New York Times
The eruption in Los Angeles began when immigration agents showed up to arrest people at their jobs. They hadn’t told the city they were coming, and protesters tried to stop them.
This probably won’t be the last such conflict. The Trump administration is escalating its immigration crackdown, and worksite raids are the next major step. Future arrests are likely to be disruptive.
Finding more migrants: For most of this year, officials from Immigrations and Customs Enforcement have snagged the easiest-to-find migrants: People with criminal records, court petitions, asylum requests. Agents often knew where these people would be.
The result: The government was deporting about 700 per day, not much more than the Biden administration.
Last month, Stephen Miller, Trump’s immigration czar, delivered a message: ICE needed to hit a “minimum” of 3,000 arrests a day — about 10 times the figure under Biden.
Creative answers: To get there, the agency is seeking new tactics. The government has dismissed criminal cases against migrants and then arrested them as they left court. It is showing up at workplaces. And it has asked the National Guard and the Marines to help with enforcement.
Can Trump do that?
The White House says it deployed federal troops to Los Angeles because the local police need help to counter “insurrectionists.” But the Posse Comitatus Act says the armed forces aren’t law enforcement. We asked Rachel VanLandingham, a professor at Southwestern Law School and a former Air Force lieutenant colonel, what’s allowed.
Is this all legal?
The founders wanted to prevent the president from using federal troops against “we the people” because of the way the Red Coats used warrants to do whatever they wanted in people’s homes. But National Guard troops are local citizens; they live in their communities. So they’re allowed to help with police work — until they’re federalized. Which is what Trump did last weekend. Then they became indistinguishable from active-duty military. All they can do is defend federal workers like ICE agents, and federal buildings like an ICE detention center.
So the California National Guard and the Marines can’t contain the protests?
Not unless the president invokes the Insurrection Act! That law lets troops police our streets to suppress insurrections and help execute federal law in the face of rebellion.
Trump said yesterday that the protesters were “insurrectionists.” What counts as a rebellion?
It’s very vague — the law doesn’t say. It could be people trying to stop ICE agents from doing their job. I don’t think courts are going to want to argue about what constitutes a rebellion. The founders gave the president discretion here, so if Trump does invoke the Insurrection Act he’s on firm legal footing.