A US federal judge ordered this Wednesday (10) that Donald Trump’s administration withdraw the hundred National Guard soldiers still mobilized in Los Angeles, California. According to the decision of Magistrate Charles Breyer, of San Francisco, the stay of the soldiers in the city a few months after the protests against the expulsions which initially motivated the operation is illegal.
The Trump administration is expected to appeal the decision. Although the troop presence under White House control in Los Angeles is currently minimal, the Republican administration has repeated the tactic in a series of other Democratic-majority cities across the country – many of which are governed by black mayors and with majority non-white populations.
Breyer also ordered the federal government to return control of the National Guard to California Governor Gavin Newsom. The Force is organized and maintained by each American state, but can be mobilized by the president in the event of invasion or rebellion against the government.
The White House says Los Angeles residents’ protests against ICE’s deportation operations fit that description. Even after the protests ended, Justice Department lawyers argued that the threat against federal ICE agents was still serious, citing a man arrested last week for planning an attack on a federal building in Los Angeles.
The federal judge disagreed. “The founders of the Republic shaped our government with a system of checks and balances. The Trump administration, however, is clear that it wants carte blanche to do as it pleases,” Breyer wrote. “No crisis lasts forever.”
In June, amid protests over ICE operations, Trump took control of the California National Guard and sent 4,000 troops to Los Angeles. In July, he withdrew 2,000 soldiers, and reduced his presence in the following months to around a hundred. The California government filed a lawsuit against the White House to try to end the mobilization, a measure which has now borne fruit.
The government of Democrat Gavin Newsom, however, failed to get the courts to bar Trump from further mobilizations of the National Guard in the future.
If the case reaches the Supreme Court, Trump will have another opportunity to ask America’s highest court to expand presidential power — something the Court has done consistently.
The Court ruled in 2024 that presidents enjoy broad immunity, and that year alone it allowed the White House to strip immigrants’ protected status and send them to countries like El Salvador, declared the Trump administration’s mass firing of civil servants legal, and allowed the dismantling of USAID, the U.S. foreign aid agency.
Trump’s use of the National Guard in cities like Los Angeles, Washington, Chicago, Memphis and Portland has polarized Americans – especially after the attack that killed one soldier and injured another in Washington on the 26th. The suspect, an Afghan immigrant with ties to the CIA, was also injured and is under arrest.
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