California is losing the court of public opinion
In the on-going Battle of Los Angeles, California governor Gavin Newsom may have the law on his side – but his adversary president Donald Trump has the most powerful imagery.
The conflict began in Los Angeles on Friday, when mobs of protestors attacked agents of the US Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE), who were trying to serve warrants on specific illegal immigrants at a Home Depot and also at a clothing store.
On Saturday, during a protest in front of a nearby Department of Homeland Security (DHS) office, members of the crowd lit fires and threw rocks at federal officers, who defended themselves with tear gas and non-lethal ammunition.
Later that day, president Trump authorised the deployment of 2000 members of the National Guard to protect the federal ICE agents; since then 700 American Marines have been added to the federal force.
Governor Newsom and other leaders of the Democratic-dominated California have claimed that Trump's actions were not needed because local and state authorities had the situation under control. And yet on Sunday, following three days of violence and arrests, the Los Angeles Police Department declared downtown Los Angeles an 'unlawful assembly' area.
And on Monday the state of California sued the Trump administration, claiming that Trump 'illegally acted to federalise the National Guard,' in the words of Newsom.
Typically a governor requests a president to federalise and mobilise the National Guard to deal with riots or natural disasters. For example, consider the Los Angeles riots of 1992. It was sparked by the acquittal of four white police officers who beat a black motorist named Rodney King and it led to more than fifty deaths and a billion dollars of damage; in response a Republican California governor Pete Wilson asked a Republican president George HW Bush to federalise the National Guard.
Not since 1965, when president Lyndon B. Johnson sent the National Guard to Alabama to protect civil rights demonstrators, has a president sent troops without a governor's request.
While California officials might be able to make a legal case against the Trump administration, the state and the Democratic party risk losing in the court of public opinion. Viral photographs show masked rioters waving Mexican flags in front of burning cars and debris, supporting the Trump White House's inflammatory claims about an immigrant invasion.
In a shrewd public relations move, the federal Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has released mug shots under the heading: 'ICE Captures Worst of the Worst Illegal Alien Criminals in Los Angeles Including Murderers, Sex Offenders, and Other Violent Criminals.'
The rogues' gallery contains illegal immigrants from a number of countries including Vietnam, the Philippines, and Mexico, charged with offenses including attempted rape, assault with a deadly weapon, grand theft larceny, distribution of heroin and cocaine, wilful cruelty to a child and other serious crimes.
Democrats recently succeeded in reversing the allegedly unlawful deportation to El Salvador of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, an illegal immigrant from El Salvador who was granted the right to remain in the US by a federal immigration judge.
But on his return he was indicted by a federal grand jury on charges of being an MS-13 gang member who has smuggled thousands of illegal immigrants, drugs, and firearms in the US.
Democratic strategists might ask whether someone like Abrego Garcia should be the face of the Democratic party. At least, unlike some of the rioters cavorting in front of burning wreckage in LA, he does not wear a mask.
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