National Guard troops that were mobilized to help respond to immigration protests in Los Angeles were then sent more than 100 miles away to protect federal agents enforcing immigration laws on marijuana farms in the Coachella Valley, according to court documents filed by the Trump administration Monday.
Around 315 National Guard troops assisted the Drug Enforcement Agency in executing a federal search warrant Wednesday on suspected illegal marijuana farms in Thermal, a desert community around 25 miles southeast of Palm Springs, according to a DEA spokesperson.
During the operation, Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents arrested between 70 and 75 workers on suspicion of lacking documentation, the spokesperson said. One U.S. citizen was arrested on suspicion of impeding law enforcement.
The use of the National Guard in this operation has become a new sticking point in the ongoing legal battle between Gov. Gavin Newsom and President Trump over whether the president has the authority to command some 4,000 National Guard members to quell unrest in L.A.
The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the violence in Los Angeles likely provided sufficient grounds for Trump’s June 7 decision to deploy the troops to protect federal personnel and property and overturned a temporary restraining order that would have returned the National Guard to Newsom’s control. The appeals court determined that Trump may continue to control military troops in Los Angeles while Newsom’s objections to their deployment are litigated in a federal court.
In Monday’s federal court filing, attorneys from the office of California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta challenged whether current conditions in Los Angeles justify the continued use of National Guard members, especially in missions such as the marijuana farm raid that are “untethered to protection against the kinds of harms against federal personnel and property that the Ninth Circuit concluded likely justified the initial federalization.”
Lawyers representing the Trump administration pushed back, writing that the Coachella Valley operation was “in the same vein of other uses of service members to provide protection for immigration enforcement” and that Bonta’s team gives “no persuasive factual or legal reason to question Defendants’ [the Trump administration’s] continued use of military service members.”
Trump’s attorneys argue that protests and violence continue to challenge federal agents’ ability to enforce immigration law, pointing to a Wednesday declaration by Ernesto Santacruz, director of the L.A. field office of ICE’s enforcement and removal operations, regarding ongoing unrest in Los Angeles.
“The presence of the National Guard and other Department of Defense personnel has enabled ICE to continue to carry out its congressionally mandated duties in the Los Angeles area,” Santacruz wrote Wednesday. “Because of the current threat, we would not be able to carry out as many immigration enforcement operations as we have been able to with the Guards’ assistance.”
The declaration, however, does not reference any conditions of violence or unrest in Riverside County.
The DEA’s Los Angeles Field Division said that it requested support from multiple federal agencies in conducting a search warrant on the Coachella Valley marijuana farms due to the “topography and magnitude” of the operation, which spanned 787 acres and took place in temperatures up to 112 degrees. A total of 500 personnel participated in the operation, including members of Customs and Border Protection; ICE; the National Guard; the Federal Bureau of Investigations; the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosions; the U.S. Marshals Service; and the Internal Revenue Service.
“Due to the vast magnitude of the operation, we needed partners to safeguard not just our personnel,” the DEA spokesperson said, “but also the individuals either working or living in the premises.” Two men were found padlocked inside a trailer during the operation, according to the DEA.
On Monday, Bonta’s team requested additional discovery of information regarding National Guard deployments outside of the Los Angeles area as well as updated information on whether the Trump administration remains unable to enforce immigration laws in L.A. or elsewhere using regular federal agencies to the degree that the National Guard deployment remains necessary.
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