Restoring Order in Los Angeles

National Review Online

Monday, June 09, 2025

 

What have the self-driving vehicles done to anyone?

 

Rioters set Waymo cabs ablaze in Los Angeles last night in the ongoing spasm of violence the last several days over federal immigration enforcement in the West Coast metropolis. As is always the case with “mostly peaceful protests,” left-wing demonstrators have destroyed property, blocked traffic, and hurled objects at law enforcement.

 

President Trump has responded by activating California National Guard troops without a request by the governor, in this case Democrat Gavin Newsom. This is a highly unusual move and the first time the president has called up a state’s guard without gubernatorial approval since 1965, but it is legally permissible and understandable in the circumstances.

 

The president is relying on what a 1971 Office of Legal Counsel memo called his “inherent authority to use troops for the protection of federal property and federal functions,” as well as 10 U.S.C. 12406, which provides for the emergency mobilization of the National Guard. That statute says the president can call up the Guard when there’s an actual or threatened invasion or rebellion, or when he can’t execute the laws with regular federal forces.

 

Given what’s being done to attack and obstruct ICE agents who are simply enforcing the immigration laws, the latter condition applies. This is not an invocation of the Insurrection Act, which would involve federal troops taking on general law-enforcement functions. Instead, the role of the Guard is limited, as the presidential proclamation stipulates, to ensuring “the protection and safety of Federal personnel and property.”

 

State and city officials are condemning the activation of the Guard as a “provocation,” although usually the only people provoked by troops standing in front of a federal building to keep it from getting attacked are those who might want to attack it.

 

Another criticism is that the violence was isolated to a relatively small portion of the massive city and thus deploying the National Guard was unnecessary. But attacking federal agents is no small matter, and, as we learned in 2020, urban riots can quickly spiral out of control if there isn’t an overwhelming show of force early.

 

Certainly, images of police cars getting attacked by rioters last night doesn’t provide any reassurance that L.A. has the situation under control, and indeed Los Angeles Police Chief Jim McDonnell said that his officers were “overwhelmed.”

 

The ICE actions that set off the mayhem of the last few days were targeted arrests of repeat immigration offenders and illegal immigrants already ordered removed, as well as worksite raids of the sort that must happen if there is going to be any hope of substantially reducing the number of illegal immigrants living and working in the United States. Given that hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants live in L.A. proper, and perhaps close to a million in L.A. County, no one should be surprised that ICE is showing up. The opposition, though, is driven by resistance to immigration enforcement as such. A California assemblyman who had a large role in ginning up the protests of ICE in the nearby city of Paramount said of the agents, “The community is coming out strong to show that they are not welcome in our community.”

 

There’s much talk of what can be done to “de-escalate” the situation. The first step would be for left-wing residents of L.A. to stop harassing and assaulting federal officers for doing their jobs.