Soldiers armed with full combat gear patrolling American cities seems more like something one might see in “The Hunger Games,” and those same soldiers being deployed against peaceful protesters evokes the militant authoritarianism of “V for Vendetta.” But those fictional regimes, once far-fetched, now seem disturbingly similar to the very real actions of the current Trump administration.
Across the United States, the Trump administration has authorized the deployment of the National Guard to various cities, including Chicago and Los Angeles, with President Donald Trump himself saying the government is “waging a war from within.”
Who that war is against is unclear; currently, the “enemy within,” as Trump describes them, seems to actually be composed mostly of peaceful protesters speaking out against Immigration and Customs Enforcement, whose widespread and intrusive arrests and deportations have not been limited to illegal immigrants.
The Trump administration’s legal justification for the deployments is dubious at best, relying on a very broad interpretation of U.S. laws. One law the administration invoked is Title 10, Section 12406 of the U.S. Code.
The law allows the president to “call into Federal service members and units of the National Guard of any State in such numbers as he considers necessary” to stop an “invasion by a foreign nation,” combat a “rebellion or danger of a rebellion” within the U.S. or “execute the laws of the United States” with regular forces.
Another law used to justify the deployments is the Insurrection Act, which is similar to Title 10. It outlines the power of the president to domestically deploy federal armed forces as “a last resort,” ordered only when state authorities “are unable or otherwise fail to suppress the insurrection or rebellion, quell the domestic violence, or enforce the laws that are being obstructed, and Federal civilian law enforcement authorities are unable to do so.”
However, to describe the situations where Trump has attempted to deploy the National Guard in cities like Portland or Chicago as a “rebellion” requires a baffling misinterpretation of the truth. President Trump has attempted to frame the anti-ICE protests as trying to “overthrow the government,” or even as instances of domestic terrorism.
But the protests, advocating for the end of ICE aggression and violations of human rights, have been largely peaceful, with little of the “campaign of violence” and anti-American chaos President Trump claims he is worried about.
In actuality, ICE and other government organizations seem far more guilty of the egregious acts of violence and lawlessness the Trump administration warns of.
In September, ICE agents shot a Presbyterian minister in the head with a pepper ball as he prayed outside of an ICE facility in Chicago. Also in Illinois, a Mexican immigrant was shot and killed by an ICE officer during an arrest attempt.
In Portland, during an anti-ICE protest, a man wearing an inflatable frog costume stood in front of federal officers from the Department of Homeland Security, which they deemed enough justification to pepper-spray the air intake and turn the costume into a gas chamber.
Even journalists, long regarded as essential for a society of free expression, have faced brutality at the hands of federal agents.
In response to the federal government’s questionably justified overreach, states like California and Oregon have sued the federal government in opposition to the deployments, claiming that they violate the Posse Comitatus Act. The act prevents federal use of military troops to enforce domestic law, stating that they are an overuse of federal power.
The Trump administration has countered that the deployments are legal via the aforementioned Insurrection Act, which provides a statutory exception to Posse Comitatus, as well as several other loopholes such as Title 32, Section 502 of the U.S. Code. Title 32 authorizes the National Guard to carry out federal missions at the request of the federal government while remaining under state control, also bypassing Posse Comitatus.
So far, judges have thankfully sided with the states, ruling that the protests are not out of control and that the deployments are not covered under exceptions to Posse Comitatus. Courts have issued temporary restraining orders barring the deployment of troops to those cities while the lawsuits are being escalated to the Supreme Court, which has taken the rare step of requesting additional time and briefings on the case.
Hopefully, the Supreme Court will see the Trump administration’s actions for the unlawful overuse of presidential authority that they are. Hopefully, President Trump will see that there’s a limit to his power that no amount of blustering, hyperbole and misinformation will overcome. But until then, the fate of free speech, human rights and American democracy remains in question.
