Gov. Gavin Newsom is asking a federal judge for a restraining orderthat blocks Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth from ordering National Guard troops and Marines to support immigration raids in Los Angeles.
“They must be stopped, immediately,” attorneys for the state wrote in a filing Tuesday. The request, submitted around 11 a.m. local time on Tuesday, urged U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer to act within two hours.
The urgent plea came as Newsom and other California officials continued to assail Trump’s order to “federalize” 4,000 members of the state’s National Guard for a mission to protect federal immigration facilities and personnel amid street protests. The state sued Mondayto block that effort as well as Hegseth’s subsequent deployment of 700 Marines to assist the National Guard effort.
The restraining order request, however, is focused explicitly on a growing expectation among California officials that those troops will soon be sent on arrest missions alongside agents from Immigration and Customs Enforcement — raising the likelihood of direct confrontations with L.A. residents.
“Such support activities would include holding a secure perimeter in communities around areas where immigration enforcement activities would take place, and securing routes over public streets where immigration enforcement officers would travel,” said Paul Eck, a state attorney who works with California’s National Guard, in a sworn statement accompanying the restraining order request.
The state says using the Guard this way would violate legal limits on the use of the military for law enforcement purposes.
Trump administration lawyers resisted the unusually fast timetable, asking Breyer to give them at least 24 hours to respond.
“There is no invasion or rebellion in Los Angeles; there is civil unrest that is no different from episodes that regularly occur in communities throughout the country, and that is capable of being contained by state and local authorities working together,” California Attorney General Rob Bonta and other lawyers wrote in the new motion.
Bonta stressed that while California officials don’t want the troops “on the streets of a civilian city,” the state is not seeking to stop the federal government from using the military to protect federal facilities in L.A.
“This motion does not seek to prevent any of those forces from protecting the safety of federal buildings or other real property owned or leased by the federal government, or federal personnel on such property,” the state’s lawyers said.