California will sue over Trump National Guard deployment, Newsom says

Gov. Gavin Newsom said on social media Monday that California planned to sue over President Trump’s deployment of National Guard troops in Los Angeles.

After a night of unrest on L.A. over immigration sweeps, Newsom said on X: “This is exactly what Donald Trump wanted. He flamed the fires and illegally acted to federalize the National Guard. The order he signed doesn’t just apply to CA. It will allow him to go into ANY STATE and do the same thing. We’re suing him.”

The move by President Trump to activate nearly 2,000 guardsmen marked the first time since 1965 that a president has deployed a state’s National Guard without a request from that state’s governor. The decision was met with stern rebukes from state and local officials, including Newsom who said the deployment was “not to meet an unmet need, but to manufacture a crisis.”

Newsom’s office on Sunday afternoon sent a formal letter to the Trump administration asking them to rescind their deployment of troops.

“There is currently no need for the National Guard to be deployed in Los Angeles, and to do so in this unlawful manner and for such a lengthy period is a serious breach of state sovereignty that seems intentionally designed to inflame the situation, while simultaneously depriving the state from deploying these personnel and resources where they are truly required,” the letter read.

Trump administration officials have seized on the isolated incidents of violence to suggest wide parts of L.A. are out of control. On Sunday, Trump took to social media to claim “violent, insurrectionist mobs are swarming and attacking” federal law enforcement.

“A once great American City, Los Angeles, has been invaded and occupied by Illegal Aliens and Criminals,” he wrote, blaming Democratic politicians for not cracking down earlier.

While officials have not said how long the immigration enforcement actions will continue, Trump told reporters Sunday, “we’re going to have troops everywhere. We’re not going to let this happen to our country.”

Many California officials, who have long been at odds with Trump, say the president was trying to exploit the situation for his political advantage and sow unneeded disorder and confusion.

Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass called the deployment of federalized troops a “chaotic escalation” and issued a reminder that “Los Angeles will always stand with everyone who calls our city home.”

It is unclear when the suit will be filed.

Trump said in a memo to the Defense and Homeland Security departments Saturday that he was calling the National Guard into federal service under a provision called Title 10 to “temporarily protect ICE and other United States Government personnel who are performing Federal functions.”

Title 10 provides for activating National Guard troops for federal service. Such Title 10 orders can be used for deploying National Guard members in the United States or abroad.

Erwin Chemerinsky, one of the nation’s leading constitutional law scholars, told The Times Saturday that “for the federal government to take over the California National Guard, without the request of the governor, to put down protests is truly chilling.”

“It is using the military domestically to stop dissent,” said Chemerinsky, dean of the UC Berkeley School of Law. “It certainly sends a message as to how this administration is going to respond to protests. It is very frightening to see this done.”

British photographer Nick Stern said he was hit with a 14mm high-velocity “sponge bullet” in his thigh while he was covering a stand-off between protestors and law enforcement in Los Angeles on Saturday evening.

The 60-year-old photographer told The Times of London he was “making a point of making myself visible as media” with a press ID around his neck while he was holding a large video camera.

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Stern arrived on the scene after hearing reports of federal agents carrying out immigration enforcement operations in the city’s Paramount area. “I thought by the time I get down there it’ll be over…but as the day went on things seemed to escalate,” he said.

He added that he saw a car on fire, along with a Black Hawk helicopter that was “dropping off ammo for ICE, boxes and boxes of it,” and that police officers were armed with “less-lethal weapons,” including flash-bangs — or stun grenades — and sponge rounds designed to deliver a painful blow.

LAPD did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The force has not responded publicly to the incident.

At about 9 p.m. local time (midnight E.T.), Stern was capturing images of two young women standing a few feet away with their backs to him, waving a Mexican flag toward a line of sheriff’s deputies who were massed farther down the street, when he said he felt “horrific shooting pain impacting my leg” before he blacked out.

