Big Beautiful Burn by Caspar Shaller

[This article posted on 6/11/2025 is translated from the German on the Internet, https://www.akweb.de/bewegung/usa-los-angeles-proteste-gegen-razzien-der-einwanderungsbehoerde-ice-trump-sendet-nationalgarde-big-beautiful-burn/.]

Residents of LA are no longer willing to put up with the terror of the immigration authorities. Photo: picture alliance / ASSOCIATED PRESS | Ethan Swope

An unprecedented series of raids by the US immigration authorities ICE hit Los Angeles in early June: officials entered homes and businesses in the city to arrest suspected illegal immigrants. A total of 118 people are said to have been taken into custody without judicial search warrants.

The city, which has a large population of migrants from Latin America, immediately fought back: on Friday evening, June 6, thousands of people gathered for demonstrations, particularly around a federal justice department building where those arrested were believed to be held. Protesters attacked police vehicles and blocked major roads and highways. The police responded with tear gas and rubber bullets, which also hit clearly identified journalists. An Australian reporter was deliberately shot with rubber bullets in front of a camera. Trade unionist David Huerta, president of SEIU California and SEIU United Service Workers West (USWW), was arrested during the protests on June 6 and remained in custody for several days. He has since been released on bail. Actions for his release also took place in other cities across the US.

US President Donald Trump announced that he would crush the opposition on the streets of Los Angeles “immediately and with military force.” On Saturday, June 7, he called 4,000 National Guard troops to the second-largest city in the US. In addition, 700 soldiers from Marine special forces are to be deployed.

“Declaration of war on all Californians”
In doing so, Trump disregarded the authority of California Governor Gavin Newsom, who criticized the measure as “deliberately provocative.” Newsom called the intervention an “unmistakable step toward authoritarianism.” Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass, who like Newsom is a member of the Democratic Party, warned that her city was “being used as a test case for what happens when the federal government threatens the sovereignty of states or municipalities.” On Tuesday evening, June 10, Bass finally imposed a nighttime curfew. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) called the images of armed National Guard troops moving into the city a “declaration of war on all Californians.”

US military forces are not supposed to be deployed domestically, but there are legal loopholes, such as the Insurrection Act of 1807, which allows the president to call in the military for police purposes in the event of uprisings against state authority. The situation has not yet escalated to that point. The deployment of the National Guard – the reserve army – to restore public order is a recurring phenomenon in the US. They were deployed in 2020 to suppress the Black Lives Matter protests. At that time, tear gas and rubber bullets were used, among other things. In 1992, thousands of troops were also sent to Los Angeles after the riots surrounding the Rodney King police brutality case. However, this normally happens at the request or at least with the consent of the government of the states concerned. The last time the National Guard was deployed against the will of the governor in charge was in 1965, when Lyndon B. Johnson sent troops to Alabama to protect civil rights activists from angry supporters of racial segregation.

California has already announced that it will sue the federal government over the deployment of the National Guard. A court is to limit the deployment of the National Guard to guarding buildings owned by the federal government. “Donald Trump is creating fear and terror by ignoring the Constitution and exceeding his powers. This is a staged crisis to damage the foundations of our republic,” said Newsom, who is considered a Democratic presidential candidate for 2028.

The political showdown in Los Angeles is more than a conflict over immigration policy or the right to demonstrate. It is a stress test for civil democracy in the US.
Human rights lawyer Philippe Sands warned in the British Guardian that the escalation in Los Angeles is part of a broader attempt to create an exceptional situation. The aim is to test how much military presence citizens will tolerate at home. Sands points out that a slide into authoritarianism often takes place below the threshold of public awareness: “It is a slow process that takes people across boundaries that previously seemed unthinkable.” Book bans, arrests without legal basis, violent deportations, and the normalization of military presence on the streets are symptoms of this development. He sees historical parallels to Pinochet’s regime in Chile, whose Plan Z was based on constructing a threat scenario to legitimize brutal repression of political opponents. Trump, too, is using the concept of the “enemy within” to stir up fear toward immigrants in order to push through authoritarian measures. “This is a familiar pattern,” said Sands. “You use the power of office to create fear that allows you to go further than you normally would.”

Attack on fundamental principles
Trump’s actions in Los Angeles can also be seen as a diversionary tactic. The US economy is stagnating, the stock markets are going crazy, and Trump’s tariffs have already raised the prices of consumer goods. Trump’s budget package, dubbed the “Big Beautiful Bill,” which offsets tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans with massive cuts in social spending, has also caused widespread outrage.

The Los Angeles Times commented that Trump deliberately chose the city as the stage for a political showdown to distract from these problems. He specifically targeted a city with a predominantly Latin American population, knowing full well that the massive military raids would meet with fierce resistance. The subsequent deployment of National Guard troops to quell the protests further fueled the conflict and provided dramatic images that Trump could use in the media to advance his political agenda.

The battle between liberal governors and mayors on one side and the right-wing federal government on the other could lead to a constitutional crisis. The question of which level of government has which powers and how far the federal government can go to enforce laws is at the heart of a looming power struggle. US border official Tom Homan has already openly threatened to arrest Gavin Newsom and Karen Bass if they resist the deployment of troops. Trump is increasingly attacking the fundamental principle of the separation of powers in the US, which grants the states much greater autonomy than, for example, the German federal states. It remains to be seen how the courts will deal with the lawsuits filed by the states, but the legal battles could drag on for months or years and permanently change the political landscape of the US.

These developments are a wake-up call for American democracy. Whether the judiciary and Congress can still effectively control the president’s power, or even want to, remains one of the key questions. Unlike in Philippe Sands’ example of Pinochet’s Chile, the courts have not yet been stripped of their powers. The political showdown in Los Angeles is therefore more than a conflict over immigration policy or the right to demonstrate. It is a stress test for US civil democracy. How Angelinos, Californian authorities, the judiciary, and national politics respond will determine whether the next three and a half years of Trump will be as authoritarian as he wishes—or whether a remnant of liberal democracy will remain.

Caspar Shaller is a freelance journalist.