President Sends National Guard To Stop California Insurrection

President Donald Trump on Saturday announced the deployment of  2,000 National Guard soldiers to Los Angeles County amid escalating violent protests against federal agents enforcing U.S. immigration laws. The protests have reportedly included explosives detonated against cars, federal buildings, and federal law enforcement personnel. The insurrectionists have also lobbed rocks, stones, and concrete at federal law enforcement, according to Fox News.

Foreign criminals apprehended this week by now-beseiged U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents in Los Angeles included gang members and others with long rap sheets, including assault, domestic violence, robbery, cruelty to children, and drug and alien trafficking, Fox News reported, citing the Department of Homeland Security.

On Saturday, law enforcement officials used tear gas on rioters in Paramount, Calif., following an alleged ICE raid, Fox News reported. Several people were arrested on charges of assaulting a federal agent, U.S. Border Patrol head Michael W. Banks said. 

The violence came on the heels of Friday’s bedlam in which more than 1,000 rioters “surrounded a federal law enforcement building and assaulted ICE law enforcement officers, slashed tires, defaced buildings, and taxpayer funded property,” according to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. DHS noted that it took the Los Angeles Police Department two hours to show up at the scene of the insanity. 

Trump took aim at California Gov. Gavin Newsom and Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass for their refusal to effectively deal with the disorder.  

“If Governor Gavin Newscum, of California, and Mayor Karen Bass, of Los Angeles, can’t do their jobs, which everyone knows they can’t, then the Federal Government will step in and solve the problem, RIOTS & LOOTERS, the way it should be solved!!!” Trump wrote on social media. 

‘More Empathy’

Newsom claimed on X that Trump’s rapid response was “purposefully inflammatory and will only escalate tensions.” 

“LA authorities are able to access law enforcement assistance at a moment’s notice. We are in close coordination with the city and county, and there is currently no unmet need. The Guard has been admirably serving LA throughout recovery. This is the wrong mission and will erode public trust,” he insisted Saturday evening.

Trump, California, and America have all seen this movie before. Five years ago this month, Newsom balked at stopping Black Lives Matter rioters who used convicted criminal George Floyd’s death while in police custody as an invitation to smash up and loot businesses and injure police officers and civilians.

“Our fate is tied to the fate of others,” Newsom said, demanding “more empathy” as criminals set fire to buildings and police cars and looted stores.  

“The black community is not responsible for what’s happening in this country right now, we are. Our institutions,” he said. 

This weekend’s violence in Los Angeles County comes in the wake of Democrat politicians rallying around threatening efforts to target ICE officers. On Tuesday, Democrat House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries joined a chorus of Democrats criticizing federal immigration officers for wearing masks after some agents and their families have been reportedly doxxed and threatened by anti-ICE activists. 

“This is America. This is not the Soviet Union,” said Jeffries, who earlier this year urged Democrats to “fight” Trump’s policies “in the streets.”

“We’re not behind the Iron Curtain. This is not the 1930s. And every single one of them, no matter what it takes, no matter how long it takes, will of course be identified,” Jeffries threatened. 

As Newsweek reported, posters with the names, photos, and phone numbers of ICE officers popped up in a Southern California neighborhood earlier this year. 

‘Officers In Harm’s Way’

It’s not just California. Nashville Mayor Freddie O’Connell recently faced backlash for doxxing federal law enforcement officers in the name of “transparency.”

Keep in mind that the city of Nashville refused to turn over the manifesto of a transgender killer who stormed into a Christian elementary school in March 2023 and killed three third-graders and three staff members. Open records advocates sued, alleging the city and the Biden FBI were breaking the law.

Tennessee Sen. Marsha Blackburn has introduced a bill that would protect law enforcement from doxxing. 

“My Protecting Law Enforcement from Doxxing Act would make this illegal and hold blue city mayors accountable for obstructing enforcement of our immigration laws by putting law enforcement officers in harm’s way,” the Republican said in a statement. 

Department of Homeland Security Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin also called out leftist politicians for their “vilification and demonization of ICE.”

“Make no mistake, Democrat politicians like Hakeem Jeffries, Mayor Wu of Boston, Tim Walz, and Mayor Bass of Los Angeles are contributing to the surge in assaults of our ICE officers through their repeated vilification and demonization of ICE. From comparisons to the modern-day Nazi gestapo to glorifying rioters, the violent rhetoric of these sanctuary politicians is beyond the pale. This violence against ICE must end,” McLaughlin said in a statement. 

‘About Enforcing the Law’

If all of this looks a lot like the costly and seemingly endless race-centric demonstrations in the summer of 2020, that’s because it is. Complete with CNN and other corporate media outlets treating the destruction and violent protests against ICE agents in Los Angeles County as fiery, but “mostly peaceful,” all over again. 

“CNN is calling this ‘lawful protests with some unrest,” Liz Wheeler noted Saturday on X. “It’s the BLM ‘fiery but mostly peaceful protests’ all over again. The rioters are assaulting cops, burning cars, impeding the lawful deportation of criminal aliens because they hate America.”

Disorder is once more the order of the day in the left’s bizarro world campaign in which “every cop is a criminal, and all the sinners saints.” Americans — more than ever — are not with such twisted sympathies. The nation and Trump learned a lot from the Marxist insanity, and the president and his administration have little patience for assaults on law enforcement. 

“American people, this is about enforcing the law, and again, we’re not going to apologize for doing it,” Border Czar Tom Homan told Fox News’ The Big Weekend Show. 

“ANY attack on our agents or officers will not be tolerated,” Banks, the Border Patrol chief, wrote on X. “You will be arrested and federally prosecuted.”

Matt Kittle is a senior elections correspondent for The Federalist. An award-winning investigative reporter and 30-year veteran of print, broadcast, and online journalism, Kittle previously served as the executive director of Empower Wisconsin.