California governor asks court to block Trump administration from using troops in immigration raids

Photo: CNBC-TV18/MGN

LOS ANGELES (AP) — California Gov. Gavin Newsom asked a federal court Tuesday to block the Trump administration from using the National Guard and Marines to assist with immigration raids in Los Angeles, saying the practice would only heighten tensions.

Newsom filed the emergency request after President Donald Trump ordered the deployment to LA of roughly 4,000 National Guard members and 700 Marines following protests driven by anger over the president’s stepped-up enforcement of immigration laws.

The governor’s request said it was in response to a change in orders for the Guard members, who were originally deployed to protect federal buildings. The court documents said sending troops on immigration raids would only escalate tensions and promote civil unrest.

The Marines and another 2,000 National Guard troops were ordered to LA on Monday, adding to a military presence that local officials and Newsom do not want and that the police chief says makes it harder to handle the protests safely.

Marine Corps Gen. Eric Smith said Tuesday that the Marines deployed to the area had not yet been called to respond to the protests and were there only to protect federal officials and property.

The Marines were trained for crowd control but have no arrest authority, Smith told a budget hearing on Capitol Hill.

Paul Eck, deputy general counsel in the California Military Department, said the agency was informed that the Pentagon plans to direct the California National Guard to start providing support for immigration operations. That support would include holding secure perimeters around areas where raids are taking place and securing streets for immigration agents, he said in the governor’s emergency request.

According to U.S. officials, the California Guard members who were deployed were authorized to provide protection and secure streets and perimeters around areas where enforcement actions are taking place. The officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss military operations, said the Guard members are not participating in any of the enforcement actions, but are providing security and have already been doing some of those missions in the Los Angeles area.

Trump says he’s open to using Insurrection Act

Trump left open the possibility of invoking the Insurrection Act, which authorizes the president to deploy military forces inside the U.S. to suppress rebellion or domestic violence or to enforce the law in certain situations. It’s one of the most extreme emergency powers available to a U.S. president.

“If there’s an insurrection, I would certainly invoke it. We’ll see,” he said Tuesday from the Oval Office. “But I can tell you last night was terrible, and the night before that was terrible.”

Trump has described Los Angeles in dire terms that Mayor Karen Bass and Newsom say are nowhere close to the truth.

While protesters blocked a major freeway and set cars on fire over the weekend, the demonstrations in the city of 4 million people have largely been centered in several blocks of downtown. On Monday, they were far less raucous, with thousands of people peacefully attending a rally at City Hall and hundreds more protesting outside a federal complex that includes a detention center where some immigrants are being held following workplace raids across the city.

Los Angeles police said they made over 100 arrests Monday evening, mostly for failing to disperse the downtown area. One person was arrested for assault with a deadly weapon and two police offers were injured, the department said.

Obscene slogans directed at Trump and federal law enforcement remained scrawled across several buildings. At the Walt Disney Concert Hall, workers were busy washing away graffiti Tuesday morning.

In nearby Santa Ana, armored Guard vehicles blocked a road leading to federal immigration and government offices. Workers swept up plastic bottles and broken glass.

Sending in the military is the latest step in the administration’s immigration crackdown as Trump pursues the mass deportations he promised last year during the presidential campaign. The protests have been driven by anger over enforcement that critics say is breaking apart migrant families.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth suggested Tuesday that the use of troops inside the U.S. will continue to expand.

“I think we’re entering another phase, especially under President Trump with his focus on the homeland, where the National Guard and Reserves become a critical component of how we secure that homeland,” he said on Capitol Hill.

Los Angeles officials say police don’t need help

The mayor and the governor say Trump is putting public safety at risk by adding military personnel even though police say they don’t need the help.

Los Angeles Police Chief Jim McDonnell said he was confident in the police department’s ability to handle large-scale demonstrations and that the Marines’ arrival without coordinating with the police department would present a “significant logistical and operational challenge.”

The protests began Friday after federal immigration authorities arrested more than 40 people across Los Angeles and continued over the weekend as crowds blocked a major freeway and set self-driving cars on fire. Police responded with tear gas, rubber bullets and flash-bang grenades.

Demonstrations have spread to other cities nationwide, including San Francisco and Santa Ana, California, as well as Dallas and Austin, Texas. Authorities in Austin said police used pepper spray balls and tear gas to disperse a crowd that threw rocks and bottles at officers Monday, injuring four.

