Minutes after Sec. of Protection Pete Hegseth trumpeted plans to “flood” Washington with Nationwide Guard troops, a senior U.S. navy official took the stand in federal courtroom in California to defend the controversial deployment of troopers to Los Angeles.
The transfer throughout protests earlier this summer season has since grow to be the mannequin for President Trump’s growing use of troopers to police American streets.
However the trial, which opened Monday in San Francisco, activates the argument by California that Trump’s troops have been illegally engaged in civilian regulation enforcement.
“The military in Southern California are so tied in with ICE and other law enforcement agencies that they are practically indistinguishable,” California Deputy Atty. Gen. Meghan Sturdy instructed the courtroom Tuesday.
“Los Angeles is just the beginning,” the legal professional went on. “President Trump has hinted at sending troops even farther, naming Baltimore and even Oakland here in the Bay Area as his next potential targets.”
Senior U.S. District Decide Charles R. Breyer stated in courtroom that Hegseth’s statements Monday may tip the scales in favor of the state, which should present the regulation is more likely to be violated once more as long as troops stay.
However the White Home hasn’t let the pending case stall its agenda. Nor have Trump officers been phased by a choose’s order limiting so-called “roving patrols” utilized by federal brokers to indiscriminately sweep up suspected immigrants.
After Border Patrol brokers final week sprang from a Penske transferring truck and snatched up staff at a Westlake Residence Depot — showing to brazenly defy the courtroom’s order — some attorneys warned the rule of regulation is crumbling in plain sight.
“It is just breathtaking,” stated Mark Rosenbaum of Public Counsel, a part of the coalition difficult the usage of racial profiling by immigration enforcement. “Somewhere there are Founding Fathers who are turning over in their graves.”
The chaotic immigration arrests that swept by Los Angeles this summer season had all however ceased following the unique July 11 order, which bars brokers from snatching individuals off the streets with out first establishing cheap suspicion that they’re within the U.S. illegally.
An Aug. 1 ruling within the ninth Circuit Court docket of Appeals appeared to guarantee they might not resume once more for weeks, if ever.
For the punch-drunk Division of Justice, the ninth Circuit loss was the newest blow in a protracted judicial beatdown, as lots of the administration’s most aggressive strikes have been held again by federal judges and tied up in appellate courts.
“[Trump] is losing consistently in the lower courts, almost 9 times out of 10,” stated Eric J. Segall, a professor at Georgia State College Faculty of Regulation.
Within the final two weeks alone, the ninth Circuit additionally discovered Trump’s government order ending birthright citizenship unconstitutional and signaled it might doubtless rule in favor of a gaggle of College of California researchers hoping to claw again funding from Trump’s conflict on so-called DEI insurance policies.
Elsewhere within the U.S., the D.C. Circuit courtroom appeared poised to dam Trump’s tariffs, whereas a federal choose in Miami quickly stopped building at Alligator Alcatraz.
California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta has crowed that his Division of Justice had sued the administration practically 40 occasions.
However even the breakneck tempo of present litigation is glacial in contrast with the actions of immigration brokers and federalized troops.
On Monday, the White Home appeared to vindicate them by sending the Nationwide Guard to Washington.
Talking for greater than half an hour, President Trump rattled off a listing of American cities he characterised as underneath siege.
When requested if he would deploy troops to these cities as nicely, the president stated, “We’re just gonna see what happens.”
“We’re going to look at New York. And if we need to, we’re going to do the same thing in Chicago,” he stated. “Hopefully, L.A. is watching.”
This picture taken from video reveals U.S. Border Patrol brokers leaping out of a Penske field truck throughout an immigration raid at a Residence Depot in Los Angeles, on Aug. 6, 2025.
(FOX Information/Matt Finn by way of AP)
The Division of Justice argues that the identical energy that permits the president to federalize troops and deploy them on American streets additionally creates a “Constitutional exception” to the Posse Comitatus Act, a nineteenth century regulation that bars the troopers from civilian police motion.
California attorneys say no such exception exists.
“I’m looking at this case and trying to figure out, is there any limitation to the use of federal forces?” Decide Breyer stated.
Even when they hold taking losses, Trump administration officers “don’t have much to lose” by choosing fights, stated Ilya Somin, regulation professor at George Mason College and a Constitutional scholar on the Cato Institute.
“The base likes it,” Somin stated of the Trump’s most controversial strikes. “If they lose, they can consider whether they defy the court.”
Different consultants agreed.
“The bigger question is whether the courts can actually do anything to enforce the orders that they’re making,” stated David J. Bier of the Cato Institute. “There’s no indication to me that [Department of Homeland Security agents] are changing their behavior.”
Some students speculated the decrease courtroom massacre would possibly truly be a strategic sacrifice within the conflict to increase presidential energy within the Supreme Court docket.
“It’s not a strategy whose primary ambition is to win,” stated Professor Mark Graber of the College of Maryland Francis King Carey Faculty of Regulation. “They are losing cases right and left in the district court, but consistently having district court orders stayed in the Supreme Court.”
Win or lose within the decrease courts, the political attract of concentrating on California is potent, argued Segall, the regulation professor who research the Supreme Court docket.
“There is an emotional hostility to California that people on the West Coast don’t understand,” Segall stated. “California…is deemed a separate country almost.”
An favorable ruling within the Supreme Court docket may pave the best way for deployments throughout the nation, he and others warned.
“We don’t want the military on America’s streets, period full stop,” Segall stated. “I don’t think martial law is off the table.”
Pedro Vásquez Perdomo, a day laborer who is among the plaintiffs on the Southern California case difficult racial profiling by immigration enforcement, has stated the case is greater than him.
He squared as much as the rostrum exterior the American Civil Liberties Union’s downtown workplaces Aug. 4, his voice trembling as he spoke in regards to the non permanent restraining order — upheld days earlier by the ninth Circuit Court docket of Appeals — that stood between his fellow Angelenos and unchecked federal authority.
“I don’t want silence to be my story,” the day-laborer stated. “I want justice for me and for every other person who’s humanity has been denied.”
