The Trump administration must remove California National Guard troops from Los Angeles by Monday, a federal appellate court ruled. The decision upheld a lower court order that halted the mobilization that had roiled the nation’s second-largest city for six months.
The ruling late Friday by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit substantially upheld a district court decision from earlier this week that found the federal government had illegally prolonged the military presence in Los Angeles months after intense protests over immigration enforcement had died down.
The decision by the three-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit effectively blocked the Trump administration from using the remaining 100 or so National Guard troops in California — at least, for the moment.
But the appellate judges temporarily blocked a key part of the order by District Court Judge Charles R. Breyer that would have forced the Trump administration to return control of the troops to Gov. Gavin Newsom, who ordinarily commands them.
California officials celebrated the move as a partial victory in a battle that has dragged on for months.
“The Ninth Circuit’s decision means that, come Monday, there will be no National Guard troops deployed in California. Let me repeat: For the first time in six months, there will be no military deployed on the streets of Los Angeles,” the state’s attorney general, Rob Bonta, said in a statement.
“California did not ask to be a testing ground for the president’s militarized vision of America,” he added. “There is no crisis to justify the National Guard’s continued presence, and we look forward to continuing to prove that in court.”
The Justice Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
At the deployment’s high point in June, about 4,000 National Guard troops and 700 Marines were commandeered by the Trump administration and dispatched to Los Angeles. State and local officials objected strenuously to the move, calling it an inflammatory overreaction to scattered demonstrations that were being ably handled by local and state law enforcement agencies.
Mr. Newsom sued over the initial deployment, but the administration argued that the troops were responding to an emergency and were needed to protect federal agents and property. In June, the Ninth Circuit ruled that conditions in Los Angeles were sufficient for Mr. Trump to take control of the state’s National Guard and direct troops to provide protection during the enforcement of immigration laws.
The administration began gradually drawing down the number of federalized troops in July as public condemnation grew and protests abated. As of last month, about 300 California National Guard members remained under the president’s command, and most were in the process of being released to their usual duties, which generally involve part-time service controlled by the state.
State officials said on Friday that the California deployment consisted of about 100 troops on federal orders that were scheduled to last into February. Last week, Judge Breyer ruled that any emergency the president might have cited as justification for the deployment had long since ended, and that all remaining troops should be released from federal orders and returned to the governor’s command.
Lawyers for the Trump administration argued that the law required an emergency only at the time the president decided to federalize National Guard troops, after which he could extend the deployment as long as he deemed necessary. They also said that troops were still needed to protect federal workers from threats stemming from immigration raids that have been intensely unpopular in immigrant-heavy Southern California.
Shawn Hubler is The Times’s Los Angeles bureau chief, reporting on the news, trends and personalities of Southern California.
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