The Trump administration must turn over a cache of documents, photos, internal reports and other evidence detailing the activities of the military in Southern California, a federal judge ruled Tuesday, handing a procedural victory to the state in its fight to rein in thousands of troops under the president\u2019s command.<\/p>\n
Ordering \u201cexpedited, limited discovery,\u201d Senior U.S. District Judge Charles R. Breyer in San Francisco also authorized California lawyers to depose key administration officials and signaled that he might review questions about how long California National Guard troops remain under federal control. <\/p>\n
The Department of Justice opposed the move, saying it had \u201cno opportunity to respond.\u201d <\/p>\n
The ruling follows a stinging loss for the state in the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals on Thursday, when a panel struck down Breyer\u2019s temporary restraining order that would have returned control of the troops to California leaders. <\/p>\n
Writing for the court, Judge Mark R. Bennett of Honolulu said the judiciary must broadly defer to the president to decide whether a \u201crebellion\u201d was underway and if civilians protesting over immigration agents had sufficiently hampered deportations to warrant assistance from the National Guard or the Marines. <\/p>\n
Bennett wrote that the president has the authority to take action under a statute that \u201cauthorizes federalization of the National Guard when \u2018the President is unable with the regular forces to execute the laws of the United States.\u2019\u201d <\/p>\n
But neither court has yet opined on California\u2019s other major claim: that by aiding immigration raids, troops under Trump\u2019s command violated the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878, which forbids soldiers from enforcing civilian laws.<\/p>\n
Shilpi Agarwal, legal director of the ACLU of Northern California, argued that the White House is abusing the post-Civil War law \u2014 known in legal jargon as the PCA \u2014 by having soldiers support Immigration and Customs Enforcement operations.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere isn\u2019t a dispute that what the National Guard is doing right now is prohibited by the PCA \u2014 legally it absolutely has to be,\u201d Agarwal said. \u201cGoing out with ICE officers into the community and playing a role in individual ICE raids really feels like what the Posse Comitatus Act was designed to prohibit.\u201d <\/p>\n
In his June 12 order, Breyer wrote that such a claim was \u201cpremature,\u201d saying that there was not yet sufficient evidence to weigh whether that law had been broken. <\/p>\n
The 9th Circuit agreed. <\/p>\n
\u201cAlthough we hold that the President likely has authority to federalize the National Guard, nothing in our decision addresses the nature of the activities in which the federalized National Guard may engage,\u201d Bennett wrote. \u201cBefore the district court, Plaintiffs argued that certain uses of the National Guard would violate the Posse Comitatus Act. … We express no opinion on it.<\/p>\n
Now, California has permission to compel that evidence from the government, as well as to depose figures including Ernesto Santacruz, Jr., the director of the ICE field office in L.A., and Maj. Gen. Niave F. Knell, who heads operations for the Army department in charge of \u201chomeland defense.\u201d<\/p>\n
With few exceptions, such evidence would immediately become public, another win for Californians, Agarwal said. <\/p>\n
\u201cAs the facts are further developed in this case, i think it will be come more abundantly clear to everyone how little this invocation of the National Guard was based on,\u201d she said. <\/p>\n
In its Monday briefing, the Trump administration argued that troops were \u201cmerely performing a protective function,\u201d not enforcing the law. <\/p>\n
\u201cNothing in the preliminary injunction record plausibly supports a claim that the Guard and Marines are engaged in execution of federal laws rather than efforts to protect the personnel and property used in the execution of federal laws,\u201d the Justice Department\u2019s motion said. <\/p>\n
The federal government also claimed that even if troops were enforcing the law, that would not violate the Posse Comitatus Act \u2014 and if it did, the Northern District of California would have only limited authority to rule on it. <\/p>\n
\u201cGiven the Ninth Circuit\u2019s finding, it would be illogical to hold that, although the President can call up the National Guard when he is unable \u2018with the regular forces to execute the laws of the United States,\u2019 the Guard, once federalized, is forbidden from \u2018execut[ing] the laws,\u2019\u201d the motion said. <\/p>\n
For Agarwal and other civil liberties experts, the next few weeks will be crucial. <\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s this atmospheric Rubicon we have crossed when we say based on vandalism and people throwing things at cars, that can be justification for military roaming our streets,\u201d the lawyer said. \u201cThere was more unrest when the Lakers won the Championship.\u201d <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Trump administration must turn over a cache of documents, photos, internal reports and other evidence detailing the…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":12661,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5123],"tags":[13257,1582,276,13254,281,3040,1808,2961,3228,13258,224,5337,8762,7090,13259,13256,5207,13255,1810,13253],"class_list":{"0":"post-12660","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-los-angeles","8":"tag-authority","9":"tag-ca","10":"tag-california","11":"tag-california-lawyer","12":"tag-court","13":"tag-department","14":"tag-immigration-raid","15":"tag-la","16":"tag-law","17":"tag-legal-director","18":"tag-los-angeles","19":"tag-losangeles","20":"tag-marines","21":"tag-national-guard","22":"tag-other-evidence","23":"tag-posse-comitatus-act","24":"tag-president","25":"tag-shilpi-agarwal","26":"tag-troop","27":"tag-trump-judge"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/114742293110509186","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12660","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12660"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12660\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12661"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12660"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12660"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12660"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}