Republican senators support President Trump’s crackdown on people protesting his administration’s work to deport thousands of migrants, but they are uncertain about the Pentagon’s deployment of 700 active-duty Marines to California.
The Trump White House appears confident that a showdown with California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) over illegal immigration is good politics for the president.
But some GOP lawmakers are worried about the prospect of street clashes spreading to other cities and of Trump invoking the Insurrection Act of 1807 to get the active-duty military more involved in responding to mass protests.
There’s no GOP opposition to a tough response to street protests.
Senate Appropriations Committee Chair Susan Collins (R-Maine), who is up for reelection next year in a state Trump lost to Biden, said “the violence that we’re witnessing against law enforcement, ICE officers in L.A.” and the property damage is “completely unacceptable and does call for a strong response.
But she warned that “sending in active-duty troops to deal with domestic law enforcement issues raises very serious concerns.”
“I do not agree with the president’s decision to do that,” she said, before pivoting to support for Trump’s decision to call in the National Guard without the consent of local officials.
“I think calling up the National Guard, which has experience in dealing with domestic disasters, whether man-made or weather-related, does make sense,” Collins said. “But I do not think that sending in active-duty Marines is a good idea.
“I think it puts them in a very difficult position,” she added.
Sen. Mike Rounds (R-S.D.), a member of the Armed Services Committee, said he hopes “cooler heads prevail” on both sides of the political spectrum as the administration continues operations to deport migrants.
Rounds said he doesn’t want to see street clashes and property destruction play out in other cities.
“Hopefully it does not occur and hopefully cooler heads prevail all the way around,” he said. “The challenge … is you’ve got individuals that are creating a scene when [Immigration and Customs Enforcement] is coming in and doing their job.”
Senate Armed Services Committee Chair Roger Wicker (R-Miss.) and Sen. Deb Fischer (R-Neb.), a senior member of the Armed Services panel, declined to comment on the deployment of Marines.
A poll of 4,309 U.S. adults by YouGov found that only 34 percent of Americans approved of Trump deploying Marines to Los Angeles, while 47 percent disapproved.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) on Tuesday defended Trump’s decision to deploy 4,000 members of the California National Guard to help maintain the peace in Los Angeles, but he distanced himself from the decision to mobilize active-duty Marines, telling reporters he didn’t know Trump’s precise authority for doing so.
“I don’t know the particulars on what authorities exist there, but my assumption is that the administration has been looking carefully at what he can and can’t do under the law. Obviously, the 1798 Act is available to them if they choose to exercise it,” Thune told reporters.
That’s a reference to the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, which authorizes the president during a declared war, invasion or predatory incursion to detain and deport citizens of an enemy nation.
Thune argued Trump was justified in mobilizing the National Guard because local authorities failed to contain property destruction and the threat of violence.
“In this case, at least there were clear just failures on the part of state and local officials, which is why I think it required the president to take a federal response,” he said.
“There was a security situation out there that needed to be addressed, and I think ultimately, the president’s objective is to keep people safe,” he said.
Newsom accused Trump of “intentionally causing chaos” by mobilizing troops, and Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass (D) said the move was “completely unnecessary” because the Los Angeles Police Department was “well equipped” to handle protests.”
Trump’s deployment of active-duty troops is raising questions on Capitol Hill about whether he will invoke the Insurrection Act of 1807.
The president cited the law in January as potential authority to obtain complete operational control of the southern border, if necessary.
White House aides drafted a proclamation during Trump’s first term in 2020 to invoke the Insurrection Act in case Trump wanted to deploy active-duty troops to Washington, D.C., to respond to protests over the murder of George Floyd earlier that year.
The president decided not to, despite calls by Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.), who wrote in a New York Times op-ed to “send in the troops.”
Gen. Eric Smith, the commandant of the Marine Corps, told Republican senators Tuesday morning that the 700 Marines Trump deployed would be limited to guarding federal properties and had training in crowd control. He said active-duty soldiers would not have arrest authority.
Rounds told The Hill that Smith informed members of the Armed Services panel that Trump was operating under Title 10 of the United States Code, which includes the statutes often referred to as the Insurrection Act, according to the Brennan Center for Justice.
“They are there just as if they were on any other sovereign mission at an embassy anyplace else around the world. They have been trained in crowd control, but their mission is to protect other entities that are federal in nature, meaning buildings or other members of the military,” Rounds said.
He said the National Guard troops — in contrast to the Marines — “are federally activated” and “members of the armed services under Title 10 rather than Title 32,” referring to the transfer of the California National Guard from Newsom to Trump.
“That was not part of the discussion,” he said of the Insurrection Act. “I know it’s available to him,” referring to Trump, “but right now it’s not necessary.”
Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) claimed that the Democratic officials in California and Los Angeles “seem not to be very concerned with controlling the violence” and “in some ways are defiant of federal law” by refusing to work with federal officials to deport migrants who are living in the country illegally.
He said “my preference would be to have local, not national” law enforcement and troops handle local protests but warned that waiting too long to send in the National Guard could allow protests to spiral out of control, like they did in some cities during summer 2020 after Floyd’s murder.
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