Trump’s Dangerous Decision to Suppress Anti-ICE Protests With Troops

To suppress protests against his deportation agenda President Donald Trump took an extraordinary action on Saturday by calling up 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 reported 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 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 Leadership will step in and solve the issue 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 engagements carries immense exposure 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 prospective 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 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 A multitude of governors agreed and thousands of troops from states were deployed to Washington D C In 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-governor Pete Wilson The Guard was federalized during the New York postal strike in following the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr in and during the Detroit uprising Presidents Dwight Eisenhower John F Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson used the National Guard to help enforce civil rights during the s and s But it is the 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 At times their response has degenerated into uncontrolled violence 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 Governor James Rhodes to deploy the Ohio National Guard On May Guardsmen opened fire on antiwar protesters at Kent State University firing rounds over a period of just 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 apprentice strike involving more than one million students at colleges and universities followed Close to percent of campuses saw protests in the month after the Kent State killings with four million participating This included at Jackson State College now University in Mississippi where city and state police opened fire on learner protesters and passersby on May wounding and killing law trainee Phillip Lafayette Gibbs and -year-old high school trainee James Earl Green Nixon s own Commission on Campus Unrest established in the wake of the killings at Kent State and Jackson State exposed that pupil discontent was fueled by the Vietnam War and exacerbated by agents Actions and inactions of cabinet at all levels have contributed to campus unrest The words of specific political leaders have helped to inflame it Law enforcement officers have too often reacted ineptly or overreacted according to the document 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 when President Lyndon B Johnson sent troops to Alabama to protect civil rights demonstrators During his first term in office Trump suggested shooting protestors 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 He thought that the protests made the country look weak made us look weak and us meant him Esper announced that Trump looked to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Mark Milley and commented 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 required by the governor or the mayor to come in the next time I m not waiting he announced On Saturday as Trump ordered at least National Guardsmen to Los Angeles County after protests flared in downtown Los Angeles in Paramount a small city south of LA and other neighborhoods Particular activists blocked traffic and confronted federal agents Others slashed tires and defaced buildings according to the Department of Homeland Defense A large number of carried signs shouted in protest and kept their distance from federal officers Law enforcement responded by hurling tear gas canisters and flashbang grenades and firing rubber bullets at demonstrators They threw rocks at the officers commented 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 residents safety and they re unable to do that right now in Los Angeles So the federal cabinet will send in support to regain order California s attorney general Rob Bonta commented 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 com At least people were arrested on Saturday mostly in Paramount in addition to the more than 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 AM The White House did not respond to a request for clarification White House spokesperson Karoline Leavitt disclosed in a report on Saturday night that Trump was deploying the National Guard in response to violent mobs The troops would address the lawlessness that has been allowed to fester she disclosed Newsom rebuked the president s order That move is purposefully inflammatory and will only escalate tensions he explained adding that this is the wrong mission and will erode inhabitants trust The post Trump s Dangerous Decision to Suppress Anti-ICE Protests With Troops appeared first on The Intercept