Los Angeles Protests against Immigration Enforcement Violations: After a Day in the Life of a Soldier, a New York City Manifesto
In Los Angeles and dozens of other cities, there will be large anti- Trump demonstrations Saturday. They’re being billed as “No Kings Day” protests. They are going to coincide with the parade in Washington that will be held on Trump’s birthday.
However, things on Wednesday quieted down in some parts of the country, including New York City, where just a few hundred protesters gathered outside the city’s immigration court.
Most of the protests have been peaceful, and confined to small parts of the city. But some protesters have clashed with law enforcement, set cars ablaze, and vandalized buildings with graffiti.
Bass said that when you raid Home depots, tear parents and children apart and run armored caravans through the streets, you’re not trying to keep anyone safe. You’re trying to cause fear.
“I believe that anybody that’s involved in violence, or looting, or vandalism is not supporting the cause of immigrants,” Bass said at a press conference. They wouldn’t be doing that because they know the administration will be very angry at that.
Peaceful protest is legal. Harming a person or property is illegal & will lead to arrest,” Abbott posted on X Tuesday. “@TexasGuard will use every tool & strategy to help law enforcement maintain order.”
Protests will be taking place across the nation on Saturday as part of No Kings Day, a nationwide event organized by progressive groups to protest Trump’s second term actions. He will host a military parade in Washington, D.C. on June 26 to celebrate the U.S. Army’s 250th anniversary.
Downtown Los Angeles was quieter Wednesday morning as it emerged from its first overnight curfew since the start of protests against immigration enforcement raids. The city imposed the curfew after incidents of looting and vandalism on Monday. LA Police say 203 people were arrested for failing to disperse, another 17 for curfew violations, as well as a few other charges.
Several hundred U.S. Marines and 4,000 California National Guard went to Los Angeles over the objections of Democratic Gov. Newsom. National Guard units can be federalized by presidents if they’re under the command of a governor.
But experts in the laws governing the use of the military say the federalized National Guard and active-duty military, such as the Marines, can’t act as police.
“They can’t arrest,” says William Banks, a professor at Syracuse University, who has written extensively on the question. The Posse Comitatus law limits the use of the military in the U.S.
If the President were to invoke the Insurrection Act of 1807, there would be an exception to this restriction. The President has yet to take that step.
The 700 Marines aren’t in LA, but they’re coming. What do they have to do? The Mayor Karen Bass says the Marines have no clue
In the meantime, the 700 Marines are reportedly not yet in LA. Maj. Gen. Scott Sherman said in the video they’re at Naval Weapons Station Seal Beach, where they’re training for civil disorder.
There’s a difference between the riots of 1992 and what’s happening now, that local and state officials didn’t ask for military help. California has asked a federal court to block the government from using troops in LA outside of federal property. LA Mayor Karen Bass said Tuesday night that she doesn’t know what the Marines’ role will be.
“Who knows?” Bass said the bottom line is that they are not told. We have to operate on rumors. So rumor has it, there are 700 Marines that are going to come here. I don’t know what they’re going to do when they arrive.
The Los Angeles National Guard and the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Office: Why do we need a sanctuary in the U.S. Immigration Enforcement?
There were photos posted by ICE showing National Guard members protecting agents. The National Guard members handed over the civilians to law enforcement in Los Angeles.
Some legal experts say this could fall under the Guard’s role protecting federal employees. If they are drawn into aiding immigration enforcement, they risk violating Posse Comitatus.
Some federal-local relationships are not under strain. On Wednesday morning, the U.S. Attorney for the Central District of California, Bill Essayli, announced federal charges against two men for possessing molotov cocktails during protests in Paramount, Calif., and LA. He praised local police and the LA sheriff’s department for their help in the investigation, and local law enforcement representatives at the press conference also thanked the feds.
“We have a very good relationship with our law enforcement partners,” Essayli said. At the same time, he stressed the fact that federal law enforcement would not be bound by state restrictions on immigration enforcement.