“They’re supposed to shoot the ground in front of people, not target individuals — but this hit me directly,” he said, adding, “I can’t explain why they even fired.”

He was taken to the hospital shortly after blood began pouring from his leg, where he underwent scans and X-rays before surgery.

Stern, who immigrated to the U.S. 18 years ago from Hertford, United Kingdom, added that he feared what would come next after President Trump deployed the National Guard around the city, which he said had led to “indiscriminate targeting of everybody who’s at the protests.”

“I feel it’s going to get worse before it gets better. … I wouldn’t be surprised if they start firing live rounds over people’s heads next,” he added.

US officials were deploying roughly 2,000 national guard members in Los Angeles on Monday in response to large protests over immigration raids, while Donald Trump has taken the extraordinary step of threatening to arrest the Democratic governor of California.

Tensions between the federal government and the nation’s second-largest city dramatically escalated over the weekend as residents took to the streets to demonstrate against a series of brutal crackdowns on immigrant communities. Raids in the region have affected garment district workers, day laborers and restaurants, and the president of a major California union was arrested by federal agents while serving as a community observer during US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) arrests.

Protests showed no signs of stopping on Monday, as families of detained immigrants pleaded for their loved ones to be released. Federal officials said roughly 1,000 national guard members were already on the ground, and that the military would be sending roughly 700 marines, marking an exceptionally rare deployment of troops to police US residents.

Police used teargas and other munitions to disperse crowds over the weekend while Governor Gavin Newsom announced a lawsuit challenging the Trump administration’s deployment of the California national guard over the objection of state officials. Trump’s border czar, Tom Homan, has also threatened to arrest Newsom and the Los Angeles mayor, Karen Bass, a move the governor said was “an unmistakable step toward authoritarianism”.

Newsom dared the administration to follow through with the threats, prompting Trump to respond, “I would do it if I were Tom. I think it’s great.”

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) held another rally in downtown Los Angeles on Monday, demanding the “humane treatment and access to lawyers for all detainees” and an “end to ICE raids that devastate immigrant families and communities”.

“We will not be intimidated. We will not be silenced,” the civil rights group said. The ACLU of Southern California said it plans to sue over the national guard deployment.

Advocates called for the immediate release of David Huerta, the president of SEIU California and SEIU-USWW, who was arrested on Friday and initially hospitalized, with video showing officers shoving him to the ground. Huerta was charged on Monday afternoon with a federal offense of conspiracy to impede an officer, which could result in a six-year prison sentence. He was released from federal custody on a $50,000 bond following a Monday court hearing.

The charges come after the US government has repeatedly arrested high-profile officials who the Trump administration claims are obstructing Ice, including a New Jersey mayor, a congresswoman and a Wisconsin judge.

View image in fullscreen People protest against the detention of David Huerta on Monday. Photograph: Daniel Cole/Reuters

Trump, who congratulated the national guard troops for a “great job” even before they had arrived in the city, posted on his Truth Social platform on Monday that deploying them was a “great decision”, saying the city would have been “completely obliterated” otherwise.

Homan claimed on Fox News on Monday that Ice “took a lot of bad people off the street”. He said, without providing specifics, that he had arrested gang members and people with serious criminal convictions, but also admitted that Ice was detaining immigrants without criminal records.

Homan also told NBC News that more raids were coming. “I’m telling you what – we’re going to keep enforcing law every day in LA,” he said. “Every day in LA, we’re going to enforce immigration law. I don’t care if they like it or not.”

California’s lawsuit will accuse the Trump administration of “unlawfully” federalizing the state’s national guard, said the state attorney general, Rob Bonta.

“There is no invasion. There is no rebellion,” Bonta said in a statement. “The president is trying to manufacture chaos and crisis on the ground for his own political ends. Federalizing the California national guard is an abuse of the president’s authority under the law – and not one we take lightly. We’re asking a court to put a stop to the unlawful, unprecedented order.”