LA response takes stage on Capitol Hill

The Pentagon said deploying the National Guard and Marines costs $134 million. That figure came out Tuesday just after Hegseth engaged in a testy back-and-forth about the costs during a congressional hearing.

The defense secretary defended Trump’s decision to send the troops, saying they are needed to protect federal agents doing their jobs.

Meanwhile, Democratic members of California’s congressional delegation on Tuesday accused the president of creating a “manufactured crisis” with his orders to send in troops.

On Monday, California Attorney General Rob Bonta filed a lawsuit over the use of National Guard troops following the first deployment, seeking an order declaring Trump’s use of the Guard unlawful and asking for a restraining order to halt the deployment.

Trump said the city would have been “completely obliterated” if he had not deployed the Guard.

U.S. officials said the Marines were needed to protect federal buildings and personnel, including immigration agents.

Despite their presence, there has been limited engagement so far between the Guard and protesters while local law enforcement implements crowd control.

The deployment appeared to be the first time in decades that a state’s National Guard was activated without a request from its governor, a significant escalation against those who have sought to hinder the administration’s mass deportation efforts.

The last time the National Guard was activated without a governor’s permission was in 1965, when President Lyndon B. Johnson sent troops to protect a civil rights march in Alabama, according to the Brennan Center for Justice.

Democratic Rep. Norma Torres, who represents parts of Los Angeles County, said today that her “constituents are very scared” of the sweeping Immigration and Customs Enforcement actions taking place in communities there.

“They don’t want to get caught up in a situation where ICE is profiling and detaining them because of the color of their skin,” Torres said on MSNBC’s “Way Too Early.”

Torres added that she and other Democratic members were barred from entering an ICE facility in downtown LA.

“It’s not supposed to work this way. In the last Trump administration we made sure we changed the law so members of Congress would not be blocked from entering and doing oversight. … Imagine if your loved one just didn’t come home one day and you tried to locate them but ICE is playing a shell game, transferring them from one location to another because they aren’t interest in due process.”

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In downtown Los Angeles on Sunday, protesters faced off with law enforcement officers. Disinformation about the events has circulated online.

Misleading photographs, videos and text have spread widely on social media as protests against immigrant raids have unfolded in Los Angeles, rehashing old conspiracy theories and expressing support for President Trump’s actions.

The flood of falsehoods online appeared intended to stoke outrage toward immigrants and political leaders, principally Democrats.

They also added to the confusion over what exactly was happening on the streets, which was portrayed in digital and social media through starkly divergent ideological lenses. Many posts created the false impression that the entire city was engulfed in violence, when the clashes were limited to only a small part.

There were numerous scenes of protesters throwing rocks or other objects at law enforcement officers and setting cars ablaze, including a number of self-driving Waymo taxis. At the same time, false images spread to revive old conspiracies that the protests were a planned provocation, not a spontaneous response to the immigration raids.

The confrontation escalated on Monday as new protests occurred and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced — on X — that he was mobilizing 700 Marines from a base near Los Angeles to guard federal buildings. They are expected to join 2,000 members of the California National Guard whom Mr. Trump ordered deployed without the authorization of the state’s governor, Gavin Newsom, who normally has command of the troops.

The latest deployments prompted a new wave of misleading images to spread — some purporting to show Marines and the military service’s weapons in action. One was a still from “Blue Thunder,” a 1983 action-thriller about a conspiracy to deprive residents of Los Angeles of their civil rights. It features a climactic dogfight over the city’s downtown.

Darren L. Linvill, a researcher at Clemson University’s Media Forensics Hub, said conservatives online were “building up the riots in a performative way” to help bolster Mr. Trump’s claims that Los Angeles had been taken over by “violent, insurrectionist mobs.”

Dr. Linvill said the posts were also “a bit self-fulfilling.” “As they direct attention to it,” he said, “more protesters will show up.”

James Woods, the actor who has become known for spreading conspiracy theories, used his account on X to rail against the state’s elected officials, especially Mr. Newsom, a Democrat. He also reposted a fabricated quote, attributed to former President Barack Obama, discussing a secret plot to impose socialism on the country, as well as a video of burning police cars that was from 2020.

An innocuous photograph of a pallet of bricks, actually posted on the website of a building materials wholesaler in Malaysia, was cited as proof that the protests were organized by nonprofit organizations supported by George Soros, the financier who, to the feverishly conspiratorial right, has become a mastermind of global disorder.

