The Pentagon significantly escalated the federal response to the immigration enforcement protests in Los Angeles on Monday, mobilizing a battalion of 700 Marines and doubling the number of California National Guard troops in what officials described as a limited mission to protect federal property and agents, even as President Trump described the situation as “very well under control.”
Earlier Monday, Mr. Trump labeled the demonstrators “insurrectionists,” but he stopped short of saying he would invoke the 1807 Insurrection Act, which would allow him to call up the military to intervene directly in putting down the protests.
In an announcement, the Pentagon did not make clear why it would need an additional 2,000 National Guard troops. But more worrying to state and city officials, legal experts and Democrats in Congress was the use of active-duty Marines. By tradition and law, American military troops are supposed to be used inside the United States only in the rarest and most extreme situations.
The mystery was deepened by the fact that the president said the unrest was calming down thanks to his decision to federalize the California National Guard and send its troops into the streets, over the objections of Gov. Gavin Newsom. On Monday evening, the state filed a federal lawsuit challenging the Trump administration’s move and calling president’s actions illegal.
In a statement on Monday night, Sean Parnell, a Pentagon spokesman, said the decision to send the additional National Guard troops was made “at the order of the president.”
The mixed messages — Mr. Trump’s flexing of additional military power in response to the protests, even while claiming early success — came after several days in which the president and his allies have appeared to relish the immigration standoff with local and state officials.
“This is a provocation, not just an escalation,” Mr. Newsom, a Democrat, said about the decision to send in the Marines, in an interview with The New York Times. “This is intended to sow more fear, more anger, and to further divide.”
Mr. Newsom said that just 300 of the National Guard troops Mr. Trump deployed had been put to work, suggesting the addition of Marines was more rooted in politics than in any concern about security in the streets.
California has traditionally used National Guard troops, under state control, to support local law enforcement officials if they get overwhelmed by massive unrest, he said.
“We’re not even close to needing that,” Mr. Newsom said. “But the more Trump does this, the closer perhaps we will get, because that’s his intent.”
Mr. Trump’s actions are “creating more mess,” he said, adding: “If we have to, we will clean up his mess.”
Across the country, Mr. Trump told a very different story. “We got it just in time,” Mr. Trump told reporters at the White House. “It’s still simmering a little bit, but not very much.”
That comment raised the question of why the Marines and additional National Guard troops were called up. With their mobilization, there are now about 4,700 troops assigned to Los Angeles.
On Monday afternoon, the Los Angeles police chief, Jim McDonnell, said “the possible arrival of federal military forces in Los Angeles — absent clear coordination — presents a significant logistical and operational challenge for those of us charged with safeguarding this city.”
It was unclear exactly what grounds Mr. Trump and the Defense Department are using to deploy active-duty Marines to American streets. The Posse Comitatus Act, an 1878 law, generally prohibits active-duty forces from providing domestic law enforcement unless the president invokes the little-used Insurrection Act. So far he has not done so. In his order federalizing California’s National Guard, Mr. Trump cited Title 10 of the United States Code, which lays out the legal basis for the use of U.S. military forces. His order also referred to “the authority vested in me as president by the Constitution.”
A statement from U.S. Northern Command, which is responsible for troops based in the United States, said the Marines would “seamlessly integrate with the Title 10 forces under Task Force 51” — the military’s designation of the Los Angeles forces — “who are protecting federal personnel and federal property in the greater Los Angeles area.”
That would suggest the troops do not have arrest authority, and it leaves unclear what kind of rules of engagement they will operate under if they confront protesters.
During the Vietnam War, the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel wrote memos saying that presidents had inherent power to use troops to prevent antiwar protesters from obstructing federal functions or damaging federal property in Washington and at the Pentagon, notwithstanding a law that generally bars using the military to carry out domestic policing functions. But the theory was never tested in court.
“The Trump administration is test-driving a novel legal theory that you can circumvent the restrictions on domestic law enforcement by the American military,” said Kori Schake, who is an expert on defense policy at the American Enterprise Institute and the author of a forthcoming history of civil-military relations.
She added that the administration appeared to be “blurring the line” between Title 10 federalization of the National Guard and the use of active-duty American milliary forces domestically, calling it “a dangerous undertaking.”
Invoking the 1807 Insurrection Act, which was designed to protect a still-fragile U.S. government from being overthrown from within, would give Mr. Trump the kind of extraordinary powers he sought during the Black Lives Matter protests in his first term. At the time, he was restrained by the White House general counsel, Donald F. McGahn II, and the defense secretary, Mark T. Esper. In his 2022 book “A Sacred Oath,” Mr. Esper wrote that Mr. Trump had asked why protesters could not just be shot.
Since the protests first broke out in Los Angeles on Friday, Mr. Trump and his aides have repeatedly used the term “insurrectionists” to describe the demonstrators.
In a social media post, Mr. Trump said “violent, insurrectionist mobs are swarming and attacking our Federal Agents to try and stop our deportation operations.”
But on Monday afternoon he softened his rhetoric about the situation, saying, “It was heading in the wrong direction, now it’s heading in the right direction.”
Nevertheless, the Trump administration sought to frame the mounting federal response as necessary to make up for failures by Mr. Newsom and other California leaders.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth cited “increased threats to federal law enforcement officers and federal buildings” as the rationale for deploying 700 Marines to Los Angeles. “We have an obligation to defend law enforcement officers — even if Gavin Newsom will not,” Hegseth wrote on his official X account on Monday night.
The administration’s border czar, Thomas D. Homan, suggested on Sunday that the governor and other public officials could even be arrested, a threat that drew a sharp retort from Mr. Newsom.
“Come after me,” Mr. Newsom said in an interview with MSNBC on Sunday. “Arrest me, tough guy. Let’s just get it over with.”
Reporters then asked Mr. Trump on Monday if he thought Mr. Homan should arrest Mr. Newsom.
“I would do it if I were Tom,” Mr. Trump said. “Look, I like Gavin Newsom, he’s a nice guy. But he’s grossly incompetent.”
In a sign of the widening anger over the aggressive federal deployment, the Los Angeles Civic Alliance, a coalition of business and civic leaders that has become the voice of the city’s establishment, condemned Mr. Trump’s moves.
“The issue here goes beyond Los Angeles or California: If the president of the United States can, without notice to the governor and without the constitutionally required request of the governor, send the military into our city, he can do so in any city in America at any time and for any reason he may conjure,” the group said in a rare public statement. “Peaceful protests must be respected.”
Meanwhile, smaller protests took place around the country, including in San Francisco and Boston, as well as smaller cities in California, Pennsylvania and North Carolina.
But it was the precedent Mr. Trump was trying to establish, and the expansion of the use of military forces on American soil, that got the attention of veterans like Senator Jack Reed, the ranking member of the Senate Armed Services Committee.
“The president is forcibly overriding the authority of the governor and mayor and using the military as a political weapon,” said Mr. Reed, a Rhode Island Democrat. “This unprecedented move threatens to turn a tense situation into a national crisis.”
Charlie Savage and Jesus Jiménez contributed reporting.
David E. Sanger covers the Trump administration and a range of national security issues. He has been a Times journalist for more than four decades and has written four books on foreign policy and national security challenges.
Helene Cooper is a Pentagon correspondent for The Times. She was previously an editor, diplomatic correspondent and White House correspondent.
Eric Schmitt is a national security correspondent for The Times. He has reported on U.S. military affairs and counterterrorism for more than three decades.
Laurel Rosenhall is a Sacramento-based reporter covering California politics and government for The Times.
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