type: timeline_event President Trump issued an executive order on June 7, 2025, directing the Department of Defense to provide security support for Department of Homeland Security immigration enforcement operations, effectively ordering military forces to assist with immigration raids in California. Following the order, Trump federalized the California National Guard — removing it from the command of Governor Gavin Newsom, who had opposed the federal immigration enforcement operations — and deployed approximately 700 U.S. Marines to downtown Los Angeles. Reuters reported that Trump stated additional National Guard troops would be deployed in California if needed. The deployment was described by military law experts as raising serious questions under the Posse Comitatus Act, which restricts the use of military forces for domestic law enforcement.
The Brookings Institution published analysis of the legal frameworks permitting or restricting the president's ability to deploy soldiers on American streets, noting that the Insurrection Act and other statutory authorities created pathways for domestic military deployment but that the California situation — a policy disagreement over immigration enforcement rather than an insurrection or civil disturbance — stretched those authorities beyond their historical application. Governor Newsom and California officials filed legal challenges to the federalization of the National Guard, arguing it violated established principles of state control over their National Guard forces except in narrowly defined federal emergencies.
Federal courts issued temporary rulings on the deployment, with a district court ruling it unlawful and the Ninth Circuit subsequently staying that ruling, creating a period of legal uncertainty about the military's presence in Los Angeles. USNI News and Military.com confirmed the Marines' deployment to downtown Los Angeles. The episode represented the most direct use of military forces in a domestic state over a state government's explicit objection since the civil rights era, establishing a precedent for executive branch use of military assets as a tool of domestic political conflict with opposition-led states.