Image These bricks are actually from an image on the website of a building materials wholesaler in Malaysia. Credit… The New York Times

“It’s Civil War!!” an account on X wrote on Saturday, claiming that the bricks had been placed near the offices of Immigration and Customs Enforcement for “Democrat militants.”

X posted a Community Note pointing out that the photograph had nothing to do with the protests, but it still was seen more than 800,000 times. It was also widely reposted, including by several seemingly inauthentic accounts in Chinese.

The online trope dates at least to the Black Lives Matter protests in 2020. It reappeared in 2022 after a conspiratorial post by Representative Lauren Boebert, a Colorado Republican who suggested that bricks for a paving project near Capitol Hill were intended for violent protests after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade.

“These days, it feels like every time there’s a protest, the old clickbaity ‘pallets of bricks’ hoax shows up right on cue,” the Social Media Lab, a research center at the Toronto Metropolitan University, wrote on Bluesky. “You know the one, photos or videos of bricks supposedly left out to encourage rioting. It’s catnip for right-wing agitators and grifters.”

It also fits into the narrative that protests against government policies are somehow inauthentic. On his own platform, Truth Social, Mr. Trump also suggested that the protesters were “Paid Insurrectionists!”

Numerous posts echoed unsubstantiated claims that the protests were the work of Mr. Soros as well as local nongovernment organizations or Democratic elected officials, including the mayor of Los Angeles, Karen Bass. Some posts disparaging the protests were shared by accounts with deceptive handles that closely resembled those of official government sources or news organizations.

Mike Benz, a conspiracy-minded influencer on X who last year claimed that the Pentagon used the pop star Taylor Swift as part of a psychological operation to undercut Mr. Trump, advanced an outlandish theory that the mayor had links to the Central Intelligence Agency and had helped start riots in the city where she lives.

He based that simply on Ms. Bass’s role as a board member for the National Endowment for Democracy, the congressionally mandated organization formed during the Reagan administration to promote democratic governance around the world.

Not surprisingly, perhaps, the theme was echoed by accounts across social media linked to Russia, which often amplifies content that discredits the United States. The Kremlin and its supporters have long accused Mr. Soros or the United States government of covertly sponsoring “color revolutions” to overthrow governments — from the Arab Spring countries swept up by mass street protests in 2011 to Ukraine.

“It is nationwide conspiracy of liberals against not only Trump but against American people in general,” Aleksandr Dugin, a prominent nationalist in Russia, wrote on X on Sunday.

Disinformation in situations like these spreads so quickly and widely that efforts to verify facts cannot keep up, said Nora Benavidez, senior counsel at Free Press, an advocacy organization that studies the intersection of media, technology and the law. She described it as part of “a much longer effort to delegitimize peaceful resistance movements.”

“Information warfare is always a symptom of conflict, stoked often by those in power to fuel their own illiberal goals,” she said. “It confuses audiences, scares people who might otherwise have empathy for the cause and divides us when we need solidarity most.”

Protesters gather at Santa Ana federal building: ‘This is the healthiest thing to do’

A protester with a bullhorn was among about 120 people outside the Santa Ana federal building on Monday, where unmarked white vans had been driving in and out all day.

In Santa Ana, about 120 protesters gathered outside a federal building near City Hall on Monday afternoon.

Multiple raids had been conducted across Santa Ana that morning, including at Home Depots and restaurants and in industrial areas of the city.

“I feel enraged,” said Councilmember Jessie Lopez, standing with the crowd. “If [U.S. Atty.] Bill Essayli cares about criminals, he should start at the White house.”

Essayli last week sent a letter to Santa Ana, warning the sanctuary city about its proposal to pass a resolution that would require the Santa Ana Police Department to inform residents whenever they received a courtesy call from Immigration and Customs Enforcement alerting them about upcoming raids.

Bethany Anderson was with a group of friends from Fullerton, where they had been receiving calls Monday. They were standing in front of a driveway that led to a small gated garage where unmarked white vans had been driving in and out all day.

“I knew they would bring people here” to the federal building, said Anderson, who is accredited by the Department of Justice as a legal representative. “This is not a jail, so we have no idea about the quality of conditions inside, so that’s very worrisome.

