2020 debate inside the White House over whether to use the military to put down violent protests following the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis. At that time, President Trump, who wanted to send in federal troops, was talked out of a military show of force by his defense secretary, among others. But his current administration is staffed by loyalists who seem to be more aligned with his views.
Why We Wrote This
California has filed a lawsuit, while the Trump administration is doubling the National Guard troops and deploying the Marines. Both sides are sparring over the cause and nature of the unrest and whether the federal government is helping put out a fire – or pouring on gasoline.
Critics have raised questions about the efficacy of deploying military units for this purpose, since their rules limit what they can do. As more soldiers are sent in, it’s unclear whether they are intended as a symbolic show of force that may end up never being used, or, as some Democrats warn, a first step in an authoritarian power play. The Pentagon is reportedly still working out guidelines for the Marines being sent to LA, including how they should respond to any threats from protesters.
Behind the clash are dueling narratives over the cause and nature of the unrest in Los Angeles and whether the federal government is assisting to put out a fire – or pouring gasoline on the flames.
Officials in California argue that President Trump’s decision to deploy soldiers to guard federal personnel and facilities actually provoked more people to join what had been small-scale protests, causing more violence to spread. “We didn’t have a problem until Trump got involved,” Mr. Newsom said on X on Sunday. He said the deployment seemed “intentionally designed to inflame the situation” and should be rescinded.
President Trump insisted that California should be grateful to the federal government for sending the National Guard to handle the situation. “If we had not done so, Los Angeles would have been completely obliterated,” he wrote on Truth Social on Monday.
He and other administration officials fault Governor Newsom, who is seen as a likely presidential candidate in 2028, for not acting decisively to quell a threat to public safety. “The President chose the safety of this community over waiting for Governor Newsom to get some sanity,” Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem told CBS’s “Face the Nation” on Sunday.
The last time a president bypassed a governor to send in National Guard troops was in 1965, when Lyndon Johnson ordered the Alabama Guard to protect civil rights demonstrators marching from Selma to Montgomery. This time, the White House federalized the National Guard to quell protests, not protect them.
Experts say federal law is so broad in this area that it’s unlikely a court would block Mr. Trump’s actions.
“It’s lawful, but awful,” says Lt. Col. (ret.) Rachel VanLandingham, a former Air Force judge advocate. “Legally, the bases for federalizing the National Guard are pretty [darn] broad.”
The White House memo issued June 7 said that protests against federal agents involved in arrests of unauthorized immigrants “constitute a form of rebellion against the authority of the Government of the United States.” The National Guard is needed to “temporarily protect” federal officials and federal property, it stated.
The memo “was very carefully written,” says Lieutenant Colonel VanLandingham, now a professor at Southwestern Law School in Los Angeles. “If you’re just protecting people who do their jobs, and you’re protecting federal property, that seems to be legally viable.”
“The only invasion that I see is the invasion of ICE”
Late Monday morning, hundreds of people rallied in a downtown park near Los Angeles’ City Hall to demand the release of David Huerta, the president of California’s Service Employees International Union, who was arrested during Friday’s protests. He was later released on bail, but charged with impeding law enforcement; he said he had been monitoring their actions. Other cities, including San Francisco, also held protests Monday in solidarity with Mr. Huerta.
Around noon, a smaller group walked to the nearby federal building, which houses the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Police helicopters buzzed overhead. In all directions, anti-ICE graffiti could be seen on buildings, signs, bus stops, and sidewalks in a district that became a focal point of protests on Friday after word spread of ICE teams making arrests. The protests later spread to Paramount, a Latino neighborhood to the south, and to neighboring Compton.
Troops from the California National Guard stood at alert a few feet away while protesters shouted call-and-response chants against Mr. Trump and ICE.
“Up, up, up with the immigrants. Down, down, down with Trump.”
“Money for jobs and education. Not for ICE and deportation.”
“Who’s got the power? We’ve got the power. What kind of power? People power.”
