Op-Ed: Trump deploys National Guard to sow fear among migrants
Protesters confront police on the 101 Freeway near the Metropolitan Detention Center of downtown Los Angeles, Sunday, June 8, 2025, following immigration raid protest. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong)
When 2,000 National Guard troops show up uninvited to Los Angeles at the scene of protests you are only asking for trouble.
The fear is elevated, the situation only worsens.
That’s not what anyone should want.
Except for Donald Trump.
.
INQUIRER.NET USA photo by Robert Gamo
Trump – called TACO when it comes to tariffs, an acronym for “Trump always chickens out” – must see the ICE raids in Los Angeles as his time to flex.
It’s Trump’s strongman moment, all greased up, and pumping up for the camera hard.
Here’s authoritarianism in action. Boots not just on the ground but in your face.
Before federalizing the National Guard, Trump’s supposed to consult the governor, in this case Gavin Newsom.
But Trump did not, making this the first time in 33 years that a president has overstepped authority to go into a situation like Los Angeles with the National Guard. It usually requires some finding that determines what we are seeing is a violation of the Insurrection Act.
The White House said Saturday that the president had signed a “presidential memorandum.”
Was it with auto pen?
Filipinos know insurrection. It’s the term that described Filipinos’ fervent ire when it countered the sale and colonization of their country to the US in 1899.
The Philippine-American War is one no one likes to talk about and it’s a war the U. won in the name of establishing imperial evil. But not before Filipinos, called insurrectionists, battled the colonizer for three years.
Looking at the video of the news in LA with the protestors and ICE agents, nothing I saw looked remotely like an insurrection in the LA suburb of Paramount, Calif. A tense scene with people mobilized to speak out as is their First Amendment right.
Nor did I see the local law enforcement not in control. If anything, I saw law enforcement aiding ICE which should not have been the case. Local law enforcement do not enforce federal immigration law. Everyone stays in their lane, right?
What I did not see was an insurrection.
But if you want a situation to get hot fast, send in the National Guard.
And that’s what Trump did.
Newsom said on X that there was no shortage of law enforcement, and that Trump wanted a “spectacle.”
And Trump’s sycophants were chiming in, cheering shamelessly.
There was White House aide Stephen Miller reportedly calling it an insurrection.
VP JD Vance on X: “Insurrectionists carrying foreign flags are attacking immigration enforcement officers, while one half of America’s political leadership has decided that border enforcement is evil.”
It was a tweet that overstated the situation. ICE had been making raids in Los Angeles, and people were protesting. But one video circulated by Fox host Sean Hannity showed ICE agents subdue a man who appeared to be union president David Huerta, who was arrested for obstructing law enforcement. The video seems to disprove that with Huerta being swarmed by ICE agents and shoved backwards to the ground.
It’s all intended to strike fear in the hearts of Americans, and not just in LA but all over the nation.
If you weren’t convinced by the takedown of big law firms, the shakedown of Harvard, the bullying of corporates to bend to his will, well this is your moment, too, to notice the body language of a tyrant.
He’s not effing around.
Just remember, he’s the guy who waited three hours to watch the Jan. 6 insurrectionists on TV before calling them off.
He’s the guy who later pardoned almost all of them once he returned to power.
Trump knows what insurrection looks like and he pardoned it. LA this weekend is nothing like Jan. 6. And Trump knows that.
Still, he wants to fight California and Newsom. He’s also willing to hurt all of Californians, the most Asian state in the nation, that has the 4th largest economy in the world.
Instead of working with us, the president threatens us with defunding of federal dollars because he doesn’t like the kind humanity of the state’s sanctuary laws.
By calling in the Guard, Trump unwisely seems determined to ignite something. What will he do if we are all out in the streets protesting him?
Emil Guillermo is an award-winning journalist, news analyst and stage monologuist. He writes for the Inquirer.net’s US Channel. He has written a weekly “Amok” column on Asian American issues since 1995. Find him on YouTube, patreon and substack.
As a standup, he is performing at the World Series of Comedy at Laughs Unlimited in Old Sacramento, Wednesday, June 11 at 7 p.m. Get discount tickets. CODE: GIVE or FUNNY
