Raids by ICE brokers have elevated considerably since mid-Could when the Trump administration threatened to fireplace senior ICE officers if they didn’t ship on greater arrest quotas. A number of high-profile wrongful arrests of US residents have additional infected tensions.
Protests have escalated in California, a Democratic stronghold and a “sanctuary state” the place native regulation enforcement doesn’t cooperate with ICE to detain unlawful immigrants.
In 1992, the then president, George H.W. Bush, backed the decision of the then governor of California, Pete Wilson, name to deploy nationwide guard members to quell the South Central LA riots.
Historic precedents
Is there a precedent for this? Sure and no. The Rebellion Act (handed in 1807, however revised a number of instances) authorises the president to name on the nationwide guard in instances of disaster or struggle to complement state and native forces. This has been codified in title 10 of the US Code, which particulars the legal guidelines of the land.
In 1871, the regulation was revised to particularly enable for the nationwide guard for use within the safety of civil rights for black Individuals. Authorized specialists have lengthy known as for reform of the Rebellion Act, arguing that the language is simply too imprecise and open to misuse.
Previously, former US presidents, Dwight D. Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson all invoked totally different sections of the Act to guard civil rights, notably in opposition to segregationist states. Whereas the act implies consent between governor and president, it doesn’t require it.
Two examples stand out. On June 11 1963, John F. Kennedy issued government order 11111 mobilising the nationwide guard to guard desegregation of the College of Alabama, in opposition to the desires of Alabama governor George Wallace.
Wallace’s dedication to dam the registration of two black college students, Vivian Malone and James Hood, produced a produced a sensational media second when Wallace bodily blocked the doorway of the college. Native regulation enforcement stood by the governor. With the state of Alabama in defiance of federal regulation, Kennedy noticed no various however to deploy the guard.
Lower than two years later, in March 1965 Lyndon B. Johnson once more deployed the guard in Alabama, bypassing Governor Wallace. In February, a state trooper within the city of Marion killed a younger voters-rights activist, Jimmie Lee Jackson.
This capturing, together with a number of violent assaults by the native police on voter registration activists in Selma, impressed a collection of marches in help of the 1965 voting rights invoice. On the eve of the march from Selma to Montgomery, tensions between native police and civil rights protesters had been at a excessive.
Civil rights activists, together with Martin Luther King Jr, lead a march from Selma to Montgomery in Alabama, March 1965, to help the proper to protected voter registration.
Wikimedia Commons
In response, Johnson bypassed Wallace and known as within the nationwide guard to make sure, as he put it, the rights of Individuals “to walk peaceably and safely without injury or loss of life from Selma to Montgomery”.
Earlier than final Saturday, this was the final time a president circumvented the authority of the state governor in deploying the guard. However even on this occasion, there was an implied request from Wallace, who explicitly requested federal assist within the absence of state sources.
The subtext right here is that Wallace didn’t wish to be seen to name up the nationwide guard himself, so he pressured Johnson to make that call, permitting him to assert that the president was trampling on state sovereignty.
Rebellion Act
Protesters shelter behind makeshift barricades in Los Angeles, June 8 2025.
EPA-EFE/Allison Dinner
In actuality, Trump has invoked the Rebellion Act to guard ICE brokers. Certainly, the nationwide guard has a sophisticated historical past of responding to civil unrest. The present state of affairs is in stark distinction with the previous, and faces severe questions of legitimacy.
It’s tough to not see this as the newest transfer by the Trump administration to subjugate California. In early January Trump threatened to withhold federal assist to rebuild after the wildfires. In previous months he threatened to withdraw all the state’s federal funding to punish it for its stance on campus protests and the inclusion of transgender athletes in girls’s sports activities.
In contrast to his predecessors, Trump has not mobilised the nationwide guard to guard civil rights in opposition to a hostile police pressure. As an alternative, he seems to be utilizing this as leverage to undermine a political opponent he views as blocking his agenda. Circumventing gubernatorial powers over the nationwide guard on this method has no precedent and heralds the following stage in an prolonged battle between the president and the state of California.