Suddenly, she saw movement in the driveway and grabbed the bullhorn hanging from her shoulder. “We see you!” Anderson shouted as protesters screamed, “Shame!” and rushed to see what was going on.

“We see you, private security guards! You don’t have to do this!”

The Orange County Rapid Response Network posted addresses and photos of locations where ICE had conducted raids in Fountain Valley. The group’s co-director, Casey Conway, said he was happy to see so many people show up in Santa Ana.

“But this isn’t just today. This has been every day for three weeks. We’re super overwhelmed right now.”

The crowd held pro-immigrant and anti-Trump signs and waved Mexican flags.

Someone passed around bottled waters and masks as a young woman chanted on a bullhorn, “Move ICE, get out the way!” to artist Ludacris’ song “Move.”

Federal police stood by the building’s entrance, where some took photos of the crowd. When they went back inside, the crowd started chanting, “¡Quiere llorar!” — “He wants to cry,” a common insult among Mexican soccer and rock fans.

Alicia Rojas looked on from the edge of a sidewalk. The Colombian native had her amnesty application denied in the federal building as a child.

“This is all triggering,” said the 48-year-old artist.

Now a U.S. citizen, Rojas grew up in Mission Viejo during the era of Prop. 187 and remembered all the racism against people like her at the time.

Seeing so many young people out to protest made her “hopeful, but I’m also worried. I’ve seen how the response has been to these peaceful protests. This administration has no capacity to be American.”

She looked on. “I feel rage inside, but this is the healthiest thing to do. More than anything. I’m here to look after the kids.”

As the vans came in and out throughout the afternoon, activists at first blocked them but later backed down when federal agents shot pepper balls into the ground. Among those hit was Conway, who rushed to the side to have their reddened eyes washed out with water.

“I need someone to be on deescalation,” Conway gasped. The task fell to Tui Dashark. Dressed in neon green Doc Martens, an olive hat and a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles T-shirt, he led the crowd through chants including “No firman nada” (Don’t sign anything).

“Please stop throwing water bottles,” Dashark said at one point. “They’re just water bottles to us. But to them, it’s assault with a deadly weapon.”

The crowd calmed down.

“I’m proud of you guys for not escalating,” Dashark said. “You’re the f— real ones.”

He turned to the gate driveway, where federal agents had quietly returned.

“You’re so cool man,” Dashark said in a sarcastic voice as the crowd laughed. “ I wonder, what kind of person is up thinking, ‘I want to lock up kids as a career?”

As the day continued, the situation eventually evolved into the old children’s game of Red Rover: Protesters would get too close and throw water bottles, federal agents would shoot pepper balls and eventually escalate to flash-bang grenades and tear gas. After a couple of hours, the crowd moved a couple of hundred feet to the east to Sasscer Park, named after a Santa Ana police officer killed in the 1960s by a member of the Black Panther Party. Local activists call it Black Panther Park.

By 5 p.m., the protesters numbered at least 500. T-shirts emblazoned with logos of beloved Santa Ana Chicano institutions colored the scene: Suavecito. Gunthers. Funk Freaks. Santa Ana High. El Centro Cultural de México. People took turns on bullhorns to urge calm and to unite. But then another protester saw federal agents gathering at the federal building again.

“We gotta make them work overtime!” a young woman proclaimed on a bullhorn. “They don’t make enough money. let’s go back!”

The crowd rushed back to the federal building. Eventually, Santa Ana police officers arrived to create a line and declare an unlawful assembly.

For the next four hours, the scene was akin to a party broken up occasionally by tear gas and less-than-lethal projectiles. Cars cruised on nearby streets blasting Rage against the Machine, sierreño music and the tunes of Panteón Rococó, a socialism-tinged Mexican ska group. Someone used AutoTune to shout profanities against the police, drawing giggles from the overwhelmingly Gen Z crowd.

A Latina woman who gave her name only as Flor arrived with her teenage daughter. It was their first protest.

“We live in a MAGA-ass town and saw this on television,” Flor said. “I grew up just down the street from here. No way can we let this happen here.”

Nearby, Giovanni Lopez blew on a loud plastic horn. It was his first protest as well.

“I’m all for them deporting the criminals,” said the Santa Ana resident. He wore a white poncho bearing the Aztec god Quetzalcoatl. “But that’s not what they’re doing. My wife is Honduran and she’s not a citizen. She’s scared to go to her work now even though she’s legal. I told her not to be afraid.”

