Related Articles
Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem wants members of the U.S. military to have the authority to arrest protesters in Los Angeles.
According to a letter obtained by The San Francisco Chronicle, Noem wrote to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on Sunday requesting that he authorize “DoD forces to either detain, just as they would at any federal facility guarded by military, lawbreakers under Title 18 until they can be arrested and processed by federal law enforcement, or arrest them.”
Noem’s request came on the eve of Hegseth’s announcement that the military would be mobilizing as many as 700 active duty U.S. Marines for deployment to the Los Angeles area, to potentially be used to tamp down anti-ICE protests. President Donald Trump inflamed the protests over the weekend by federalizing and deploying thousands of National Guard members to the city, while casting it as a war zone overrun by marauding criminals. Local authorities have affirmed that instances of violence and vandalism against property are not reflective of the overall tone of the protests as a whole.
Noem wrote to Hegseth: “We need … support to our law enforcement officers and agents across Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), Customs and Border Protection (CBP), and Federal Protective Services (FPS), as they defend against invasive, violent, insurrectionist mobs that seek to protect invaders and military aged males belonging to identified foreign terrorist organizations, and who seek to prevent the deportation of criminal aliens.”
California Attorney General Rob Bonta wrote in the state’s lawsuit against the Trump administration that “the Posse Comitatus Act has expressly prohibited the use of the active duty armed forces and federalized national guard for civilian law enforcement,” and decried alleged plans to have Marines and National Guard troops “accompany federal immigration enforcement officers on raids throughout Los Angeles,” and “physically interact with or detain civilians.”
The protests taking place in Los Angeles, which are now spreading throughout the country, are not in defense of immigrant criminality that is regularly sensationalized by Noem and the Trump administration. They are a reaction to the brutal, inhumane tactics the federal government has been implementing to target immigrant communities. In recent weeks, ICE has surprised migrants at immigration hearings, thrown teenagers on their way to volleyball practice in detention, ripped infants out of their mothers arms while conducting an arrest, and begun carrying out large scale round ups that — by the admission of Trump’s “immigration czar” Tom Homan — ensnare migrants with no criminal record.
“I feel like we are a case study for what happens when the federal government moves in and takes over power from the state government and from the local entities,” Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass told ABC7 on Tuesday. Bass added that she had “tried to explain to [Homan] that the last thing our city needs is the National Guard. “If we needed the help, we would ask for the help. There’s nothing unusual about doing that, but why did they need to take power away from the governor?”
“If the raids hadn’t happened, we would not be looking at the violence in the street right now,” Bass added, noting that the ICE raids were creating a sense of fear in L.A.’s substantial immigrant community.
Now the Trump administration seems to be actively attempting to inflame tensions even further by not only threatening to send active duty members of the military into the fray — but potentially giving them the power to act as law enforcement against civilians. Such a move hasn’t been made by a president since 1992, when former President George H.W. Bush invoked the Insurrection Act during the Los Angeles riots that broke out after four officers charged in the beating of Rodney King were acquitted.
“U.S. Marines serve a valuable purpose for this country — defending democracy. They are not political pawns. The Secretary of Defense is illegally deploying them onto American streets so Trump can have a talking point at his parade this weekend,” California Governor Gavin Newsom wrote Sunday on social media.
“This is a red line, and they are crossing it,” he added.
