During a Tuesday hearing at the 9th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals, the DOJ urged a three-judge panel to issue an emergency stay of a lower court order and allow the Trump administration’s deployment of the California National Guard to continue in Los Angeles — going so far as to argue a president’s federalization of militia can’t be second-guessed by the courts, even if the chief executive mobilized forces from all 50 states and Washington, D.C., simultaneously.
Well, it’s mostly true. I mean this isn’t normal civil unrest. This is the people being fed up with a government trying to use fear as a weapon against it’s own people. And the mob violence isn’t generally preventing federal officers from doing what they want, it is in response to it. There is some mob shouting preventing some federal officers ftom doing what they want.
But issue at hand is that the law is very vague about the quantity needed to trigger the allowance of using the national guard. By just reading it, ICE could send a single agent to arrest 5 people in a facility that has 500. If the people stop the arrests, then it meets the written requirements. It ludicrous though to interpret it that way of course. But since it was written so poorly, we are at the mercy of the courts.