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A federal judge in California has found that Donald Trump and administration officials violated the law by deploying the National Guard to Los Angeles in response to protests against his anti-immigration agenda.
The president’s troop deployment violated the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878, which prohibits “the use of the U.S. military to execute domestic law,” according to Tuesday’s ruling from District Judge Charles Breyer.
Nearly 140 years later, Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth deployed the National Guard and a cadre of U.S. Marines to Los Angeles, “ostensibly to quell a rebellion and ensure that federal immigration law was enforced,” Breyer wrote.
“There were indeed protests in Los Angeles, and some individuals engaged in violence. Yet there was no rebellion, nor was civilian law enforcement unable to respond to the protests and enforce the law,” he added.
Following a brief bench trial last month, the judge determined that the administration illegally and “systematically used armed soldiers (whose identity was often obscured by protective armor) and military vehicles to set up protective perimeters and traffic blockades, engage in crowd control, and otherwise demonstrate a military presence in and around Los Angeles.”
“In short, Defendants violated the Posse Comitatus Act,” Breyer wrote.
The judge’s order — in the face of Trump’s plans for what Breyer called “a national police force with the president as its chief” — further blocks the administration from sending troops into the state.
The Trump administration is blocked from “deploying, ordering, instructing, training, or using the National Guard currently deployed in California, and any military troops heretofore deployed in California, to execute the laws, including but not limited to engaging in arrests, apprehensions, searches, seizures, security patrols, traffic control, crowd control, riot control, evidence collection, interrogation, or acting as informants,” according to the ruling.
Breyer’s order is paused until September 12, giving the Trump administration time to appeal.
A series of Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids in the Los Angeles area in June sparked a wave of demonstrations, prompting Trump to deploy the National Guard and a cadre of U.S. Marines.
The administration sent in roughly 5,000 National Guard soldiers and Marines to the Los Angeles area, assisting with more than 170 law enforcement operations carried out by federal agencies, according to the Department of Defense.
The Pentagon has ended most of those operations, but hundreds of National Guard members remain active in southern California.
Trump had federalized the normally state-authorized National Guard, going above the command and objections of Governor Gavin Newsom and state officials. Those troops still have only a limited mission in supporting federal law enforcement agents and federal buildings at the center of protests against the administration’s mass deportation agenda.
Democratic officials and civil rights groups feared the president is testing the limits of his authority to send active-duty military into American streets — and violating service members’ commitments to stay out of domestic politics.
“DONALD TRUMP LOSES AGAIN,” Newsom wrote on X after Tuesday’s ruling.
“The courts agree — his militarization of our streets and use of the military against US citizens is ILLEGAL,” he added.
This is a developing story
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