Trump, pushing bounds of his office with L.A. deployment, faces test in court

WASHINGTON — The mission of President Trump’s extraordinary deployment of U.S. Marines and National Guardsmen to Los Angeles depends on whom you ask — and that may be a problem for the White House as it defends its actions in court on Thursday.

The hearing, set before U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer in San Francisco, will set off a rare test over the legality of a military deployment on American soil.

While California has asked for a temporary restraining order against the government, a judicial decree ordering a full withdrawal would be extraordinary, scholars said. But so, too, was the deployment itself, raising the stakes for the judge entering Thursday’s hearing.

Breyer, a veteran of the bench appointed by President Clinton and the younger brother of Stephen Breyer, the former Supreme Court justice, could instead define the parameters of acceptable troop activity in a mission that has been murky from its start over the weekend.

In an interview, California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta told The Times that he was told that Trump’s mission set for both the Marines and the National Guard in Los Angeles “is to protect federal property, functions and personnel.”

“The property part may well be compliant with the Posse Comitatus Act,” Bonta said, referring to a landmark law passed after the Civil War prohibiting the use of U.S. troops to engage in local law enforcement.

“If all the Marines do is protect buildings, that might be compliant,” he added. “But it needs to be made clear that they cannot go out into the community to protect federal functions or personnel, if that means the ‘functions’ of civil immigration enforcement conducted by the ‘personnel,’ ICE. That means they’ll be going to Home Depots, and work sites, and maybe knocking on doors.”

Vague mission set

Trump told reporters Tuesday that without federal involvement, “Los Angeles would be burning down right now,” suggesting their role was to confront violent rioters throughout the city. But that same day, Air Force Gen. Gregory Guillot told The Times that Marines sent to L.A. County were limited in their authority and without arrest power, deployed only to defend federal property and personnel. The Los Angeles Police Department continues to lead the response to the protests.

Still a third potential mission set emerged within 24 hours, when Immigration and Customs Enforcement posted a photo on Facebook indicating that National Guardsmen were accompanying its agents on the very immigration raids that generated protests in the first place. And White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt told The Times that the president’s primary motivation behind the federal show of force was to send a message to protesters — an effort to deter agitators in the crowd from resorting to violence.

Clarifying the true nature and purpose of the deployment — whether to protect federal property, to supplement ICE raids, to quell unrest, or all of the above — will prove critical to the administration’s success on Thursday. Breyer denied California’s request for an emergency restraining order on Tuesday, instead giving both sides 48 hours to prepare their case for the hearing.

“He’s the most well-regarded district judge in the United States,” said Robert Weisberg, a professor at Stanford Law School. “He will be very meticulous in asking all of these questions.”

‘Posse Comitatus’

Unprecedented though Trump’s actions may be, signs of caution or restraint in his decision to refrain from invoking the Insurrection Act could ultimately salvage his mission in court, experts said.

The Insurrection Act is the only tool at a president’s disposal to suspend Posse Comitatus and deploy active-duty Marines on U.S. soil. While Trump and his aides have made a coordinated public effort to reference the L.A. protesters as insurrectionists, he has, so far, stopped short of invoking the act.

The president instead invoked Title 10 of the U.S. Code, which grants him the authority to federalize the National Guard. Even still, California argues that Trump has overstepped the law, which still requires directives to the Guard “be issued through the governors of the States.” And the White House has suggested that Title 10 authority also justifies the Marine deployment.

“We expect an order from the court making clear what’s lawful and what’s unlawful, and part of that is making clear that the deployment of the National Guard by Trump is unlawful,” Bonta said.

“And so he might just strike down that deployment,” he added, “returning the National Guard to the command of its appropriate commander-in-chief, the governor.”

Ahilan Arulanantham, co-director of the Center for Immigration Law and Policy at UCLA School of Law, said that Title 10 “requires a ‘rebellion or danger of rebellion,’ and inability of regular law enforcement authorities to execute the laws.”

“I would be shocked if a court determined that those conditions were met by what is actually happening in L.A. at the moment, as those of us living here know,” Arulanantham added.

Yet, by relying on Title 10 authorities and by refraining from invoking the Insurrection Act, Trump could save himself from a definitive loss in court that would probably be upheld by the Supreme Court, Weisberg said.

“I do think that Trump is trying to take just one step at a time,” Weisberg said, “and that he contemplates the possibility of invoking the Insurrection Act, but it’s premature.”

“There’s always the possibility he’s being rational,” he added.

Another front in California vs. Trump

For Bonta, the case before Breyer is just the latest in a series of legal battles California has brought against the Trump administration — cases that have compelled the White House to lay out evidence, based on truth and facts, before seasoned judges.

Moments before Bonta spoke with The Times, Leavitt told reporters in a briefing that “the majority of the behavior that we have seen taking place in Los Angeles” has been perpetrated by “mobs of violent rioters and agitators.”

“It’s completely untrue and completely unsurprising,” Bonta responded. “It’s what the Trump administration — the press secretary, the secretary of Defense and the secretary of Homeland Security — it’s what they’ve been on a full 24-hour campaign to try to do, to manufacture and construct a reality that’s not actually true.”

The LAPD and L.A. County Sheriff’s Department, Bonta noted, have dealt with worse in the past, not just during major historic events such as the Rodney King riots of 1992 or the George Floyd protests of 2020, but after relatively routine annual events, such as the NBA Finals or the Super Bowl.

“There is absolutely no doubt that the National Guard was unnecessary here,” Bonta said, adding, “They’re using words like insurrection and emergency and rebellion and invasion, because those are the words in the statutes that would trigger what they really want. They want the president to be able to seize more power.”

What else you should be reading

The must-read: 9-year-old Torrance Elementary student deported with father to Honduras
The deep dive: Newsom, in California address, says Trump purposely ‘fanned the flames’ of L.A. protests
The L.A. Times Special: Brian Wilson, musical genius behind the Beach Boys, dies at 82

More to come,
Michael Wilner

—
Was this newsletter forwarded to you? Sign up here to get it in your inbox.