“Some people think that California is a sanctuary for aliens from federal immigration laws,” Essayli said. “Federal laws are applicable in this area, and nothing they’ve done to date has affected our ability to carry out our immigration enforcement efforts.”
The Mexican Revolution: What are we doing now? Kilmar Armando Garcia, the U.S. Marines and the National Guard?
McLaughlin: There are questions about who is financially backing the protests. There’s some activity on the ground that it seems that is highly coordinated, and that there might be a financial backer that could be even a foreign adversary, and we are having ICE, or, excuse me, the IRS and the FBI, look further into who might be backing these protests.
She said that there was some activity on the ground and that it may be a financial backer that was foreign.
“No, I don’t say the governor and the mayor — I said, somebody’s paying them — I think. And if they’re not, they’re just troublemakers. What do I have to tell you? But I believe somebody’s paying them,” Trump told reporters who had traveled with him to North Carolina.
In a conversation with NPR’s Steve Inskeep, McLaughlin also criticized California leaders for failing to restore order, spoke about deportation numbers and discussed Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, a Maryland man mistakenly deported to El Salvador, who the Trump administration brought back to the U.S. to face criminal charges in Tennessee.
McLaughlin: “Not true.” It’s the same as the National Guard. These are highly trained members of our military. They have means to control crowds, especially when things get out of control with rioters. Law enforcement personnel have been getting hit with rocks. There have been fires, cars lit on fire, buildings being vandalised and even ICE enforcement officers being attacked. The military members have means of regaining control, because they are highly trained.
McLaughlin: I think at the end of the day, Steve, Americans want peace, and we want peace abroad, and we want peace on our own home soil. The military needs to be brought in to help restore order if Mayor Karen Bass and Governor Newsom are not going to call out the rioters who are attacking our law enforcement.
The Marines have been dispatched to Los Angeles. The national guard does not have the same skills that the Marines have in this particular situation.
I’ve seen the videos and photos of the cars. Secretary Pete Hegseth wants the military to do some things, but I’m not sure what they should do. He’s emphasized a focus on the mission, which he defines as lethality and readiness, meaning readiness for combat. How does sending Marines to protect buildings and cars in LA match up with the mission?
Inskeep: The President’s memorandum in sending National Guard troops to California said that the protests can be construed as a kind of rebellion. That’s the word that’s used. I’d like to know how we can see this as a rebellion. I think a rebellion is a group of people that have a leader and objective. Are you able to identify who’s in charge of this rebellion?
How have we gotten rid of Kilmar Abrego? I’m afraid he’s coming back in the United States with a phone number?
McLaughlin: Last month? I don’t own that phone number. I need to get back to you on that. I know deportations are around in the last 125 days, about 150,000.
Roughly. I think we have been able to ramp up our efforts. I mean, we did inherit, you know, a very broken ICE, a very broken CBP, people who are not able to do their jobs for the last four years.
We don’t know the exact number for this year, but we think the rate of deportations will be higher than other years, but still considerably lower than other years. Is it hard to get the numbers up?
McLaughlin was speaking Steve, we have been facing injunctions from a lot of these judges. We knew it was coming in. I think it’s a matter of, partially, of resources. Congress needs to pass this bill so that we give our ICE enforcement officers more resources, especially during these kinds of protests. You’re going to go from zero to 100 in no time because these officers have not been given the authority to do their jobs for the last four years.
McLaughlin: I would definitely counter that. This has been the most injunctions by a single president. Absolutely, Steve. Look at the numbers.
McLaughlin: No. I think. I mean, take the case of Kilmar Abrego Garcia. Take the case of eight heinous convicted individuals who were deported from South Sudan. A judge in Massachusetts ordered those eight people to come back. This is unprecedented. Why do we have judges in the US who want to bring child rapists and killers back to the United States after being deported? Steve, it’s quite disturbing, and it’s pure activism.
