The jousting between the Donald Trump Administration and California’s political leadership over immigration law enforcement has resulted in troops from the Twentynine Palms Marine Corps Base being dispatched across the Southland as “peacekeepers” to prevent protesters from interfering with federal agents’ roundup of illegal migrants.
The use of the U.S. military in this way was not a second or even third option, but rather the administration’s fourth choice in how to ensure that “Operation Alta California” can proceed according to the current federal government’s stated intention of remove an estimated 2.2 million people who are in the Golden State illegally.
As of Tuesday, according to the United States Marine Corps, 719 Marines from the 2nd Battalion, 7th Marines stationed at the Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center Twentynine Palms were deployed to specific locations in Los Angeles San Bernardino and Orange counties, with the lion’s share – well over 600 – in Los Angeles County. Their mission, according to the U.S. Northern Command, calls for them to engage in “protecting federal personnel and federal property in the greater Los Angeles area.”
The Donald Trump Administration previously intended to initiate on April 10 Operation Alta California in what was to be for a period of three to four weeks the limited arenas of Riverside and San Bernardino counties.
That plan fell through, though, when Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco and San Bernardino County Sheriff Shannon Dicus gave indication that they would not permit the deputies from their departments to serve in a facilitating capacity in assisting the Department of Homeland Security and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement in rounding up an estimated 250,000 illegal immigrants in both counties. The administration’s hope had been that once its success in dealing with the illegal immigration issue was established in Riverside and San Bernardino counties, the fourth and fifth largest counties in the state, respectively, populationwise, that it would be able to induce law enforcement agencies elsewhere to lend it a hand in aggressive operations. Because Bianco and Dicus had gotten cold feet, Operation Alta California was postponed for more than seven weeks, until June 2, and its focus was moved to Los Angeles County, with its epicenter being the City of Los Angeles.
More than a dozen U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency sweeps took place across Los Angeles on June 2, more than a score in Los Angeles County on June 3 and hundreds completed by June 6. Consequently, immigration enforcement was given a lesser emphasis in San Bernardino County in the same timeframe, though U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency agents were notably present in the cities of San Bernardino, Colton, Rialto and Ontario at that time.
A firestorm of resistance and protest ensued, one which involved not just activists on the street but grew to include a literal who’s who of California’s Democratic political establishment in Sacramento and Washington, D.C., as well as the City of Los Angeles.
By June 4, there were massive protests materializing in the areas where workplace arrests were taking place or near federal buildings. It was soon revealed that community groups advocating on behalf of illegal immigrants were using their own self-styled Rapid Response Network, which employs a succession of hotline via phone numbers those sighting federal officers, primarily those with Immigration and Customs Enforcement, could call. Those managing the hotline then relayed word to hundreds, indeed thousands, of activists with whom they are affiliated through cell phone contact, giving precise instructions and directions to where Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) had set up or was involved in illegal migrant roundups. .
Crowds got in the way of several ICE operations. In some instances, riot conditions took place or were on the brink of manifesting. LAPD officers were reporting that people in the crowds at the protests where they had come to ensure peaceful demonstrations could take place were throwing bricks, rocks, flaming projectiles, Molotov cocktails, concrete, M-80s and quarter sticks of dynamite their way.
On June 5, Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass, a Democrat, was promulgating that Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents were conducting operations at schools, hospital emergency rooms and homeless shelters.
The Department of Homeland Security immediately responded, calling what Bass had said, “blatantly false,” whereupon Bass retracted her statement. Los Angeles police officers, confronted with violent protestors made arrests. This immediately provoked charges from the advocates for illegal aliens that the department had violated 2017’s California Values Act, which was supposed to prohibit the cooperation of local law enforcement agencies with federal officials in immigration law enforcement as well as the commitment by Los Angles officials to maintain the City of the Angels as a sanctuary city.
Looting of some businesses in those areas occurred. Cars and then a fleet of delivery vans owned by one company were overturned and/or set afire. Damage was done to federal buildings or nearby properties. Federal agents were physically assaulted.
On June 6, David Huerta, the president of the Service Employees International Union California. was arrested during a demonstration against ICE action at a workplace in downtown Los Angeles when he reported became physical, assaulting a law enforcement officer while smashing a gate screaming profanities in the direction of officers.
U.S. Attorney Essayli charged Huerta with conspiracy to impede an officer, a felony under federal law with a potential punishment of up to six years in prison.
The 101 Freeway was twice shut down Sunday, June 8, when protesters on an overpass threw rocks, debris, and M-80 explosives at California Highway Patrol officers and vehicles below them.
In short order, 25th Congressional District Councilwoman Norma Torres and California Senator Alex Padilla came within Angstrom units of being arrested when they interfered, or at least sought to interfere, with federal officials such as Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem or U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli or intruded into the federal Roybal building to come between federal agents and those who had been taken into custody. In Padilla’s case, he found himself face down on the floor of a hallway in the Westwood Building, handcuffed, with two U.S. marshals and an FBI agent on top of him. Torres was teargassed along with a handful of others in her party.
