Demonstrations in Los Angeles enter their fourth day on the repression of immigration from the Trump administration.
President Donald Trump, during the weekend, called demonstrators “violent crowds and insurrectionists” after deploying the National Guard despite the objections of the Democratic Governor of California Gavin Newsom.
The climbing stage arouses a multitude of legal issues, in particular to what extent Trump is willing to use his authority to slow down demonstrations in the face of the immigration raids of his administration.
President Donald Trump arrives at Hagerstown regional airport, en route to Camp David, Hagerstown, Maryland, June 8, 2025.
Nathan Howard / Reuters
On Sunday, Rachel Scott asked Trump of Trump, the main policy correspondent of the ABC News if he is ready to invoke the 1807 insurrection law. The last time the act was used was in 1992 during the Los Angeles riots.
“It depends whether or not there is an insurrection,” replied Trump.
When asked by Scott if he thought that an insurrection took place in Los Angeles, Trump replied: “No, no. But you have violent people, and we’re not going to let them get away,” Trump said at the time. But Sunday evening, he referred to the demonstrators on his social platform of truth as “violent crowds and insurrectionists” and “paid insurrectionists”.
Invited to define the insurrection, Trump said: “You only have to look at the site to see what is going on.”
Trump has not notably excluded the sending of navies in active service to California after the defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, said they were standing next. An American official confirmed on Monday afternoon that 700 Marines from Twentynine Palms in California were ordered to help Los Angeles.
The bar to send navies in active service? “The bar is what I think,” Trump said on Sunday.
That of the insurgency law
Generally, the use of federal troops on American soil is mainly prohibited. The Comitatus law possesses from 1878 limits the army to be involved in civilian police unless the congress approves it or in circumstances “expressly authorized by the Constitution”.
An exception is the insurrection law, a 218 -year law signed by President Thomas Jefferson.
The Insurrection Act declares, in part: “Whenever there is an insurrection in a state against his government, the president may, at the request of his legislature or his governor, if the legislative assembly cannot be summoned, to appeal to a federal service such as the militia of other states, in the number of insurrection, and the use of such as armed forces, as it considers the number of insurrection.”
Another provision indicates that it can be used “whenever the president considers that obstructions, combinations or illegal assemblies, or a rebellion against the authority of the United States, make impracticable to enforce the laws of the United States in any state by the normal course of legal proceedings”.
A few Legal experts warned The law is too wide and vague, and there have been various calls to be reformed to provide larger controls on the presidential power.
Police owned a demonstrator during a demonstration against federal immigration sweeping in downtown Los Angeles on June 8, 2025.
Mike Blake / Reuters
Scenes from downtown Los Angeles after the riots of Los Angeles on May 2, 1992.
Paul Harris / Getty images
The Insurrection Act was invoked in response to 30 crises on its history, according to the Brennan Center for Justice, notably the presidents of Dwight D. Eisenhower and John F. Kennedy to de -regulate schools after the historic decision of the Supreme Court in Brown c. Board of Education of Education
Most of its uses involved federal troops deployed, although some situations were resolved after the troops were ordered to respond, but before their arrival on the scene, noted the Brennan center.
When it was used for the last time in 1992 by President George HW Bush to send the National Guard to Los Angeles, it was at the request of the then. Pete Wilson, as riots, exploded in the city after the acquittal of four white police officers accused of the blows of Rodney King.
If Trump invoked the act, he would probably do it against Newsom’s wishes – something that has not been done since President Lyndon B. Johnson in the 1960s to cope with civil disorders.
How Trump mobilized the National Guard
Trump did not invoke the Insurrection Act when he activated and deployed the National Guard in Los Angeles.
Instead, he cited title 10 of the American code-which contains a provision that allows the president to appeal to federal soldiers when there is “a rebellion or a danger of rebellion against the authority of the United States government” or “that” the president cannot with the regular forces to execute the laws of the United States “.
According to a presidential memorandum, Trump said that he was sending the National Guard to “temporarily protect ice and other members of the American government staff who fulfilled federal functions, including the application of federal law, and to protect federal goods, in places where protests against these functions occur or probably occur on the basis of current threats and planned operations.”
The troops of the National Guard deployed at the University of Alabama to force its desegration, Tuscaloosa, Alabama, June 11, 1963.
Shel Hershorn / Getty Images
The memo said 2,000 troops in the National Guard could be deployed for 60 days or “at the discretion” of Hegseth.
The troops called under title 10 of the fall are generally prevented from direct involvement in the application tasks under the posse Comitatus Act, unless Trump calls the insurrection law or other limited exceptions.
Governor Newsom said on Monday that the State was continuing the administration on Trump deployment of the National Guard.
“He collapsed the fires and acted illegally to federate the National Guard,” wrote Newsom on social networks. “The order he signed does not only apply to that. This will allow him to enter any state and do the same thing. We are pursuing him.”