Newsom earlier said the president was “putting fuel on this fire, ever since he announced he was taking over the national guard – an illegal act, an immoral act, an unconstitutional act”.

Federal law, he said, “specifically notes they had to coordinate with the governor of the state”. The governor also said Trump’s actions were “putting lives at risk”.

Also on Monday, families targeted by the recent raids spoke out. Trabajadores Unidos Workers United, an immigrant rights group, hosted a press conference outside Ambiance, a garment district warehouse raided on Friday.

One woman said she witnessed the raid where her father was “kidnapped by Ice,” adding: “What happened was not right. It was not legal. In this country, we all have the right to due process … I saw with my own eyes the pain of the families, crying, screaming, not knowing what to do.”

Another woman, Yuriel Romero, said the raid was traumatizing: “I witnessed how they put my father in handcuffs, chained him from the waist and form his ankles.”

On Sunday thousands of Angelenos had swamped the streets around city hall, the federal courthouse and a detention center where previously arrested protesters are being held. They also brought a freeway to a standstill.

View image in fullscreen California Highway Patrol using smoke grenades to advance and push protestors off the 101 freeway during a demonstration following federal immigration operations in Los Angeles on 8 June 2025. Photograph: Blake Fagan/AFP/Getty Images

Vocal and boisterous, the crowd for large parts of the day was mostly peaceful. But tensions flared several times. On Sunday afternoon, police used teargas to disperse groups of protesters gathered near the detention center. And in the evening, officers fired round after round of flash-bangs in an attempt to push the protesters back up the freeway off-ramps.

Mayor Bass has said that LA is a “proud city of immigrants” and has strongly condemned the raids, but has also said protesters would be arrested for “violent” acts. LA police leaders have alleged that some officers had rocks and fireworks thrown at them, though officials have said the demonstrations were largely peaceful.

Civil rights activists have criticized the militarized response of local law enforcement, including LAPD, which has a history of injuring protesters, sometimes leading to costly settlements. Several journalists were injured at the protests, with an Australian reporter on Sunday shot by a rubber bullet at close range while filming a segment.

“When residents come together to make use of their first amendment rights, often LAPD responds with a show of force,” said Sergio Perez, executive director of the Center for Human Rights and Constitutional Law, a legal support group, who was present at the protests. “When you show up in riot gear and paramilitary equipment, you inject into an already dynamic situation a volatile element that escalates things.”

Trump’s national guard deployment marked a stunning escalation in a broad crackdown on immigrants following raids across the country. The federalization of the guard troops is the first time an American president has used such power since the 1992 LA riots, when widespread violence broke out in reaction to the acquittal of four white police officers for brutally beating the Black motorist Rodney King. It also was the first deployment without the express request of the governor since 1965.

Los Angeles county, home to 3.5 million immigrants, making up a third of the population, has a long history of civil rights protests. The demonstrations come as the White House has aggressively ramped up immigration enforcement with mass detentions in overcrowded facilities, a new travel ban, a major crackdown on international students and rushed deportations without due process.

Perez noted how immigrants were deeply woven into the fabric of life in LA, making uprisings against raids inevitable: “When a city like this is the target of an immigration raid by an administration like this, you’re going to deal with a popular and massive outpouring of resistance.”

Thousands of people took to the streets of Los Angeles on Monday for a fourth day of protests targeting President Trump’s immigration raids and the deployment of National Guard soliders to protect federal agents.

Many local and state leaders, including Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass and California Governor Gavin Newsom, accuse the president of overstepping his authority and of inciting the crowds. On Sunday, demonstrators and outside “agitators” set cars on fire, attacked law enforcement with rocks, fireworks and other projectiles in downtown L.A. Police responded with tear gas, flash bang grenades and non-lethal rounds.

Over the past days and weeks, federal immigration agents have targeted numerous Southern California businesses and common gathering places for day laborers, such as Home Depot parking lots, as part of Trump’s directive to deport millions of immigrants who are in the United States illegally.

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