Trump’s Dangerous Decision to Suppress Anti-ICE Protests With Troops
The National Guard’s response to civilian protests has a deadly history made infamous by the Kent State massacre.
To suppress protests against his deportation agenda, President Donald Trump took an extraordinary action on Saturday by calling up 2,000 National Guard troops to tamp down demonstrations in California. In doing so, he exercised rarely used federal powers, bypassed the authority of the state’s governor, Gavin Newsom, and set the stage for violent confrontation.
Newsom, a Democrat, said the soldiers were unneeded and would only “escalate tensions.”
Trump’s order came after protests broke out on Friday and continued through Saturday as federal agents searched Los Angeles’s garment district and other neighborhoods for undocumented immigrant workers. More protests are planned for Sunday afternoon.
Any demonstration impeding immigration law enforcement would be considered a “form of rebellion,” according to Trump.
“If Governor Gavin Newscum, of California, and Mayor Karen Bass, of Los Angeles, can’t do their jobs, which everyone knows they can’t, then the Federal Government will step in and solve the problem, RIOTS & LOOTERS, the way it should be solved!!!” Trump posted to his Truth Social account, using his childish moniker for Newsom.
The Trump administration’s move to further insert the military into domestic political and law enforcement activities carries immense risk. Militarizing an already tense situation increases the likelihood of civilian harm, threatens to chill civil liberties, and could irreparably damage civil–military relations.
The White House did not respond to questions about the potential for escalating tensions, worries about violence, or whether Trump would take personal responsibility for any resulting casualties.
The National Guard has, at times, been tapped to stifle dissent. In 2020, Trump requested that the governors of multiple states deploy their National Guard troops to Washington, D.C., to suppress protests after Minneapolis police killed George Floyd. Many governors agreed, and thousands of troops from 11 states were deployed to D.C.
In 1992, President George H.W. Bush sent National Guard troops to Los Angeles to quell riots after police officers were acquitted in the beating of Rodney King. That deployment was requested by California’s then-Gov. Pete Wilson.
The Guard was federalized during the New York postal strike in 1970, following the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. in 1968, and during the 1967 Detroit uprising. Presidents Dwight Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy, and Lyndon Johnson used the National Guard to help enforce civil rights during the 1950s and 1960s.
But it is the 1970 deployment of the National Guard to crack down on anti-war protests in Kent, Ohio, that best illustrates the danger of involving the military in civilian law enforcement.
That April, President Richard M. Nixon expanded the Vietnam War by invading neighboring Cambodia, supercharging the anti-war movement. In Kent, protests in response led to vandalism and prompted Republican Gov. James Rhodes to deploy the Ohio National Guard. On May 4, Guardsmen opened fire on antiwar protesters at Kent State University, firing 67 rounds over a period of just 13 seconds, killing four students — Allison Krause, Jeffrey Miller, Sandra Scheuer, and William Knox Schroeder — and wounding nine others.
The unrest that followed was unprecedented in American history. A national student strike involving more than 1 million students at 450 colleges and universities followed. Close to 90 percent of campuses saw protests in the month after the Kent State killings, with 4 million participating. This included at Jackson State College (now University) in Mississippi, where city and state police opened fire on student protesters and passersby on May 15, wounding 12 and killing law student Phillip Lafayette Gibbs and 17-year-old high school student James Earl Green.
Nixon’s own Commission on Campus Unrest, established in the wake of the killings at Kent State and Jackson State, found that student discontent was fueled by the Vietnam War and exacerbated by officials. “Actions and inactions of government at all levels have contributed to campus unrest. The words of some political leaders have helped to inflame it. Law enforcement officers have too often reacted ineptly or overreacted,” according to the report. “At times, their response has degenerated into uncontrolled violence.”
Trump’s activation of the California National Guard is the first time a president has done so without a request from a state’s governor since 1965, when President Lyndon B. Johnson sent troops to Alabama to protect civil rights demonstrators.
During his first term in office, Trump suggested shooting protesters to quell dissent, according to his former secretary of defense, Mark Esper. “The president was enraged,” Esper recalled, amid the strife following George Floyd’s murder in 2020. “He thought that the protests made the country look weak, made us look weak and ‘us’ meant him.” Esper said that Trump looked to the chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Mark Milley and said, “’Can’t you just shoot them, just shoot them in the legs or something?’” Esper characterized it as “a suggestion and a formal question.”
During the last presidential campaign, Trump promised he would crack down on protests with troops. “You’re supposed to not be involved in that, you just have to be asked by the governor or the mayor to come in — the next time, I’m not waiting,” he said.
On Saturday, Trump ordered at least 2,000 National Guard members to Los Angeles County after protests flared in downtown Los Angeles; Paramount, a small city south of LA; and other neighborhoods. Some activists blocked traffic and confronted federal agents. Others slashed tires and defaced buildings, according to the Department of Homeland Security. Many carried signs, shouted in protest and kept their distance from federal officers.
Law enforcement responded by hurling tear gas canisters and flash-bang grenades, and firing rubber bullets at demonstrators.
“They threw rocks at the officers,” said Bill Essayli, the interim U.S. attorney for the Central District of California. “We had Molotov cocktails thrown. We had all kinds of assaults on agents. The state has an obligation to maintain order and maintain public safety, and they’re unable to do that right now in Los Angeles. So the federal government will send in resources to regain order.”
California’s attorney general, Rob Bonta, said local law enforcement did not require federal assistance. “There is no emergency and the President’s order calling in the National Guard is unnecessary and counterproductive,” he posted on X.
At least 20 people were arrested on Saturday, mostly in Paramount, in addition to the more than 100 people arrested at the protests on Friday, according to Essayli.
As a third day of protests loomed, Trump issued a social media rant that took aim at Newsom, “Radical Left protests,” and mask-wearing demonstrators. He thanked the “National Guard for a job well done!” It was unclear what job the troops, who had not yet been seen on the streets, had done when Trump posted the comments on Sunday at 2:41 a.m.
The White House did not respond to a request for clarification.
White House spokesperson Karoline Leavitt said in a statement on Saturday night that Trump was deploying the National Guard in response to “violent mobs.” The 2,000 troops would “address the lawlessness that has been allowed to fester,” she said.
Newsom rebuked the president’s order. “That move is purposefully inflammatory and will only escalate tensions,” he said, adding that “this is the wrong mission and will erode public trust.”