The GI Rights Hotline has been inundated with calls from anxious soldiers and their families ever since President Trump took over the California National Guard and sent thousands of troops to Los Angeles.
According to Steve Woolford, a resource counselor for the hotline, which offers private counseling to service members, several National Guard troops and their loved ones have contacted to express that they are in agony over the legitimacy of the deployment, which is being contested in federal court.
Others called to express their concerns about immigrant family members becoming entangled in federal immigration raids and to stress that the Guard should not participate in them.
According to Woolford, they do not wish to deport their brother-in-law, their wife, or their uncle. Words like “I joined to defend my country, which is really important to me, but No. 1 is family, and this is actually a threat to my family” have been used.
Veterans advocates who have direct contact with troops and their families say they are extremely concerned about the morale of the approximately 4,100 National Guard members and 700 U.S. Marines deployed to Los Angeles amid protests against immigration raids, despite the fact that active-duty soldiers are generally prohibited from publicly commenting on their orders.
Spokespeople for six veterans advocacy groups told The Times that many soldiers were unhappy with the assignment because they felt it was clearly political and pitted them against their fellow citizens.
The possible impact of the domestic deployment on military recruitment and retention, which just recovered after several years in which several branches failed to fulfill recruitment targets, is another issue that advocates expressed concern about.
According to Brandi Jones, organizing director of the Secure Families Initiative, a nonprofit organization that supports military wives, children, and veterans, “What we’re hearing from our families is: This is not what we signed up for.” Morale is a major worry for our families.
“Among the former Marine Corps colleagues I’ve spoken to in recent weeks, there’s been a universal expression of, This is an unnecessary deployment given the operational situation,” said Janessa Goldbeck, a U.S. Marine Corps veteran and the CEO of the nonprofit Vet Voice Foundation.
She claimed that the president of the United States put the young men and women in uniform in an unnecessary political position by choosing to deploy the National Guard and active duty Marines despite repeated warnings from the LAPD and local elected officials that doing so would be escalating or inflammatory.
The young men and women who volunteered to serve their country did not enlist to police their own neighborhoods, she continued.
Trump has stated time and time again that if he hadn’t dispatched military to help put an end to the protests, Los Angeles would be on fire.
Trump told reporters last week that the military’s intervention saved Los Angeles. And it was much better the second night. Nothing much happened on the third night. And hardly one even bothered to show up on the fourth night.
According to the military’s U.S. Northern Command, the troops in Los Angeles were solely sent there to protect government operations, property, and personnel; they have no right to arrest demonstrators.
“While we cannot speak for the individual experience of each service member, the general assessment of morale by leadership is positive,” stated Task Force 51, the military’s designation for the Los Angeles forces, in an email on Saturday.
The statement went on to say that access to chaplains, certified clinical social workers, and behavioral health specialists, as well as ongoing improvements to housing facilities and appropriate work-rest cycles, all contribute to the staff members’ quality of life.
As of this past weekend, it is unclear if the National Guard troops, who are federalized under Title 10 of the US Code, had received their salaries.Soldiers who received 60-day activation orders on June 7 will begin getting salary by the end of the month, Task Force 51 told The Times on Saturday. Additionally, those who are experiencing financial difficulties can seek assistance from Army Emergency Relief, a nonprofit charity.
Army veteran and House Armed Services Committee member U.S. Rep. Derek Tran (D-Orange) said he has asked Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth for his strategy for handling the logistics of this military activation, but he has not given me any definitive answers.
“The disrespect this Administration has shown our Veterans and active-duty military personnel is shameful, and I firmly believe it will have a detrimental effect on our ability to draw in and retain the troops that keep America’s military capability the envy of the world,” Tran said in a statement to The Times.
In an email, Governor Gavin Newsom spokeswoman Diana Crofts-Pelayo expressed concern about the mission’s potential effects on the soldiers’ mental and physical health who were sent needlessly to Los Angeles.
Newsomposted images of National Guard men sleeping on concrete floors and what looked like a freight dock were uploaded on X on June 9. The Trump dispatched troops without food, water, fuel, or a place to sleep, according to Newsom.
The soldiers in the pictures were taking some time to rest because they weren’t actively on task, Task Force 51 informed The Times. The statement went on to say that at the time, it was thought to be too risky for them to go to better lodging.
Task Force 51 reports that the military has since contracted for hot meals for breakfast, dinner, and a late-night meal, showers, hand-washing stations, sleeping tents, latrines, and full laundry services.
According to the military, the majority of the contracts have been completed thus far.
