California Governor Gavin Newsom filed suit against The Trumps government. The occasion is the decision of US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who, without the consent of California, sent National Guard units to Los Angeles. The order to send soldiers into the field is, under normal circumstances, the responsibility of individuals federal state.
"I have asked the Trump administration to withdraw the illegal decision to station troops in Los Angeles County and place them under my command," Newsom wrote in a June 9 post on Platform X. And he added: "We didn't have any problem until Trump got involved." writes DW.
Mass arrests
It seems that California, a federal state in the southwest of the USA, is increasingly turning into a stronghold of the resistance against President Donald Trump. In Los Angeles on Monday, hundreds of people demonstrated again against the decision on mass deportations of migrants. The gatherings continued in the evening on Tuesday. The Los Angeles Police Department confirmed through X that a number of people who violated the curfew ordinance were taken into custody. The announcement talks about "mass arrests", but no more precise data on the number of arrests was given.
The mayor of Los Angeles, Karen Bass, asked the Trump administration, also via X, to stop the "raids" in her city: "Fear is spreading in Los Angeles. Parents, employers, grandparents, young people... Everyone is afraid to go about their daily activities. We are a city of immigrants. Washington is attacking our residents and our economy," Bass wrote on X.
American Justice Minister Pam Bondi and Trump called the protesters in Los Angeles "professional agitators and rioters." The National Guard's job is to protect Los Angeles police officers, they claim.
"If the justice system in California cannot protect the men and women of the Los Angeles Police Department from insurgents, we can act against those people," Bondi said in an interview with Fox News.
Mass arrests and deportations
And while the conflict between Trump and Newsom is exploding, experts are arguing about whether the US president even has the right to use the military against civilians.
The reason for the conflict is the raids, that is, the arrests and mass deportations of migrants who do not have valid permits to stay in the USA. Since Trump took office in January of this year, the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has, as reported by the media, arrested more than 100.000 illegal migrants.
In California, according to the Public Policy Institute, one in three residents was born abroad. Most of the immigrants live in the regions around the big cities on the Pacific coast, like Los Angeles.
Newsom sues the US government
After the outbreak of demonstrations, US President Trump made the decision last Saturday to send National Guard units into the field. As it was said, the army should protect the officers of ICE, i.e. public institutions.
The order envisages sending at least 4.000 National Guard soldiers into the field within at least 60 days. In addition, the Pentagon announced on Monday the dispatch of an additional 700 marines to Los Angeles.
California Governor Newsom announced that he will fight legally against the deployment of marines: "American marines are not pawns in a political game. We will file a lawsuit to stop this decision," he wrote on social networks. In the meantime, the governor of Texas, Greg Abbott, announced on X that the military would be deployed in the event of protests.
What will Trump do?
According to experts, the legal situation surrounding the deployment of US military forces on US soil is not entirely clear. Trump is referring to a legal provision that allows the president to deploy the National Guard in a federal state under certain circumstances, including rebellion against the authority of the federal government.
But that very text (Section 12406) also says that the order to deploy the National Guard is given by "state governors" - a provision ignored by US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, given that he deployed the California National Guard without first informing California Governor Newsom.
But an American law from 1807, the so-called "Insurrection Act" (Insurrection Act), allows the American president to hire the National Guard "in case of insurrection against the authority of the United States" without notifying the governor of that federal state. So far, Trump has not invoked that law.
As for the Marines, legal experts believe that Trump, in his constitutionally defined role as commander-in-chief, has more direct authority over their deployment than he does over the deployment of the National Guard on US soil. But as long as he does not invoke the Sedition Act, that order too is subject to legal restrictions.
"There is no state of emergency"
"Something like this has never happened," Juliet Kayem, a lawyer and migration expert, told the BBC. "Yes, there was violence," she admitted, "but we don't have a state of emergency or some kind of crisis in the form that the president and his ministers are talking about," said Kayem, a former employee of the Ministry of State Protection who was in charge of interstate affairs.
Ever since the civil rights movement of the 1960s, when southern governors resisted court orders to desegregate public schools, US presidents have never sent troops into a state without the governor's consent.
The last time the Sedition Act was implemented with the consent of a federal state was in 1992. Then the governor of California, Pete Wilson, as well as the mayor of Los Angeles, Tom Bradley, asked the then president George Bush Sr. for the help of the federal authorities. After the acquittal of a police officer who beat African-American driver Rodney King, street riots broke out in Los Angeles.
