Gavin Newsom Demands Trump Administration Remove National Guard From L.A. Amid ICE Protests: ‘Rescind the Order. Return Control to California’

California Gov. Gavin Newsom has formally requested that the Trump Administration remove the National Guard from L.A.. The soldiers’ insertion into the city was a retaliatory measure made by the President late Saturday night in response to ongoing protests against city-wide raids by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Newsom announced the move in an Instagram post Sunday afternoon, sharing his official letter to Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth and writing, “I have formally requested the Trump Administration rescind their unlawful deployment of troops in Los Angeles County and return them to my command. We didn’t have a problem until Trump got involved. This is a serious breach of state sovereignty — inflaming tensions while pulling resources from where they’re actually needed. Rescind the Order. Return order to California.”

In the letter, Newsom states that he received a letter from Trump’s office Saturday stating that “‘[t]wo thousand members of the California National Guard will be called into Federal service effective immediately for a period of 60 days.'” Newsom pointed out that the Department of Defense did not transmit the directive to the Office of the Governor, nor was it approved or ordered by Newsom. All are requirements of 10 U.S. Code Section 12406, which Trump invoked in order to call the National Guard into L.A. in the first place.

“There is currently no need for the National Guard to be deployed in Los Angeles,” Newsom’s letter read, “and to do so in this unlawful manner and for such a length period is a serious breach of state sovereignty that seems intentionally designed to inflame the situation, while simultaneously depriving the State from deploying these personnel and resources where they are truly required.”