The National Guard, Police and Protesters stand outside a downtown prison in Los Angeles after two days of clashes with the police in a series of immigration raids on June 08, 2025 in Los Angeles, California.
Spencer Platt | Getty images
A federal judge prohibited President Donald Trump on Tuesday to deploy the National Guard and other military troops in California to carry out actions to apply the law, including arrests, research locations and crowd control.
The decision came within the framework of a trial brought in early June by the State of California contesting the deployment of the guard and the navies of the defense secretary Pete Hegseth to deal with demonstrations in Los Angeles concerning the implementation policies of the Trump administration.
Judge Charles Breyer said Trump’s deployment of thousands of troops in the National Guard and 700 navies to “voluntarily” violated the Federal Law Posse Comitatus, which prohibits US military forces from enforcing the law at the national level.
Breyer’s injunction in the American district court of San Francisco is limited to California, and the judge sparked the decision until September 12 to give the Trump administration to appeal.
The judge said that the Trump administration was not required to withdraw the 300 national guard troops currently postulated in Los Angeles, “and they are not prohibited from using troops compatible with the Comitatus law.” This could include custody of federal buildings.
But the decision comes when Trump planned to deploy national guard troops in other American cities to face crime, including Oakland and San Francisco.
Senior district judge Charles R. Breyer
Source: USDC | North District of California
In mid-August, Trump placed Washington, the DC police forces under federal control and deployed troops of the national guard in this city to solve what he claims to be a crawling crime problem.
Tuesday, Trump, in a social media point of sale, said that at least 54 people had been shot in Chicago this weekend, and warned: “I will quickly solve the crime problem, just as I did in DC.”
Breyer, in his decision, warned that new deployments of guard troops and soldiers in other American cities would create “a national police force with the president as a leader”.
“The recent executive orders of President Trump and the public statements concerning the National Guard raise serious concerns as to whether he intends to order the troops to violate the act of Comitatus posse elsewhere in California,” the judge wrote.
Governor Gavin Newsom has sworn the decision in an article on social networks.
“Donald Trump is losing again,” said Newsom on X.
“The courts agree – its militarization of our streets and the use of the military against American citizens are illegal,” wrote Newsom, who has become a leading democratic voice in opposition to the Republican President.
Governor Gavin Newsom speaks after the American district judge Charles Breyer granted a temporary emergency prohibition order to arrest the deployment by President Trump of the California National Guard, Thursday, June 12, 2025, in the Supreme Court of the State of California in San Francisco.
San Francisco Chronicle / Hearst Newspapers | Hearst Newspapers | Getty images
Breyer, in his decision, wrote: “Congress spoke clearly in 1878 when he adopted the Comitatus law, prohibiting the use of the American army to execute domestic law”.
“Nearly 140 years later, the defendants – President Trump, Secretary of Defense Hegseth, and the Ministry of Defense – deployed the National Guard and the Marines in Los Angeles, apparently to repress a rebellion and ensure that Federal Immigration Act was applied,” the judge wrote.
“There have been demonstrations in Los Angeles, and some people have embarked on violence,” wrote Breyer.
“However, there was no rebellion, and civilian police were unable to respond to demonstrations and enforce the law.”
Police and national guards take action while thousands of anti-ice protesters are gathered outside the Los Angeles Federal Building, California, on June 9, 2025 in the midst of demonstrations against immigration raids.
Tayfun Coskun | Anadolu Getty images
Breyer said that the evidence introduced during a trial for the trial show that the defendants had “systematically used armed soldiers (whose identity was often obscured by protective armor) and military vehicles to set up protective perimeters and traffic blockages, engage in the control of crowds and demonstrate a military presence in Los Angeles.”
CNBC asked for comments on the decision of the Ministry of Justice, which represented the Trump administration in the trial.
