A new report suggests that President Donald Trump's administration sent National Guard troops in Los Angeles to assist the Drug Enforcement Administration in a law enforcement operation about 130 miles outside the city, in a move that experts say seems unlawful.
According to the report, around 315 National Guard troops were sent to the eastern Coachella Valley region to help the DEA search a local marijuana growing operation. The DEA asked the National Guard for assistance due to the “magnitude and topography” of the operation.
Legal experts expressed alarm at the move.
"This is the slippery slope," Ryan Goodman, law professor at New York University, wrote on Bluesky.
Federal law prohibits the National Guard from replacing local law enforcement agencies under the Posse Comitatus Act. There are limited instances where the National Guard can be used in law enforcement operations, such as to quell a rebellion. But the guardsmen have to be invited by a state's governor under the law.
Trump initially deployed the National Guard to Los Angeles to stop protests against Immigration and Customs Enforcement operations. Now that those protests have died down, it appears Trump is looking for new ways to utilize the troops.
On June 7, Trump issued a memorandum calling on the National Guard to "temporarily protect ICE and other United States Government personnel who are performing Federal functions."
The U.S. Northern Command said the president's memo is not geographically constrained to the Los Angeles area. Instead, the agency noted that National Guard troops are expected to appear in "locations where protests against [federal] functions are occurring or are likely to occur."
Joyce Vance, a law professor at the University of Alabama, said the redeployment is part of the Trump administration's broader strategy to federalize law enforcement.
"What you have to understand is that this administration wants the confrontation," Vance wrote on Bluesky.
