The Trump administration illegally used thousands of military troops in Southern California, a federal judge said. in a ruling that accused the president of effectively turning nearly 5,000 Marines and National Guard soldiers into a national police force, reported The New York Times.
The
ruling, by Judge Charles R. Breyer of the Federal District Court in San
Francisco, came more than two months into a contentious deployment that was set
off by immigration protests in June and has since dwindled to about 300
National Guard soldiers. Judge Breyer placed his injunction on hold for 10
days.
The judge
found that President Trump’s deployment had exceeded the limits of federal laws
that generally prohibit the use of the military for domestic law enforcement.
The
decision was a victory for Gov. Gavin Newsom of California, a possible
presidential candidate who filed the lawsuit and who has rebuked Mr. Trump for
sending the military into Los Angeles. But the Justice Department, which
defended the Trump administration in the lawsuit, is expected to appeal the
decision and could receive more favorable consideration from the U.S. Court of
Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.
The ruling
was the latest in a series of judicial battles over claims of expansive
unilateral powers by the administration. Mr. Trump and administration officials
have deported
people without due process, imposed
widespread and unpopular tariffs and rolled
back energy regulations, citing wartime and emergency powers that have been
disputed in federal court.
The
president also declared crime in Washington, D.C., to be an emergency in order
to send
federal troops there in August, although crime rates in the nation’s
capital have actually been falling and local officials said the deployment was
not needed. Since then, Mr. Trump has publicly mused about sending the National
Guard into other Democratic-led cities. Federal law gives the White House more
latitude to conduct local law enforcement in the District of Columbia than in
the states.
The
decision on Tuesday arose from the president’s deployment this summer of about
4,000 members of the California National Guard and 700 Marines to Los Angeles,
where demonstrations had erupted over immigration raids.
In an executive order that was issued on June 7 over the objections of Mr. Newsom, who normally controls the state’s National Guard troops, the president wrote that “violent protests” had grown into “a form of rebellion,” and that the military was needed to “temporarily protect” federal agents and property.
City
officials in Los Angeles vehemently disputed the president’s justification,
noting that the police had been capably handling the protests, which were
mostly confined to a few blocks in downtown Los Angeles near government
buildings.
The White
House, the officials said, had unnecessarily inflamed local outrage by sending
masked and armed immigration agents into workplaces in a liberal city where
immigrants make up roughly a third of the population, and then had used the
ensuing demonstrations as a pretext to send in the military.
A
19th-century law, the Posse Comitatus Act, generally prohibits the use of the
U.S. military for domestic civilian law enforcement, absent an insurrection.
But the president did not invoke the Insurrection Act. Rather, he argued that
an overarching federal law, Title 10 of the U.S. Code, which lays out the role
of the armed forces, allowed him to commandeer National Guard units to execute
federal law.
The
administration contended that the troops were needed in California for federal
agents to do their jobs because protesters were impeding their efforts.
California officials quickly challenged the deployment, and Judge Breyer, an
appointee of President Bill Clinton, a Democrat, temporarily
blocked it in June.
A
three-judge panel from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, which
included two appointees of Mr. Trump and one of former President Joseph R.
Biden Jr., ruled
that the judge had erred. The protests had been violent enough, they found,
that the president could at least make an argument for deployment, and legal
precedent required them to give “a great level of deference” to the president
in weighing the facts underlying his executive order.
The
decision allowed the troops to remain under the president’s control, pending a
decision on a secondary request by the state to restrict how the troops could
be used. Lawyers for California demanded that the military be limited, at most,
to guarding federal buildings, and the appeals court determined that the
administration’s use of the troops remained subject to judicial review.
By
mid-June, the protests in Los Angeles had largely ended, but instead of
releasing the troops, the administration kept them on duty in a sprawling tent
city near Long Beach. The administration sent soldiers and Marines out with
federal agents executing search and arrest warrants and conducting immigration
raids.
Mr. Newsom
challenged the administration’s claim that the troops were not conducting law
enforcement. During a three-day hearing in August before Judge Breyer’s order,
lawyers for California showed numerous photographs of armed National Guard
troops engaged in what appeared to be police work — forming security perimeters
around cannabis farms and workplaces where raids were being conducted, or
wielding batons behind police tape as Immigration and Customs Enforcement
agents handcuffed people.
In at
least two instances, the state’s lawyers noted, members of the deployment
briefly detained people. One occasion was early in the deployment in
Carpinteria, when National Guard troops prevented a protester from entering an
area where a raid was in progress. The other episode occurred later, when
Marines held a
man for about a half-hour after he tried to enter a Los Angeles
federal building.
A field
agent for Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Los Angeles testified that,
for at least the first month of the deployment, about 75 percent of ICE
operations involved federalized troops.
Maj. Gen.
Scott Sherman, a 33-year Army veteran who led the task force overseeing the Los
Angeles deployment, testified that troops took great care not to cross the line
into law enforcement. But the line was fraught.
The
general testified at length, for example, about a mission, code-named Operation
Excalibur, in which federal immigration agents on foot and on horseback marched
through MacArthur Park, a Los Angeles landmark in a neighborhood now largely
home to immigrant families with low incomes.
General
Sherman said the administration initially wanted to conduct the mission on
Father’s Day and to stage troops and military equipment in the middle of the
park in a “show of presence,” but he objected. The placement of troops, he
said, seemed to inappropriately involve the military in what appeared to be a
risky and low-value operation.
Only after
federal officials planned to reposition the troops outside the park did he
recommend approval. But when he expressed his concerns, he said, Gregory
Bovino, a Border Patrol chief who is overseeing the federal immigration
crackdown in Southern California, questioned his loyalty to the country.
The
mission, which General Sherman said was ultimately approved by Defense
Secretary Pete Hegseth, was postponed twice before taking place on July 7.
Mayor Karen Bass of Los Angeles condemned it as a callous act of political
theater that terrified children in the park as well as social workers who were
providing services to homeless people.
Scores of
National Guard troops drove to the area and stayed for about 20 minutes in case
trouble erupted, the general testified, but never left their trucks.
Trump
administration lawyers argued that California’s lawsuit was moot because the
Posse Comitatus Act is a criminal statute that cannot be enforced with a civil
lawsuit.
Moreover,
even absent an insurrection, Eric Hamilton of the Justice Department argued,
presidents have the inherent power to deploy the military to protect federal
property and employees.
The
Justice Department lawyers defended how the troops were used during the
deployment, saying they violated no law and served a “purely protective
function” for federal agents who were facing daily assaults from protesters.
Judge
Breyer sharply pushed back, questioning how anyone could limit the power of the
White House if the president could legally dispatch the military to enforce any
conceivable federal function.
Normally,
he noted, local law enforcement officers protect public employees going about
their duty. Shouldn’t the president have to prove that a threat exists and
rises to a specific threshold in order to summon the military?
“Where are
the limits?” Judge Breyer repeatedly asked.
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