One of the demonstrators, Emi Lockwood, said she had been downtown over the weekend and helped to organize Monday’s protest using social media. Originally from South America and now living in the San Gabriel Valley, Ms. Lockwood denounced what she called the kidnapping of local residents by ICE and called for an end to immigration raids.
By talking about an “immigrant invasion” and sending in troops, Mr. Trump is sowing fear in the community, she said. “The only invasion that I see is the invasion of ICE and the invasion of Homeland Security, the federal agents, the riot gear, all of that. That’s the real invasion,” she added.
Paul Nauta, a union petitioner from Riverside County, watched the LA protests over the weekend, then decided to join Monday’s demonstration downtown. He grew up in a Hispanic community and has Hispanic family members. He says the National Guard deployment seemed unnecessary and that militarized law enforcement had made the situation worse.
He condemns violence by protesters, including the torching of cars. “I think it’s horrible,” he says. But he blamed the unrest on the actions of ICE and its presence in the community. “We don’t want ICE taking away the community that has built so much here and does so much here.”
Tensions between local and federal law enforcement
Trump administration officials say their enforcement operations are aimed at taking criminals off the streets. Border czar Tom Homan told MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” Monday that ICE officers in Los Angeles had served three warrants “at locations based on a large criminal conspiracy.” When arresting “bad guys,” he added, others may be detained even if they’re not the target. If ICE “arrests that bad guy and other illegal aliens are there, we’re going to arrest them.”
Mr. Homan, who as a senior ICE official under President Barack Obama helped to deport millions of unauthorized migrants, excoriated demonstrators in Los Angeles who had tried to block ICE agents from enforcing federal law. Protesters have First Amendment rights, “but they can’t cross that line… of putting their hands on officers,” he said.
California has embraced its status as a sanctuary state, and the Los Angeles Police Department does not take part in immigration enforcement operations. This has created tensions between local and federal law enforcement that the deployment of troops could exacerbate.
Ms. Noem complained that police hadn’t done enough to protect outnumbered federal officers, asserting that the LAPD “waited hours to respond” to calls for backup. “They’ve waited until we have an officer in a dangerous situation, until they come in and help us bring peace,” she said on the CBS News program “Face the Nation.” (LAPD has said that its response time was 55 minutes, not hours.)
In 1992, Los Angeles requested military units to help quell days of riots that followed the acquittal of several police officers filmed beating Rodney King. President George H.W. Bush invoked the Insurrection Act when he authorized that deployment. Analysts say Mr. Trump may also be considering the authority granted by that statute, but he has for now settled on another legal mechanism to intervene in Los Angeles.
“This is uncharted territory. It’s pushing on the boundaries of constitutional permissibility,” says Joshua Kastenberg, a former lawyer and judge for the U.S. Air Force.
The last president to unilaterally federalize the National Guard was Richard Nixon, who in 1970 deployed service members in New York during a U.S. Postal Service strike. Nearly a century earlier, in 1894, President Grover Cleveland sent National Guard troops into Chicago during a railroad worker strike known as the Pullman Strike.
Most of the time, the National Guard is mobilized at the behest of a state governor. When the National Guard is federalized, however, the president has direct control. In this case, Mr. Trump has ordered the soldiers to protect federal personnel and federal property.
But even that modest-sounding mission could be a challenge for service members with limited, if any, training in domestic law enforcement. Active-duty troops “are trained to fight and kill, not engage in Fourth, Fifth and Sixth Amendment policing activities,” says Lt. Col. VanLandingham.
In a statement about the deployment of around 700 Marines, U.S. Northern Command said these forces had been “trained in de-escalation, crowd control, and standing rules for the use of force.”
The June 7 presidential memo doesn’t specifically mention Los Angeles and sets a 60-day timetable for the deployment of federal troops, potentially giving the White House flexibility to respond to ICE-related unrest in other cities.
This story was reported by Ali Martin in Los Angeles, Simon Montlake in Boston, and Henry Gass in Austin, Texas.
