Trial Begins Over Trump’s Deployment of National Guard in L.A.

As President Trump announced on Monday he was deploying National Guard troops to fight crime in the nation’s capital, lawyers with his Justice Department were preparing to defend his use of the Guard in Los Angeles.

Starting in early June, the Trump administration sent nearly 5,000 federal troops to Southern California over the objections of Gov. Gavin Newsom, citing protests over immigration raids in the region. The deployment was fraught with problems and lawsuits from the start, and a three-day trial began Monday in San Francisco federal court for a suit by state officials to end the activation.

Since July 1, the Pentagon has released most of the roughly 4,000 members of the California National Guard who were federalized, along with 700 Marines. A sprawling tent city that was erected in June to house thousands of soldiers at a military base south of Los Angeles in Los Alamitos is being dismantled. Only about 300 troops remain.

Testifying in federal court on Monday, William Harrington, who until last week was the deputy chief of staff for the Army task force with tactical control over the Guard troops, said that those still on duty in Los Angeles were “supporting the request for assistance” from federal law enforcement agents.

But officials at the California National Guard and the military’s Northern Command, which is overseeing the force, said earlier Monday that the remaining troops were mostly on standby or guarding federal buildings and not being used for immigration enforcement.

The Los Angeles protests lasted several days in early June and were largely confined to a section of downtown. Democratic leaders in the state said the administration had provoked them by sending masked and armed federal agents into workplaces to detain immigrants who otherwise had no criminal records, then used the subsequent public outrage as a pretext to intervene militarily.

Mayor Karen Bass of Los Angeles compared the mobilization to an “armed occupation.” Mr. Newsom called it political theater, and said the president was using service members as “props in the federal government’s propaganda machine.”

Trump administration officials said the troops were necessary to protect federal agents in a jurisdiction where state sanctuary laws prohibited local authorities from conducting immigration enforcement. They said the protests had overwhelmed local law enforcement agencies.

The state swiftly sued to end the mobilization, which a federal judge ruled to be illegal. But an appeals court blocked that ruling, allowing the deployment to continue. By mid-June, the protests had died down but the troops were accompanying federal agents conducting immigration enforcement.

California officials say those assignments amount to an illegal use of federal troops to conduct domestic law enforcement. The Trump administration has contended the troops were merely escorting federal agents.

In the interim, complaints have mounted from those who have been deployed.

On the base near Los Angeles where the troops have been stationed, soldiers have complained that only a small fraction of them were even given assignments beyond the base. Those who were sent out typically were ordered to guard federal facilities or provide backup to immigration agents delivering warrants or conducting arrests.

In July, for example, one National Guard contingent sat in trucks while immigration agents conducted a show of force in MacArthur Park in Los Angeles. Another contingent faced protesters in a field outside a cannabis farm during a raid in Ventura County.

State authorities have complained that the activation has damaged the California National Guard’s ability to handle other critical duties, including drug interdiction and wildfire management. In interviews with The New York Times, several members of the California National Guard said the deployment had threatened retention and severely eroded the morale of the force.

The mission, which federal authorities had initially indicated would end on Aug. 6, has been extended for at least another 90 days. And last week, Mr. Trump said he would chair a task force designed to increase the federal government’s role in the 2028 Olympic Games in Los Angeles, telling reporters that he would use the National Guard there again, if necessary, “to keep the Olympics safe.”