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President Donald Trump called for the military to be deployed against anti-Immigrations and Customs Enforcements (ICE) protests in Los Angeles. The protests, which began in response to ICE raids at various workplaces on Friday, escalated over the weekend after Trump ordered the deployment of 2,000 National Guard troops into the city over the objections of Mayor Karen Bass and California Gov. Gavin Newsom, both Democrats.
“Looking really bad in L.A. BRING IN THE TROOPS!!!” Trump wrote early this morning on Truth Social. In another post, the president called for law enforcement to “ARREST THE PEOPLE IN FACE MASKS, NOW!”
U.S. Northern Command issued a statement on Sunday indicating that “approximately 500 Marines from 2nd Battalion, 7th Marines at Twentynine Palms, California, are in a prepared to deploy status should they be necessary to augment and support the DoD’s protection of federal property and personnel efforts.”
The call from the president to deploy the military against U.S. citizens — a power that hasn’t been invoked by a president since the 1992 Rodney King riots in Los Angeles — would be a serious escalation of federal involvement in what local authorities say remains a manageable, if in sporadic instances violent, outbreak of public protest.
Some Republican lawmakers and Trump administration officials have indicated their support for the deployment of military personnel to California. On Sunday night, Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) shared a screenshot of a controversial opinion piece he wrote in 2020 calling for the military to be deployed against Black Lives Matter protests. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth wrote on social media Sunday night that “if violence continues, active duty Marines at Camp Pendleton will also be mobilized — they are on high alert.”
The president and his administration have targeted Los Angeles and several other so-called “sanctuary cities” — cities and other state or local jurisdictions that limit its cooperation with federal immigration enforcement — as sites to conduct highly publicized ICE raids on immigrant communities. While the administration claims that they are focusing enforcement actions on criminals, acting ICE Director Tom Homan admitted today that ICE has been sweeping up migrants who just so happened to be at the location of one of their targets, including mothers, high school students, and migrants arriving to immigration court for scheduled hearings. As the administration’s enforcement actions grow in intensity, and stray from the bounds of legality, Trump and his allies have claimed protests against their increasingly authoritarian tactics are effectively an illegal impediment to federal operations.
“A once great American City, Los Angeles, has been invaded and occupied by Illegal Aliens and Criminals.Now violent, insurrectionist mobs are swarming and attacking our Federal Agents to try and stop our deportation operations,”Trump wrote on Sunday in a post that bears little resemblance to what is actually happening in the city. “Order will be restored, the Illegals will be expelled, and Los Angeles will be set free.”Trump claimed on Monday that Los Angeles would be “completely obliterated” if he hadn’t sent in the National Guard, and told reporters that it would be “great” if his administration arrested Newsom.
In a Sunday press conference, Bass said that “what we’re seeing in Los Angeles is chaos that has been provoked by the administration.”
“When you’re at Home Depot and workplaces, when you tear parents and children apart, and when you run armored caravans to our streets you cause fear and you cause panic and deploying federalized troops is a dangerous escalation,” Bass said. “We need to be real about this, this is about another agenda, it’s not about public safety.”
Bass added that the city remained committed to protecting the First Amendment rights of protesters, but that those legal protections do “not give you the right to be violent, to create chaos, or to vandalize property.”
Newsom formally requested on Sunday that Trump revoke his federalization of the National Guard and withdraw them from the city. “In dynamic and fluid situations such as the one in Los Angeles, state and local authorities are the most appropriate ones to evaluate the need for resources to safeguard life and property. Indeed, the decision to deploy the National Guard, without appropriate training or orders, risks seriously escalating the situation,” he wrote.
“There is currently no need for the National Guard to be deployed in Los Angeles, and to do so in this unlawful manner and for such a lengthy period is a serious breach of state sovereignty that seems intentionally designed to inflame the situation,” Newsom added.
