Dive Brief:
- President Donald Trump on Saturday ordered the deployment of 2,000 California Army National Guard soldiers “to support the protection of federal personnel and federal property in the greater Los Angeles area” and ordered 500 Marines to prepare to deploy as protests against U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement raids in Los Angeles escalated. About 300 National Guard troops are on the ground in Los Angeles as of today, according to news reports.
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Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass, in a Sunday statement, called the deployment “a chaotic escalation” after the Los Angeles Police Department posted on Friday that the demonstrations were peaceful and said it would “maintain a heightened readiness posture … to ensure the continued safety of our communities.”
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Trump said on Truth Social that the deployment was necessary “to liberate Los Angeles from the Migrant Invasion, and put an end to these Migrant riots,” while California Gov. Gavin Newsom, local officials, Democratic governors and civil rights organizations decried it as federal overreach.
Dive Insight:
Saying “we didn’t have a problem until Trump got involved,” Newsom formally requested the Trump administration rescind its troop deployment in Los Angeles County. He said late Sunday that he plans to sue the president.
Newsom’s legal affairs secretary sent a letter to U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on Sunday stating “law enforcement authorities from the City and County of Los Angeles are safeguarding public safety and, as demonstrated by the robust law enforcement response yesterday evening to protect federal facilities, local law enforcement resources are sufficient to maintain order.”
The letter further states the deployment “is a serious breach of state sovereignty that seems intentionally designed to inflame the situation.”
The last time a president sent in the National Guard against a state’s wishes was in 1965, when President Lyndon Johnson unilaterally invoked the Insurrection Act to provide protection for civil rights activists in Alabama. Trump did not invoke the Insurrection Act on Saturday but relied on Title 10 authority, which allows him to call in troops if the U.S. isin invaded by a foreign nation or there is a rebellion or danger of a rebellion against U.S. authority.
Acting ICE Director Todd Lyons said in a statement that “it took over two hours for the Los Angeles Police Department to respond” after “over 1,000 rioters surrounded and attacked a federal building” on Friday.
LAPD Chief Jim McDonnell said during a press conference late Sunday that “at no point did LAPD ignore or intentionally delay” the ICE agents’ request for help. McDonnell said officers were on the scene within 38 minutes, and their response was impacted by “traffic, crowd density and hazardous conditions from tear gas deployed by federal forces.”
McDonnell said LAPD has had “very little” interaction with the National Guard aside from a conference call Sunday afternoon. “I would have said we could handle this,” he said. “I believe we would have gone through a number of steps before we requested the National Guard.”
LAPD typically waits until the department has gone to 50% deployment and requests mutual aid from the county sheriff and the 44 other police departments in Los Angeles County before seeking federal help.
“That didn’t occur in this case. It was done from the top down,” McConnell said. “They’re working for the U.S. Army, not for the California state National Guard.”
He said before he could answer whether the federal troops were necessary, “I would need to know more about what their capabilities are, what their role is intended to be.”
He added, “We have great cops here in southern California that work together all the time, so we have tremendous capability here.”
Democratic governors issued a statement in support of California. “President Trump’s move to deploy California’s National Guard is an alarming abuse of power,” the Democratic Governors Association said in a June 8 statement. ““Further, threatening to send the U.S. Marines into American neighborhoods undermines the mission of our service members, erodes public trust, and shows the Trump administration does not trust local law enforcement.”
The American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California, Amnesty International and the NAACP also issued statements of support for Gov. Newsom. “The Trump Administration is weaponizing fear to divide and destabilize,” the NAACP posted on X Saturday
