Trump Calls Out the National Guard as Riots Grip the Golden State

Late Saturday, President Trump sent a memo to Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, using his authority under 10 U.S.C. § 12406, to direct at least 2,000 National Guard troops to California in response to “numerous incidents of violence and disorder” in Los Angeles against ICE and others involved in immigration enforcement. It reminds me of a joke commonly made when I was a young INS trial attorney in San Francisco in the mid-90s: “The good news is California is the future. The bad news is the future sucks.”

ICE Arrests 44

All this began on June 6, when ICE fanned out across Los Angeles and made 44 arrests at about seven different locations, “including several Home Depot parking lots and a doughnut shop”.

Note that agents apparently had search warrants to go into at least three of those locations, including a warehouse where a federal judge had concluded “there was probable cause the employer was using fictitious documents for some of its workers”.

In response, protestors gathered at an ICE detention center in L.A., some chanting, some holding signs, and others spraying graffiti. To protect the building:

Officers holding protective shields stood shoulder to shoulder to block an entrance. Some tossed tear gas canisters to disperse the crowd. Officers wearing helmets and holding batons then forced the protesters away from the building by forming a line and walking slowly down the street.

In the midst of all of this, the president of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) of California was arrested for blocking a law-enforcement vehicle and interfering with federal officers, and L.A. Mayor Karen Bass (D), who described herself as “deeply angered by” the ICE enforcement actions, complained the agency’s “tactics sow terror in our communities and disrupt basic principles of safety in our city”.

Standoff in Paramount

The focus of the protests shifted on Saturday to the vicinity of a Home Depot in neighboring Paramount, a “heavily Latino city … south of Los Angeles”, in response to the staging of federal agents at a nearby DHS office.

As the Los Angeles Times reports: “Word quickly spread on social media. Passersby honked their horns. Soon, protesters arrived. Home Depot eventually closed.”

The protests turned to clashes between the officers and the protestors, which eventually spilled over into nearby Compton.

According to the Times, it appears that this clash was triggered by state Assemblyman José Luis Solache Jr. — the representative for Paramount — who spotted CBP vehicles and followed them to the Paramount Business Center, adjacent to the Home Depot.

Of course he posted it to Instagram, stating: “This is horrible … I am literally shaking.”

Cue the protestors, along with “social workers” and “advocates”, and as projectiles were hurled by the crowd at agents, agents responded with tear gas and flash-bang rounds. Eventually sheriff’s deputies arrived and cordoned off the area, stirring up the crowd even more.

When the federal vehicles began to exit the location, “protesters followed them, throwing rocks and other objects”.

After a fire was started by a protestor:

A couple of others pushed a cart with concrete blocks from Home Depot and they lined the road to block vehicles. One man smashed the block and spread the broken pieces on the road. Farther west along Alondra Boulevard, a crowd was gathering behind a perimeter set up by the sheriff’s deputies near the 710 Freeway.

It wasn’t until the late afternoon that local officials declared an unlawful assembly and told the protestors to disperse, but three hours later a crowd of approximately 100 assembled, with some lobbing projectiles at sheriff’s deputies.

More fires were started (at least one car was burned), with more aggressive agitators driving vehicles “toward the deputies in an attempt to scare them, prompting the deputies to fire rubber bullets, tear gas and flash-bang grenades at the vehicles”.

“A Form of Rebellion”

By midnight local time in L.A. the whole thing had largely died down, but by that point the president had issued his memo to Hegseth, calling out the National Guard.

As Trump explained: “To the extent that protests or acts of violence directly inhibit the execution of the laws, they constitute a form of rebellion against the authority of the Government of the United States.”

I will leave a more in-depth analysis of the statutory basis of that act to my colleague George Fishman, but I’ll note that Title 10 of the U.S. Code governs the armed forces, and subsection 12406(1) therein authorizes the president to “call into Federal service members and units of the National Guard of any State in such numbers as he considers necessary” to repel “a rebellion or danger of a rebellion against the authority of the Government of the United States”.

Whether the events of June 6 and 7 constituted a “rebellion” as the president asserted is a question for the voters and the courts, though Miranda Devine writing in the New York Post on June 8 argued that:

The minute the foreign flags came out in the violent anti-ICE protests in LA over the weekend, that’s when President Trump won the moral high ground.

…

The president could not have asked for a better advertisement for his tough border policies. He always said that the millions of illegal aliens who swarmed over the border under President Joe Biden was an invasion, and here were the invaders making his point for him.

The Blowback

Violent protests continued into Sunday, escalating when demonstrators faced off against the newly deployed National Guard troops and other federal officers in the City of Angels.

As per CNN: “At least 27 people were arrested in the Los Angeles area on Sunday. Some of the alleged crimes include throwing a Molotov cocktail at a police officer and ramming a motorcycle into a police line.”

BBC reports that a row of self-driving Waymo taxis “had their tyres slashed, windows smashed and exteriors spray painted before they were torched by protesters”, and that businesses reported looting amidst a chaotic scene in which protestors damaged “multiple patrol vehicles blocking a highway” as protesters “hurled objects — including E-scooters — at them”.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) blamed Trump for the chaos on Sunday, contending the president’s deployment order was intended to “fan the flames” and tweeting:

Then there was Mayor Bass, who weighed in on X (previously Twitter) with the following:

The mayor likely revealed a lot more than she had intended.

First, calling individual arrests of criminal aliens and executions of judicial warrants “raids” is unduly inflammatory and factually incorrect.

Second, the reactions of elected California Democratic officials to what ICE and CBP is doing likely does more to scare “parents afraid to take their kids to school” and “workers unsure if they should go to work” than a handful of arrests or a few government vehicles converging at a federal office complex ever could.

Finally, through their online pontifications, Bass, Newsom, Solache, and other Democratic officials are essentially putting their imprimatur on the very contentions driving the rioters and inspiring the looters and others engaged in mayhem: Immigration enforcement is morally bad and should be opposed.

But immigration enforcement remains the most popular issue for the president. In fact, in one recent poll, 56 percent of voters approved of how Trump is handling immigration (just 42 percent opposed), so plainly a majority of the American people think the laws are just and should be enforced.

Perhaps the violent spectacle that unfolded on the streets of L.A. over the weekend has dampened those sentiments, but my guess is Devine is right and that even more Americans now agree with Donald Trump’s claims on the campaign trail that the last administration’s border policies unleashed disorder and crime on this Republic.

What Starts in California Rarely Stops There

Be it ridiculous fuel limits on vehicles, crass popular culture, or questionable fashion, whatever starts in California rarely stops there. Consequently, when ICE next goes into a community in a deep-blue area, expect the local demagogues to take to social media to advance their own political prospects.

I recently warned that attacks on ICE officers were escalating and would likely soon get out of control, but even I had no idea how far things would go.

Trump and Border Czar Tom Homan show no sign of backing down, in Los Angeles or any other enclave (liberal or conservative), so expect the violence in the Golden State to spill over onto streets across the country — at least until the chaos gets too hot for the president’s political opponents to bear.