President Trump’s critics think he overreacted when he sent 2,000 members of the California National Guard to Los Angeles over the weekend to protect federal buildings from people protesting enforcement of the country’s immigration laws.
The concern is understandable. California is a Democratic stronghold, and an argument can be made that, instead of a concern for public safety, the temperamental president simply relished the chance to order troops into such a large opposition state.
Tucked in the back of his mind, maybe this gives him a chance to reply to the Trump Always Chickens Out nickname that got far more deeply under his skin than it should have. He said he was going after people in the country illegally, and by God, he’s doing exactly that. No chickens on this plate.
As of this writing, there has been no violent reaction from those defending immigrants. Nor has the National Guard been accused of any actions that would increase the tension. Let’s hope this restraint continues, because people in the South, especially Mississippi, remember full well how bad things can go when events get out of hand.
According to The Washington Post, the last time a president used federal law in the manner that Trump did was in 1992, during riots in Los Angeles after a jury acquitted police officers in the beating of Rodney King.
More familiar to Southerners are two long-ago desegregation cases: in 1957, when President Eisenhower sent the U.S. Army into Little Rock; and in 1962, when President Kennedy sent Mississippi National Guardsmen to the University of Mississippi.
In both of those events, the Arkansas and Mississippi governors opposed the president’s decision. That happened last weekend as well, when California Gov. Gavin Newsom said state and local officers had the Los Angeles situation under control, and that Trump’s order was just grandstanding.
Here’s another interesting comparison between the two eras: During the civil rights years, conservatives were likely to oppose presidential activation of troops to enforce court rulings on desegregation. Today, they’re bound to support Trump’s use of the National Guard.
Liberals, meanwhile, hailed the use of troops in the 1950s and 1960s, but are venomous about today’s action. An ACLU official called the use of troops in response to protests “unnecessary, inflammatory, and an abuse of power,” and added that it undermines the principle that the American military should not police civilians.
We may not know for a while how this turns out. Ultimately, it depends on whether the presence of troops leads to violent confrontations.
Defenders of immigrants who are here illegally at least need to be aware that the government has the right, and even the obligation, to enforce the law. The public can peaceably protest this, but as we learned at Little Rock and Oxford, not to mention during the 1992 Los Angeles riots, history tends to frown on the groups that were causing trouble.