The Santa Ana police slowly pushed the protesters out of Sasscer Park. Some, like Brayn Nestor, bore bloody welts from the rubber bullets that had hit them.

“Does someone have a cigarette?” he asked out loud in Spanish. The Mexico City native said he was there to “support the raza, güey.” He was in obvious pain, but the trademarks arachidonic humor of his native city still bubbled through.

“It’s chido [cool] that they hit me,” he proclaimed to anyone who would listen. “Es perro, güey [it’s cool, dog]. So the world knows what jerks those pigs are.”

California Gov. Gavin Newsom filed an emergency request in federal court Tuesday to block the Trump administration from using the National Guard and Marines to assist with immigration raids in Los Angeles.

Newsom’s move comes after President Donald Trump ordered the deployment of roughly 4,000 National Guard members and 700 Marines to Los Angeles following protests driven by anger over the president’s stepped-up enforcement of immigration laws.

The governor’s request said it was in response to a change in orders for the Guard.

10 California Governor Gavin Newsom filed a request in federal court to block President Trump from using troops in the ongoing immigration raids in Los Angeles. AP

The filing included a declaration from Paul Eck, deputy general counsel in the California Military Department. Eck said the department has been informed that the Pentagon plans to direct the California National Guard to start providing support for immigration operations. That support would include holding secure perimeters around areas where raids are taking place and securing streets for immigration agents.

The Guard members were originally deployed to protect federal buildings.

It was not clear if the change in mission had begun.

Newsom’s office did not immediately say how the state was notified about the change.

Marines have not responded to protests yet

In other developments Tuesday, the Marine Corps commandant said the Marines that deployed to the Los Angeles area on Trump’s orders have not yet been called to respond to the protests and are there only to protect federal officials and property,

10 Members of law enforcement keep watch as protests against federal immigration sweeps continue, in downtown Los Angeles, California, U.S. June 9, 2025. REUTERS

The 700 Marines and another 2,000 National Guard troops were ordered to LA on Monday, escalating a military presence that local officials and Gov. Gavin Newsom do not want and that the police chief says makes it harder to handle the protests safely.

Marine Corps Gen. Eric Smith told a budget hearing on Capitol Hill that the battalion has not yet been sent to any protests. The Marines were trained for crowd control but have no arrest authority and are there to protect government property and personnel, he said.

Trump left open the possibility of invoking the Insurrection Act, which authorizes the president to deploy military forces inside the U.S. to suppress rebellion or domestic violence or to enforce the law in certain situations. It’s one of the most extreme emergency powers available to a U.S. president.

10 U.S. President Donald Trump speaks in the Oval Office at the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S., June 10, 2025. REUTERS

“If there’s an insurrection, I would certainly invoke it. We’ll see,” he said Tuesday from the Oval Office. “But I can tell you last night was terrible, and the night before that was terrible.”

Trump has described Los Angeles in dire terms that Mayor Karen Bass and Newsom say are nowhere close to the truth.

While protesters blocked a major freeway and set cars on fire over the weekend, the demonstrations in the city of 4 million people have largely been centered in several blocks of downtown. On Monday, they were far less raucous, with thousands of people peacefully attending a rally at City Hall and hundreds more protesting outside a federal complex that includes a detention center where some immigrants are being held following workplace raids across the city.

At daybreak Tuesday, guard troops were stationed outside the detention center, but there was no sign of the Marines.

10 Approximately 2,000 National Guard troops were deployed on 08 June in Los Angeles by US President Donald Trump. ALLISON DINNER/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock

Obscene slogans directed at Trump and federal law enforcement remained scrawled across several buildings. At the Walt Disney Concert Hall, workers were busy washing away graffiti Tuesday morning.

In nearby Santa Ana, armored guard vehicles blocked a road leading to federal immigration and government offices. Workers swept up plastic bottles and broken glass near buildings sprayed with graffiti.

Sending in the military is the latest step in the administration’s immigration crackdown as Trump pursues the mass deportations he promised last year during the presidential campaign. The protests have been driven by anger over the stepped-up enforcement that critics say is breaking apart migrant families.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth suggested Tuesday that the use of troops inside the U.S. will continue to expand.

10 California Governor Gavin Newsom gestures as he attends an event, to announce the Golden State Literacy Plan and deployment of literacy coaches statewide, at the Clinton Elementary School in Compton, California, U.S. June 5, 2025. REUTERS

“I think we’re entering another phase, especially under President Trump with his focus on the homeland, where the National Guard and Reserves become a critical component of how we secure that homeland,” he said on Capitol Hill.

