Trump deploys National Guard to LA

LOS ANGELES — Tensions boiled over in Los Angeles on Sunday for a third day, hours after President Donald Trump took the extraordinary action of ordering at least 2,000 National Guard members to assist immigration agents clashing with demonstrators.

Near downtown, federal law enforcement officials fired canisters of tear gas at a group protesting immigration raids. Department of Homeland Security officers were among those who fired less-than-lethal rounds outside the Metropolitan Detention Center, where a crowd had been growing since the morning. The officers included at least one member of Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s Special Response Team, which wears military fatigues.

The announcement late Saturday by Trump — who said that any protest or act of violence that impeded officials would be considered a “form of rebellion” — was an escalation that put Los Angeles, and California, squarely at the center of his administration’s immigration crackdown.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom called the rare use of federal powers to bypass his authority “purposefully inflammatory” on Saturday night, adding that there was “no unmet need” and that the deployment was “the wrong mission and will erode public trust.”

On Sunday, in a formal letter, Newsom asked Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to rescind Trump’s order to deploy the National Guard in Los Angeles. “We didn’t have a problem until Trump got involved,” Newsom said in a social media post. “This is a serious breach of state sovereignty — inflaming tensions while pulling resources from where they’re actually needed.”

Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass on Sunday said sending the National Guard to Los Angeles is “a chaotic escalation,” in the aftermath of immigration raids that she said have terrorized community members.

Nearly 300 members of the California National Guard took up positions at three sites around Los Angeles on Sunday morning, according to Newsom’s office. They were the first of what Trump said would be at least 2,000 National Guard members being sent to deal with the demonstrations. Izzy Gardon, a spokesperson for Newsom, said the soldiers were deployed after Trump credited them with having turned the situation around.

Armed and in camouflage, the troops arrived Sunday at the start of what was expected to be a third consecutive day of demonstrations over the administration’s recent raids on workplaces in search of immigrants in the country without legal permission.

Protesters gathered midmorning outside the Metropolitan Detention Center in downtown Los Angeles, where the smell of tear gas still lingered from demonstrations overnight and where National Guard troops were deployed Sunday morning. “This is a show Trump wants to make LA look out of control!” one protester yelled.

Zander Calderon, 36, who was born and raised in northeast Los Angeles, said he knew several people who had received deportation orders and one neighbor who had self-deported. “This is a real threat. This is not just talk,” he said, wearing a red, green and white poncho, matching the colors of the Mexican flag, with an image of the Virgin Mary. “What I fear the most is, I fear that we will lose freedom, we will live in a dictatorship,” he said.

The arrival of the National Guard, under federal control, represents a physical manifestation of Trump’s protracted fights with California and other liberal enclaves over their policies — including his opposition to the immigrant-friendly sanctuary policies of large liberal cities.

Trump suggested deploying U.S. military forces in a similar manner during his first term, to suppress outbreaks of violence during the nationwide protests over the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis. He opted against doing so at the time, but he has repeatedly raised the idea of using troops to secure border states.

In 2020, in the final days of Trump’s first presidential term, military helicopters were used to rout peaceful protesters demonstrating against police violence near the White House. Civilian law enforcement officers carried out operations on the ground.

Trump and his aides have often lamented that not enough was done by Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz to quell protests that followed the death of Floyd in 2020.

During a campaign rally in 2023, Trump made clear that he was not going to hold back during a second term. “You’re supposed to not be involved in that, you just have to be asked by the governor or the mayor to come in — the next time, I’m not waiting,” Trump said.

Two Defense Department officials said Sunday that military officials were still trying to figure out the extent to which the troops would engage with protesters.

The troops, part of the Army’s 79th Infantry Brigade Combat Team from the California National Guard, have been tasked with defending federal property and federal personnel in the operational area, the officials said. The troops were read their rules of engagement — specifically the rules for the use of force — just before they deployed, officials said. But Pentagon officials have not said publicly exactly what those rules are.

Sunday’s deployment was the first time since 1965 that a president activated a state’s National Guard force without a request from that state’s governor, according to Elizabeth Goitein, senior director of the liberty and national security program at the Brennan Center, an independent law and policy organization. The last time was when President Lyndon B. Johnson sent troops to Alabama to protect Civil Rights demonstrators in 1965, she said.

The National Guard was last federalized in 1992, Goitein said, when President George H.W. Bush sent troops to Los Angeles to control riots after police officers were acquitted in the beating of Rodney King. That deployment was requested by the Republican governor of California at the time, Pete Wilson.

“For the federal government to take over the California National Guard, without the request of the governor, to put down protests is truly chilling,” said Erwin Chemerinsky, the dean of the law school at the University of California, Berkeley. “It is using the military domestically to stop dissent.”

The directive signed by Trump cites “10 U.S.C. 12406,” referring to a specific provision within Title 10 of the U.S. Code on Armed Services. Part of that provision allows the federal deployment of National Guard forces if “there is a rebellion or danger of a rebellion against the authority of the Government of the United States.”

The provision also states that the president may call into federal service “members and units of the National Guard of any State in such numbers as he considers necessary to repel the invasion, suppress the rebellion, or execute those laws.”

Trump’s directive said, “To the extent that protests or acts of violence directly inhibit the execution of the laws, they constitute a form of rebellion against the authority of the Government of the United States.”

Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, said in a statement Saturday night that Trump was deploying the National Guard in response to “violent mobs” that she said had attacked federal law enforcement and immigration agents. The troops would “address the lawlessness that has been allowed to fester,” she said.

The American Civil Liberties Union over the weekend condemned Trump’s order. Hina Shamsi, who directs the ACLU National Security Project, called the action “unnecessary, inflammatory and an abuse of power.”

“The Trump administration is putting Angelenos in danger, creating legal and ethical jeopardy for troops, and recklessly undermining our foundational democratic principle that the military should not police civilians,” she said in a statement.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

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