President Donald Trump pushes ahead with his maximalist immigration
campaign in face of LA protests
[June 10, 2025]
By SEUNG MIN KIM
WASHINGTON (AP) — Donald Trump made no secret of his willingness to
exert a maximalist approach to enforcing immigration laws and keeping
order as he campaigned to return to the White House. The fulfillment of
that pledge is now on full display in Los Angeles.
The president has put hundreds of National Guard troops on the streets
to quell protests over his administration's immigration raids, a
deployment that state and city officials say has only inflamed tensions.
Trump called up the California National Guard over the objections of
Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom — the first time in 60 years a president
has done so — and is deploying active-duty troops to support the guard.
By overriding Newsom, Trump is already going beyond what he did to
respond to Black Lives Matter protests in 2020, when he warned he could
send troops to contain demonstrations that turned violent if governors
in the states did not act to do so themselves. Trump said in September
of that year that he “can’t call in the National Guard unless we’re
requested by a governor” and that “we have to go by the laws.”
But now, the past and current president is moving swiftly, with little
internal restraint to test the bounds of his executive authority in
order to deliver on his promise of mass deportations. What remains to be
seen is whether Americans will stand by him once it’s operationalized
nationwide, as Trump looks to secure billions from Congress to
dramatically expand the country's detention and deportation operations.
For now, Trump is betting that they will.
“If we didn't do the job, that place would be burning down," Trump told
reporters Monday, speaking about California. “I feel we had no choice.
... I don't want to see what happened so many times in this country.”
‘A crisis of Trump's own making’
The protests began to unfold Friday as federal authorities arrested
immigrants in several locations throughout the sprawling city, including
in the fashion district of Los Angeles and at a Home Depot. The anger
over the administration’s actions quickly spread, with protests in
Chicago and Boston as demonstrations in the southern California city
also continued Monday.
But Trump and other administration officials remained unbowed,
capitalizing on the images of burning cars, graffiti and Mexican flags —
which, while not dominant, started to become the defining images of the
unrest — to bolster their law-and-order cause.
Leaders in the country’s most populous state were similarly defiant.
California officials sued the Trump administration Monday, with the
state’s attorney general, Rob Bonta, arguing that the deployment of
troops “trampled” on the state’s sovereignty and pushing for a
restraining order. The initial deployment of 300 National Guard troops
was expected to quickly expand to the full 4,000 that has been
authorized by Trump.
The state’s senior Democratic senator, Alex Padilla, said in an
interview that “this is absolutely a crisis of Trump’s own making.”
“There are a lot of people who are passionate about speaking up for
fundamental rights and respecting due process, but the deployment of
National Guard only serves to escalate tensions and the situation,”
Padilla told The Associated Press. “It’s exactly what Donald Trump
wanted to do.”
Padilla slammed the deployment as “counterproductive” and said the Los
Angeles Sheriff’s Department was not advised ahead of the federalization
of the National Guard. His office has also pushed the Pentagon for a
justification on the deployment, and “as far as we’re told, the
Department of Defense isn’t sure what the mission is here," Padilla
added.
Candidate Trump previewed immigration strategy during campaign
Much of this was predictable.
During his 2024 presidential campaign, Trump pledged to conduct the
largest domestic deportation operation in American history to expel
millions of immigrants in the country without legal status. He often
praised President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s military-style immigration
raids, and the candidate and his advisers suggested they would have
broad power to deploy troops domestically to enact Trump's far-reaching
immigration and public safety goals.
Trump’s speedy deployment in California of troops against those whom the
president has alluded to as “insurrectionists” on social media is a
sharp contrast to his decision to issue no order or formal request for
National Guard troops during the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol on
Jan. 6, 2021, despite his repeated and false assertions that he had made
such an offer.
[to top of second column]
|
President Donald Trump speaks during an "Invest in America"
roundtable with business leaders at the White House, Monday, June 9,
2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)
Trump is now surrounded by officials who have no interest in
constraining his power. In 2020, Trump’s then-Pentagon chief
publicly rebuked Trump’s threat to send in troops using the
Insurrection Act, an 1807 law that empowers the president to use the
military within the U.S. and against American citizens.
Current Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth signaled support on his
personal X account for deploying troops to California, writing, “The
National Guard, and Marines if need be, stand with ICE,” referring
to the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency.
The Defense Department said Monday it is deploying about 700
active-duty Marines to Los Angeles to support National Guard troops
already on the ground to respond to the protests.
White House responds to an ‘incompetent’ governor
Protesters over the weekend blocked off a major freeway and burned
self-driving cars as police responded with tear gas, rubber bullets
and flash-bang grenades in clashes that encompassed several downtown
blocks in Los Angeles and led to several dozen arrests. Much of the
city saw no violence.
But the protests prompted Trump to issue the directive Saturday
mobilizing the California National Guard over Newsom's objections.
The president and his top immigration aides accused the governor of
mismanaging the protests, with border czar Tom Homan asserting in a
Fox News interview Monday that Newsom stoked anti-ICE sentiments and
waited two days to declare unlawful assembly in the city.
Trump told Newsom in a phone call Friday evening to get the
situation in Los Angeles under control, a White House official said.
It was only when the administration felt Newsom was not restoring
order in the city — and after Trump watched the situation escalate
for 24 hours and White House officials saw imagery of federal law
enforcement officers with lacerations and other injuries — that the
president moved to deploy the Guard, according to the official, who
was granted anonymity to discuss private deliberations.
“He’s an incompetent governor,” Trump said Monday. “Look at the job
he’s doing in California. He’s destroying one of our great states.”
Local law enforcement officials said Los Angeles police responded as
quickly as they could once the protests erupted, and Newsom
repeatedly asserted that state and city authorities had the
situation under control.
“Los Angeles is no stranger to demonstrations and protests and
rallies and marches,” Padilla said. “Local law enforcement knows how
to handle this and has a rapport with the community and community
leaders to be able to allow for that.”
The aggressive moves prompted blowback from some of Trump's
erstwhile allies. Ileana Garcia, a Florida state senator who in 2016
founded the group Latinas for Trump and was hired to direct Latino
outreach, called the recent escalation “unacceptable and inhumane.”
“I understand the importance of deporting criminal aliens, but what
we are witnessing are arbitrary measures to hunt down people who are
complying with their immigration hearings — in many cases, with
credible fear of persecution claims — all driven by a Miller-like
desire to satisfy a self-fabricated deportation goal," said Garcia,
referring to Stephen Miller, a White House deputy chief of staff and
key architect of Trump’s immigration crackdown.
The tactics could be just a preview to what more could come from the
Trump administration and the Republican-controlled Congress. GOP
lawmakers are working to pass a massive tax-and-border package that
includes billions to hire thousands of new officers for Border
Patrol and for ICE. The goal, under the Trump-backed plan, is to
remove 1 million immigrants without status annually and house
100,000 people in immigration detention centers.
___
Associated Press writers Adriana Gomez Licon in Fort Lauderdale,
Florida, and Tara Copp and Lolita C. Baldor in Washington
contributed to this report.
All contents © copyright 2025 Associated Press. All rights reserved
 |