White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson told The Times that Newsom has to issue an apology for attempting to make a political point with out-of-context images of National Guard members.
“Our troops know they finally have a patriotic Commander-In-Chief who will always have their backs,” Jackson said, adding that military morale is extremely good under President Trump’s leadership.
Within the 500-square-mile metropolis, troops have been stationed outside government buildings in the increasingly peaceful downtown Civic Center, which is only a few square blocks away.
Compared to earlier this year, when Newsom sent the National Guard to L.A. County to assist with wildfire recovery activities during the Eaton and Palisades fires, their contacts with the public have changed significantly.
Members of the National Guard were frequently seen conversing with residents at burn zone checkpoints; some of them brought food and water and expressed gratitude to them for preventing looters from entering.
However, irate demonstrators have flipped off, cursed at, and questioned the morality of soldiers stationed downtown, who have stood stonily behind riot shields.
This is not your duty, a woman said troops as she held up a mirror outside the downtown Federal Building during the raucous No Kings demonstration on June 14. It’s your legacy. A UCLA professor stood alone outside the Federal Building on a calm Wednesday morning and held up a placard that said, “It’s Called the Constitution You F ers,” to six members of the Guard.
According to James M. Branum, an attorney with the National Lawyers Guild’s Military Law Task Force, the task force has gotten two to three times as many direct calls and referrals in recent weeks as it typically receives. Calls soared after troops were moved to Los Angeles, he said, but the upward trend started after Trump took office, when people were phoning about the conflict in Gaza and greater military deployment to the U.S. southern border.
According to Branum, many of these people joined because they wanted to combat those they perceived as terrorists. They never imagined that they would be sent to the streets of the United States to battle American adversaries.
Trump called for the deployment of the National Guard in areas where protests against federal immigration enforcement were taking place or were expected to occur in his directive on June 7th, which federalized the force. Neither California nor Los Angeles are mentioned in the document.
In a court complaint, California officials have sued the president over the deployment, claiming that the Trump administration’s directions are unclear and raise the possibility of misusing the federalized National Guard.
According to Goldbeck of the Vet Voice Foundation, guardsmen nationwide are on high alert, [believing] that they might be drawn into this.
According to Jones of the Secure Families Initiative, military families are currently experiencing a great deal of anxiety.
She claimed that they are incredibly unprepared for what is happening and that they are terrified to speak in front of others.
Jones claimed to have been in contact with a National Guard member’s wife, who disclosed that she had recently experienced a stroke. According to the woman, her husband had been taking care of her while on leave under the Family and Medical Leave Act from his civilian employment. According to the woman, the military did not accept his leave for the domestic job. She has been having trouble finding a caretaker since he was deployed to Los Angeles, Jones said.
According to Jones, her husband, a Marine on active duty, served in Iraq in 2004 with the 2nd Battalion, 7th Marine Regiment, which is currently based in Los Angeles.
At least 20 Marines were killed in the unit’s 2008 deployment to Afghanistan, and the high suicide rate following that year’s mission was widely reported.
When Jones found out that the unit known as the War Dogs was being sent to Los Angeles, she claimed she was taken aback.
I said, “Wait, they’re sending in on 2/7?” The Dogs of War? Are they being released in Los Angeles? “I thought it was nuts,” Jones remarked. It raises a lot of issues to hear that unit associated with my family, who have been serving for twenty years.
The Los Angeles deployment comes at a time of year when the California National Guard is often engaged in wildfire suppression operations a coincidence that has raised concernsamong some officials.
The California National Guard activated Capt. Rasheedah Bilal on June 18 and assigned her to Sacramento, where she is filling in as an operational member of Joint Task Force Rattlesnake, a National Guard firefighting unit that is currently understaffed due to the deployment of approximately half of its members to Los Angeles.
That s a large amount to pull off that mission … so you have to activate additional Guardsmen to cover on those missions, said Bilal, speaking in her capacity as executive director of the nonprofit National Guard Assn. of California.
National Guard members are primarily part-time soldiers, who hold civilian jobs or attend college until called into active duty. In California a state prone to wildfires, earthquakes and floods they get called into duty a lot, she said.
Many of the same National Guard soldiers in downtown Los Angeles are the same ones who just finished a 120-day activation for wildfire recovery, she said.
You have the state response to fire and then federal activation? It becomes a strain, Bilal said.
They haven t complained, she added. Soldiers vote with their feet. We re mostly quiet professionals and take a lot of pride in our job. [But] you can only squeeze so much of a lemon before it is dry. You can only pound on the California Guardsmen without it affecting things like retention and recruiting.
