Court documents filed by the Trump administration on Monday reveal that National Guard troops deployed to assist in responding to immigration protests in Los Angeles were then dispatched over 100 miles away to defend federal agents enforcing immigration laws on Coachella Valley marijuana farms.
According to a DEA spokesperson, 315 National Guard members helped the DEA carry out a federal search warrant on suspected illegal marijuana plantations in Thermal, a desert city about 25 miles southeast of Palm Springs, on Wednesday.
According to the spokeswoman, between 70 and 75 employees were detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers during the operation on suspicion of not having the proper paperwork. On suspicion of obstructing law enforcement, one American citizen was taken into custody.
In the current legal dispute between President Trump and Governor Gavin Newsom over whether the president has the right to order about 4,000 National Guard men to put an end to unrest in Los Angeles, the use of the National Guard in this operation has emerged as a new source of contention.
The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals overturned a temporary restraining order that would have given Newsom back control of the National Guard, ruling that the violence in Los Angeles probably gave Trump enough justification to send the troops on June 7 to defend federal employees and property. Trump may keep command of military forces in Los Angeles while Newsom’s objections to their deployment are being heard in a federal court, the appeals court said.
California
A challenge to the president’s power to send troops against the views of state and local officials was decided by the appeals court.
California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta’s office contested in a federal court filing on Monday whether the current state of affairs in Los Angeles warrants the continued use of National Guard members, particularly in missions like the marijuana farm raid that are not linked to protection against the types of harms against federal personnel and property that the Ninth Circuit determined probably warranted the initial federalization.
Lawyers for the Trump administration retaliated, stating that Bonta’s team provided no compelling factual or legal basis to challenge Defendants’ [the Trump administration’s] ongoing use of military personnel and that the Coachella Valley operation was consistent with other uses of service members to provide protection for immigration enforcement.
Trump’s lawyers point to a statement made on Wednesday by Ernesto Santacruz, director of ICE’s enforcement and removal operations’ L.A. field office, about the ongoing unrest in Los Angeles to support their claim that protests and violence continue to undermine federal agents’ ability to enforce immigration law.
“ICE has been able to continue performing its congressionally mandated duties in the Los Angeles area thanks to the presence of the National Guard and other Department of Defense personnel,” Santacruz tweeted on Wednesday. We wouldn’t be able to conduct as many immigration enforcement operations as we have with the Guards’ help due to the current threat.
However, no mention of any violent or unrest-prone situations in Riverside County is made in the declaration.
The terrain and scope of the operation, which covered 787 acres and occurred in temperatures as high as 112 degrees, led the DEA’s Los Angeles Field Division to ask for assistance from other federal agencies in order to execute a search warrant on the Coachella Valley marijuana farms. Customs and Border Protection, ICE, the National Guard, the Federal Bureau of Investigations, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosions, the U.S. Marshals Service, and the Internal Revenue Service were among the 500 individuals who took part in the operation.
The DEA spokeswoman stated that because of the operation’s enormous scope, we required partners to protect not just our employees but also the people who were employed or resided on the property. The DEA reported that during the investigation, two males were discovered padlocked inside a trailer.
On Monday, Bonta’s team asked for more information about National Guard deployments outside of the Los Angeles region and updated data on whether the Trump administration can still use regular federal agencies to enforce immigration laws in L.A. or elsewhere to the extent that the National Guard deployment is still required.