To ensure that Operation Alta California proceeded and prevent what federal officials said were illegal and violent suspensions of civil order, President Trump sent the California National Guard, functioning under the nomenclature Task Force 51, to maintain control over the areas where the raids conducted by Immigration and Customs Enforcement were staging operations.
Governor Gavin Newsom and Attorney General Rob Bonta, asserting that the California National Guard cannot be activated without the authorization of the California governor, sued to block the use of the National Guard as a law enforcement arm by the federal government. They presented to a federal court in San Francisco an argument that the federalization of the Guard is illegal, creates imminent harm to state sovereignty and will intensify civil unrest rather than quell it.
“Sending trained warfighters onto the streets is unprecedented and threatens the very core of our democracy,” Newsom stated publicly.
Federal officials maintained that the move was justified after protesters escalated from peaceful and passive demonstration to physically confronting and assaulting Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents and police.
White House Press Secretary Karolyn Leavitt said that the state and local response to the unlawful action of the protesters, which she called “feckless” was, either purposefully or incompetently, inadequate to protect the federal agents “in the wake of this violence. California’s Democrat leaders have completely abdicated their responsibility to protect their citizens.”
The Trump Administration contested the State of California’s lawsuit and sought a ruling that it could continue with the deployment of the California National Guard while the matter was being decided by the court.
Newsom and Bonta, both Democrats, maintain President Trump on his own did not have the authority to call out the state national guard. U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer ruled Trump had exceeded his authority by illegally deploying the national guard. The Trump Administration appealed that ruling and a three-judge appellate panel temporarily stayed Breyer’s order while a deeper examination of the federal executive’s authority of a state national guard is carried out. By tradition, national guards are brought into play through an order by the chief executive of the state in question – i.e., the governor. There is, however, precedent for a president using a state national guard in rare circumstances, as President George H.W. Bush did in 1992 in Los Angeles during the Rodney King Riot, President Lyndon Johnson did in 1965 in response violence during the Selma-Montgomery March in favor of desegregation in Alabama, President John Kennedy did in 1962 and 1963 at the University of Mississippi in 1962 and at the University of Alabama in 1963 and President Eisenhower did in Little Rock, Arkansas in 1957.
While heartened by the three-judge panel allowing the California National Guard to remain in place while the matter makes its way through the courts, the Trump Administration out of caution jumped ahead, calling upon the Marines to serve as a quasi-police force, which is itself a questionable use of the U.S military.
The idea was to have the Marines in place if Judge Breyer’s ruling is upheld.
The Trump Administration called upon the U.S. Northern Command, under the leadership of U.S. Army Major General Scott Sherman, to augment Task Force 51, a U.S. Army-directed contingency command post with 719 Marines from the 2nd Battalion, 7th Marines stationed at the Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center Twentynine Palms in order to replace the roughly 1,700 personnel from the California National Guard that were in Los Angeles if the legal challenge succeeded.
Major General Sherman offered an assurance that Task Force 51 will not unleash the firepower it possesses on civilians. He said the task force is operating under legal authority, specifically Title 10 of the United States Code.
“Task Force 51 forces have been trained in de-escalation, crowd control and standard rules for the use of force,” Sherman said.
With ICE agents freed from interference by outsiders, it returned to work.
Deportation processing was immediately initiated on many of those who were arrested, with those shown, known or admitted to be Mexican citizens taken to the border at San Ysidro.
A substantial number of others were taken to in the Adelanto Immigration and Customs Enforcement Process Center in the High Desert of San Bernardino County.
In January 2025, there were only three detainees in the Adelanto Immigration and Customs Enforcement Process Center. As of Tuesday, June 17, there were 1,200 suspected illegal aliens being detained there. The facility has a 1,940-inmate capacity.
The Adelanto Immigration and Customs Enforcement Process Center is owned and operated for the federal government by the GEO Group. The number of those charged with being in the country illegally being held there had diminished incrementally after accusations that those in the facility were endangered by exposure to the Corona Virus. A lawsuit regarding those contentions which resulted in the center’s near closure, Roman v. Wolf was settled early this month, clearing the way for it to be reopened.
GEO Group stands to reap income of $31 million per year if all of the 1,940 beds are filled. The Sentinel has learned that the Trump Administration is willing to shell $31 million out to GEO to keep the Adelanto facility running continuously, but not as was the case during the first Trump Administration and the early Biden Administration, when many of those held there remained in place for upwards of a year. The Trump Administration expects it to be run not as a prison, per se, but truly as a processing center at which those contesting their deportations will be provided with expedited hearings, ones that are intended, in the vast majority of cases to take place within two-to-three days of an arrestee’s arrival. Allowances are being made for longer holdings in matters that a more complicated or where a magistrate makes an order for a more involved asylum application processing. Nevertheless, the Trump Administration anticipates that the average stay at the facility will be no more than five days for those detained there across the board, meaning the goal is to keep the facility close to full capacity, making it instrumental in deporting roughly 138,000 or so illegal aliens during the first year of Operation Alta California. It is the intention of the Trump Administration to deport virtually all of the estimated 2.2 million undocumented foreigners residing in California.