Los Angeles officials say police don’t need help

The mayor and the governor say Trump is putting public safety at risk by adding military personnel even though police say they don’t need the help.

Los Angeles Police Chief Jim McDonnell said he was confident in the police department’s ability to handle large-scale demonstrations and that the Marines’ arrival without coordinating with the police department would present a “significant logistical and operational challenge.”

Newsom called the deployments reckless on the social platform X. “This isn’t about public safety,” the governor said. “It’s about stroking a dangerous President’s ego.”

10 Police fill the street as they face off with protesters in Los Angeles, California, USA, 09 June 2025. CAROLINE BREHMAN/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock

Protests spread across the U.S.

The protests began Friday after federal immigration authorities arrested more than 40 people across Los Angeles and continued over the weekend as crowds blocked a major freeway and set self-driving cars on fire. Police responded with tear gas, rubber bullets and flash-bang grenades.

Demonstrations spread Monday to other cities nationwide, including San Francisco and Santa Ana, California, as well as Dallas and Austin, Texas. Authorities in Austin said police used pepper spray balls and tear gas to disperse a crowd that threw rocks and bottles at officers, injuring four.

Los Angeles response takes stage on Capitol Hill

The Pentagon said deploying the National Guard and Marines costs $134 million. That figure came out Tuesday just after Hegseth engaged in a testy back-and-forth about the costs during a congressional hearing.

10 U.S. President Donald Trump pumps a fist upon arrival at Pope Army Airfield, North Carolina, U.S., June 10, 2025. REUTERS

The defense secretary said the department has a budget increase and the money to cover the costs, and he defended Trump’s decision to send the troops, saying they are needed to protect federal agents doing their jobs.

Meanwhile, Democratic members of California’s congressional delegation on Tuesday accused the president of creating a “manufactured crisis” with his orders to send in troops.

Rep. Nancy Pelosi contrasted Trump’s actions with his handling of the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the U.S. Capitol when law enforcement officers were beaten. “We begged the president of the United States to send in the National Guard. He would not do it,” Pelosi said.

10 California Governor Gavin Newsom speaks as he announces the Golden State Literacy Plan and deployment of literacy coaches statewide, at the Clinton Elementary School in Compton, California, U.S. June 5, 2025. REUTERS

California pushes back against sending troops

California Attorney General Rob Bonta filed a lawsuit over the use of National Guard troops following the first deployment, telling reporters that Trump had “trampled” the state’s sovereignty. He sought an order declaring Trump’s use of the Guard unlawful and asking for a restraining order to halt the deployment.

Trump said the city would have been “completely obliterated” if he had not deployed the Guard.

U.S. officials said the Marines were needed to protect federal buildings and personnel, including immigration agents. A convoy of buses with blacked-out windows and escorted by sheriff’s vehicles arrived overnight at a Navy facility just south of LA.

Despite their presence, there has been limited engagement so far between the Guard and protesters while local law enforcement implements crowd control.

10 Donald Trump sits in the Oval Office, flanked by Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins and Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, at the White House, in Washington, D.C., U.S., June 10, 2025. REUTERS

Protests were peaceful Monday

Thousands flooded the streets around City Hall for a union rally Monday before labor leader David Huerta was freed on a bond after he was arrested Friday while protesting the immigration raids.

As the crowd thinned, police began pushing protesters away, firing crowd-control munitions as people chanted, “Peaceful protest.” At least a dozen people were surrounded by police and detained.

Several dozen people were arrested throughout the weekend. Authorities say one was detained Sunday for throwing a Molotov cocktail at police and another for ramming a motorcycle into a line of officers.

10 US Border Patrol agents arrest a protester near the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) Santa Ana Field Office after protesters gathered following reports of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids in Santa Ana, California, on June 9, 2025. AFP via Getty Images

Guard deployment is a nearly unprecedented escalation

The deployment appeared to be the first time in decades that a state’s National Guard was activated without a request from its governor, a significant escalation against those who have sought to hinder the administration’s mass deportation efforts.

The last time the National Guard was activated without a governor’s permission was in 1965, when President Lyndon B. Johnson sent troops to protect a civil rights march in Alabama, according to the Brennan Center for Justice.