(Los Angeles) A federal judge on Wednesday ordered the Trump government to withdraw the last National Guard troops present in Los Angeles, the first city in the country where the American president deployed soldiers in June.
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Donald Trump had decided to send 4,000 members of the National Guard to the second most populous city in the United States, against the advice of local Democratic authorities, in response to the protest movement – even localized and of limited scale – against the raids carried out by the federal immigration police (ICE).
While many have since been demobilized, around a hundred of them remain deployed “to protect federal property and federal personnel who work to uphold the law,” according to the US army.
In his decision, federal judge Charles Breyer believes that the National Guard must return to the control of the governor of California. He dismissed the Justice Department’s argument that these soldiers could remain under the president’s command for as long as he wished.
This argument in favor of “a president with unlimited power to control state troops would completely upend the federalism at the heart of our system of government,” he considered.
“Today’s decision could not be clearer: federal control over the California National Guard is illegal and must end,” said California Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom, tipped as a contender for the White House in 2028.
“The president deployed these courageous men and women against their own community, removing them from essential public safety operations,” he lamented.
The decision was suspended until Monday to allow the government to appeal.
Since June, the Republican president has also sent the National Guard to Washington and Memphis to, according to him, fight crime and support the federal immigration police. The courts blocked similar deployments in Chicago and Portland in October until further notice.
The Trump administration urgently appealed to the conservative-majority Supreme Court to obtain authorization to deploy the National Guard in Chicago, but it has still not ruled.
Donald Trump has made the fight against illegal immigration a top priority for his second term, advancing an “invasion” of the United States by “criminals from abroad” and communicating extensively on expulsions of immigrants.
