WASHINGTON — Donald Trump made no secret of his willingness to exert a maximalist approach to enforcing immigration laws and keeping order as he campaigned to return to the White House. The fulfillment of that pledge is now on full display in Los Angeles.
The president has put hundreds of National Guard troops on the streets to quell protests over his administration’s immigration raids, a deployment that state and city officials say has only inflamed tensions. Trump called up the California National Guard over the objections of Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom — the first time in 60 years a president has done so — and is deploying active-duty troops to support the guard.
By overriding Newsom, Trump is already going beyond what he did to respond to Black Lives Matter protests in 2020, when he warned he could send troops to contain demonstrations that turned violent if governors in the states did not act to do so themselves. Trump said in September of that year that he “can’t call in the National Guard unless we’re requested by a governor” and that “we have to go by the laws.”
But now, the past and current president is moving swiftly, with little internal restraint to test the bounds of his executive authority in order to deliver on his promise of mass deportations. What remains to be seen is whether Americans will stand by him once it’s operationalized nationwide, as Trump looks to secure billions from Congress to dramatically expand the country’s detention and deportation operations.
For now, Trump is betting that they will.
“If we didn’t do the job, that place would be burning down,” Trump told reporters Monday, speaking about California. “I feel we had no choice. … I don’t want to see what happened so many times in this country.”
‘A crisis of Trump’s own making’
The protests began to unfold Friday as federal authorities arrested immigrants in several locations throughout the sprawling city, including in the fashion district of Los Angeles and at a Home Depot. The anger over the administration’s actions quickly spread, with protests in Chicago and Boston as demonstrations in the southern California city also continued Monday.
But Trump and other administration officials remained unbowed, capitalizing on the images of burning cars, graffiti and Mexican flags — which, while not dominant, started to become the defining images of the unrest — to bolster their law-and-order cause.
Leaders in the country’s most populous state were similarly defiant.
California officials sued the Trump administration Monday, with the state’s attorney general, Rob Bonta, arguing that the deployment of troops “trampled” on the state’s sovereignty and pushing for a restraining order. The initial deployment of 300 National Guard troops was expected to quickly expand to the full 4,000 that has been authorized by Trump.
The state’s senior Democratic senator, Alex Padilla, said in an interview that “this is absolutely a crisis of Trump’s own making.”
“There are a lot of people who are passionate about speaking up for fundamental rights and respecting due process, but the deployment of National Guard only serves to escalate tensions and the situation,” Padilla told The Associated Press. “It’s exactly what Donald Trump wanted to do.”
Padilla slammed the deployment as “counterproductive” and said the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department was not advised ahead of the federalization of the National Guard. His office has also pushed the Pentagon for a justification on the deployment, and “as far as we’re told, the Department of Defense isn’t sure what the mission is here,” Padilla added.
Candidate Trump previewed immigration strategy during campaign
Much of this was predictable.
During his 2024 presidential campaign, Trump pledged to conduct the largest domestic deportation operation in American history to expel millions of immigrants in the country without legal status. He often praised President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s military-style immigration raids, and the candidate and his advisers suggested they would have broad power to deploy troops domestically to enact Trump’s far-reaching immigration and public safety goals.
Trump’s speedy deployment in California of troops against those whom the president has alluded to as “insurrectionists” on social media is a sharp contrast to his decision to issue no order or formal request for National Guard troops during the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, despite his repeated and false assertions that he had made such an offer.
Trump is now surrounded by officials who have no interest in constraining his power. In 2020, Trump’s then-Pentagon chief publicly rebuked Trump’s threat to send in troops using the Insurrection Act, an 1807 law that empowers the president to use the military within the U.S. and against American citizens.
Current Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth signaled support on his personal X account for deploying troops to California, writing, “The National Guard, and Marines if need be, stand with ICE,” referring to the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency.
The Defense Department said Monday it is deploying about 700 active-duty Marines to Los Angeles to support National Guard troops already on the ground to respond to the protests.
White House responds to an ‘incompetent’ governor
Protesters over the weekend blocked off a major freeway and burned self-driving cars as police responded with tear gas, rubber bullets and flash-bang grenades in clashes that encompassed several downtown blocks in Los Angeles and led to several dozen arrests. Much of the city saw no violence.
But the protests prompted Trump to issue the directive Saturday mobilizing the California National Guard over Newsom’s objections. The president and his top immigration aides accused the governor of mismanaging the protests, with border czar Tom Homan asserting in a Fox News interview Monday that Newsom stoked anti-ICE sentiments and waited two days to declare unlawful assembly in the city.
Trump told Newsom in a phone call Friday evening to get the situation in Los Angeles under control, a White House official said. It was only when the administration felt Newsom was not restoring order in the city — and after Trump watched the situation escalate for 24 hours and White House officials saw imagery of federal law enforcement officers with lacerations and other injuries — that the president moved to deploy the Guard, according to the official, who was granted anonymity to discuss private deliberations.
“He’s an incompetent governor,” Trump said Monday. “Look at the job he’s doing in California. He’s destroying one of our great states.”
Local law enforcement officials said Los Angeles police responded as quickly as they could once the protests erupted, and Newsom repeatedly asserted that state and city authorities had the situation under control.
“Los Angeles is no stranger to demonstrations and protests and rallies and marches,” Padilla said. “Local law enforcement knows how to handle this and has a rapport with the community and community leaders to be able to allow for that.”
The aggressive moves prompted blowback from some of Trump’s erstwhile allies. Ileana Garcia, a Florida state senator who in 2016 founded the group Latinas for Trump and was hired to direct Latino outreach, called the recent escalation “unacceptable and inhumane.”