Inskeep: I guess we should note that the Supreme Court, unanimously, among other courts, have insisted that people may well be terrorists, but that their cases should be heard in court. That is what leads to one more question. Since you brought up the subject of Kilmar Abrego, he’s back in the US facing criminal charges. I guess he’ll get his day in court, and he’s facing quite an indictment. The administration said that he could not come back. Now that the United States has brought him back, would you agree that it was always possible to bring him back?
Steve, what matters more to me is that the media and many Democrats think that a lot of people think this is an innocent Maryland man. They’ve been saying that for months. He was a full time human trafficker. It was said that allegedly. I have to counter what you said, Steve, because I completely disagree. I think the environment that we’re in, from a judicial standpoint, is far, far different than anything under Obama or even under the first administration of President Trump.
You said you would leave it to the Department of Justice. I understand. But given that it is now clear that it was possible to bring him back, why did the government not previously bring him back?
McLaughlin: I mean, there’s, of course, you’ve heard the facilitate versus effectuate argument multiple times. He is now – Kilmar Abrego Garcia before was not facing a grand jury in Tennessee and now he is. So the facts on the ground have changed.
Los Angeles, California, Secretary Kristi Noem, and a Newsom-Newsom Attorney contend that the Trump administration is turning the military against American citizens
In Los Angeles on Thursday, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem vowed that the Trump administration will not let up in its crackdown on immigrants without legal status or on demonstrators protesting on immigrants’ behalf.
Noem spoke at a West Los Angeles federal building far from the small downtown area where protests have been concentrated. Calm has mostly returned to the area after two nights of a city-imposed curfew, and city leaders continued to dispute claims by the Trump administration that the city was ever under siege by violent mobs.
LA Mayor Karen Bass has accused Donald Trump of exploiting the protests for political gain and having called the deployment of military troops an unnecessary and provocative escalation. Secretary Noem said it will continue.
She said immigration agents were preparing to round up “literally tens of thousands of targets” in Los Angeles. It’s a scale of operations that has astounded long time immigration officials.
Gregory Bovino, who has been an official with the Customs and Border Protection for almost 30 years, said at the press conference that he had never seen it before. It’s stunningly beautiful.
On Thursday, Noem’s press conference was disrupted when Alex Padilla confronted her. As he shouted a question, he was dragged from the room, pushed to the ground, handcuffed, and briefly detained.
“If this is how the Department of Homeland Security responds to a senator with a question, you can only imagine what they’re doing to farm workers, to cooks, to day laborers” throughout California and across the country, he said to reporters later.
The White House argued that the president has the power to use the military when necessary, and that it had been interfered with and fought with by immigration agents. Justice Department lawyers said the military was not conducting law enforcement duties but would be used to protect or accompany federal agents and their operations.
“At no point in the past three days has there been a rebellion or an insurrection. Nor have these protests risen to the level of protests or riots that Los Angeles and other major cities have seen at points in the past,” the state wrote in its lawsuit against the administration.
“The federal government is now turning the military against American citizens,” Newsom said in a statement when his state sued to get control of the Guard back.. “Sending trained warfighters onto the streets is unprecedented and threatens the very core of our democracy.”
It was the first time in 60 years that a president had activated a state’s National Guard over objections of the state’s governor. President Lyndon Johnson sent troops to Alabama to protect protesters in the civil rights movement.
In his order deploying the guard, Trump said there had been attempts to impede immigration agents in Los Angeles that constituted “a form of rebellion against the authority of the government of the United States.”
The decision to remove the National Guard is a disappointment for the White House and the fight against illegal immigration in the early 2020s, a hearing heard by the District Judge Breyer
In a hearing Thursday, District Judge Charles Breyer rejected an argument by the administration’s lawyer that the courts do not have authority to review a president’s decision on whether the National Guard is needed.
The difference between a constitutional government and a king is significant. It’s not that the leader can simply say something and then it becomes it,” the judge said.
The ruling could still be appealed. It’s a disappointment for the White House in the fight over the powers it can assert in cracking down on illegal immigration. It wasn’t clear when or if the Guard units would be removed.