A federal court hearing is set for Tuesday to determine who is in charge of California National Guard troops in Los Angeles.
Until then, the troops will remain under the guidance of President Donald Trump, who federalized and deployed them late Saturday amid community demonstrations against ongoing immigration enforcement operations in the L.A. area.
On Thursday, a federal judge ordered Trump to return control to Gov. Gavin Newsom following a hearing in which the jurist expressed doubt about the president’s claims that civil unrest in downtown Los Angeles needed to be met with military force.
In a written ruling following an emergency court hearing in San Francisco, U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer wrote that Trump’s actions did not follow congressionally mandated procedure.
“His actions were illegal — both exceeding the scope of his statutory authority and violating the Tenth Amendment to the United States Constitution,” the judge wrote. “He must therefore return control of the California National Guard to the Governor of the State of California forthwith.”
Hours later, Breyer’s ruling was stayed by a three-judge appellate panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in response to a Trump administration notice of appeal.
Earlier Thursday, U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem held an eventful news conference in West L.A. to discuss ongoing ICE operations in the Los Angeles area and declare “We are not going away,” moments before Sen. Alex Padilla, D-California, was forcibly removed, forced onto a hallway floor and placed in handcuffs.
The rough treatment of Padilla was widely condemned, including by Newsom who called it “outrageous, dictatorial and shameful” and by Mayor Karen Bass who labeled it “absolutely abhorrent and outrageous.”
Thursday’s dramatic events came as tensions sparked by immigration enforcement and the resulting protests in the L.A. area remained heightened — with a dusk-to-dawn downtown curfew still in effect, leading to a reduction in confrontations with police — though arrests continued to mount.
While most of the protests have been concentrated near the federal Metropolitan Detention Center downtown and the nearby federal building and City Hall, smaller, scattered protests were held this week at the DoubleTree Hotel in Whittier, the Westin Hotel in Pasadena and the Embassy Suites Hotel in Downey, where demonstrators believed federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents were staying.
Protests have been occurring daily in the area since Friday, when ICE agents carried out a series of immigration enforcement raids, detaining dozens of people.
Prior to the curfew, the nightly protests often devolved into violence, with some demonstrators hurling objects or fireworks at police, who often responded by firing non-lethal weapons or tear gas.
Bass and community leaders took issue Thursday with suggestions by Trump and others that the entire city was under a siege of violence necessitating deployment of the military, including the 4,000 federalized National Guard troops and 700 active-duty U.S. Marines.
“To characterize what is going on in our city as a city of mayhem is just an outright lie,” Bass said at an afternoon news conference attended by dozens of local faith and community leaders.
The mayor pointed to comments made by Noem Thursday morning that described the city as a “war zone.”
“There’s no one up here that sees Los Angeles like that,” Bass said. “This is not all of Los Angeles. This is isolated to a few blocks in a city that is 500 square miles. And out of those 500 square miles, the protests – – and especially the protests that devolved into violence — represent half a square mile.”
Bass said the raids were spreading fear in the community, preventing some people from going to work or school. She said some raids that occurred Thursday took place at “emergency rooms and homeless shelters.”
And she again repeated her assertion that protests in the city would stop immediately if federal immigration authorities discontinued enforcement raids.
“We want peace to come to our city,” Bass said, adding that such an action “needs to begin in Washington, and we need to stop the raids.”
Noem said the enforcement operations were targeting violent criminals. During her news conference, photos of criminals detained during the Southland operations were shown on video screens.
Meanwhile, Thursday’s court hearings stemmed from a lawsuit brought late Monday by Newsom and state Attorney General Rob Bonta following Trump’s escalation of military forces in the Los Angeles area.
Breyer said the issue is “the president exercising his authority, and the president is, of course, limited. That’s the difference between a constitutional government and King George.”
The judge indicated Trump’s deployment of 4,000 members of California’s National Guard to the streets of Los Angeles — over Newsom’s strenuous objections — was legally deficient. The judge also was dubious about Trump’s insistence that the unrest in Los Angeles posed a “danger of rebellion.”
The judge said Trump did not appear to have met a legal requirement that such orders must pass through the governor of the state involved.
Breyer declined to rule on Newsom’s request to block the call-up of 700 active-duty Marines to Los Angeles, saying any action from the bench seemed premature because the troops haven’t arrived in the city.
On Tuesday night Bass implemented the nightly curfew in a one-square- mile section of downtown Los Angeles, lasting from 8 p.m. to 6 a.m. — a curfew that remained in effect Thursday, leading to fewer reports of unrest and property damage. Protesters continued to gather, but many retreated when the curfew took effect. Those who failed to do so faced arrest.
According to the Los Angeles Police Department, seven people were arrested for curfew violations Wednesday night and Thursday morning. There were 71 arrests for failure to disperse, two for assault with a deadly weapon on a police officer and one for resisting an officer.
A motorist was arrested late Wednesday for allegedly driving through a skirmish line of protesters and police officers near Beverly Boulevard and Western Avenue in Koreatown.
That driver led authorities on a high-speed freeway chase into the Inglewood area, where he was arrested after attempting to flee the vehicle on foot on a surface street.
The curfew applies to an area between the Golden State (5) and Harbor (110) freeways, and from the Santa Monica (10) Freeway to where the Arroyo Seco (110) Parkway and Golden State Freeway merge. That area includes Skid Row, Chinatown, and the Arts and Fashion districts.
On the first night of the curfew — Tuesday night into Wednesday morning — 17 people were arrested for curfew violations. During the day Tuesday, the LAPD arrested 203 people for failure to disperse. Three people were arrested for possession of a firearm, one for assault with a deadly weapon and one for discharging a laser at an LAPD airship, police said.
Two officers were injured during Tuesday’s unrest, according to the LAPD.
There are “limited exceptions” to the curfew — including for residents of the area, “people traveling to and from work and credentialed media representatives,” the mayor said.
Bass said she expected the curfew to be in effect for “several days.”
–City News Service
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