Whose Guard Is It Anyway?

As I watched the news of the National Guard being deployed in Los Angeles over the weekend, I found myself thinking about how the use of federal law enforcement has shifted over time and who, ultimately, history vindicates.

Federal troops have been deployed domestically, including during Reconstruction following the Civil War up to Black Lives Matter protests in 2020, but what remains ever-present in my mind is the 1962 integration of the University of Mississippi. President John F. Kennedy ordered federal troops, including the National Guard, to enforce the admission of James Meredith, a Black Mississippian who sought higher education. Law enforcement descended on Ole Miss to safeguard his right to attend the university. The Supreme Court, in Brown v. Board of Education, affirmed this right, and the President acted within his authority to enforce it. The image of James Meredith integrating the University of Mississippi is burned into our Southern soil and our national conscience. It stands as a pillar of the American civil rights canon.

Every day, I pass the statue erected in Meredith’s honor to celebrate what he represents: courage, knowledge, opportunity, and perseverance. It symbolizes not only how far we have come but also how far we must continue to go. At the University of Mississippi today, inclusion is central to our ethos. We are perhaps more conscious of race and privilege because of our history. Yet, history does not always move in a straight line.

The use of the National Guard has not always been a tool of righteousness. We are now witnessing its use in ways that diverge sharply from the spirit of civil rights enforcement. On June 6, 2025, ICE agents conducted sweeping raids across Los Angeles, targeting workplaces and community spaces, including a Home Depot (not a “drug den”). More than 100 individuals were detained, many of them longtime undocumented residents of the city. Protesters mobilized almost immediately. They surrounded detention centers, blocked traffic, and clashed with law enforcement in scenes that echoed past civil unrest, but this time the protests were not to combat police brutality but prevent the machinery of exclusion.

President Trump, without the consent of California Governor Gavin Newsom or Mayor Karen Bass, federalized the California National Guard. Trump signed a Presidential Memorandum on Saturday to send 2,000 National Guardsmen to the city, to be stationed around the Metropolitan Detention Center and key infrastructure points. Currently there are approximately 300 guardsmen deployed. The memorandum marked the first such unilateral federalization of the Guard since the 1965 Selma marches. President Lyndon B. Johnson federalized the Alabama National Guard to enforce the right to march from Selma to Montgomery following the violent suppression of civil rights demonstrators on “Bloody Sunday.” This set a historical benchmark for unilateral federal action to override state resistance in civil rights matters, but unlike Trump, Johnson is on the right side of history.

Tear gas and less-lethal munitions were used by National Guard units to disperse protests. Armed soldiers in tactical gear patrolled immigrant neighborhoods, creating scenes reminiscent of war zones like Kabul or Call of Duty, except this is Boyle Heights and East LA.

Live coverage is available through The Washington Post and the New York Times.

The deployment was justified by the administration under 10 U.S.C. § 12406 authority that allows a president to override state authority over their National Guard when “there is a rebellion or danger of a rebellion against the Government of the United States” and to address the lawlessness, citing threats to federal property. Critics, including civil rights advocates, legal scholars, and even some retired military leaders, decried the action as authoritarian overreach. Governor Newsom threatened legal action. “This is an illegal act, an immoral act, and an unconstitutional act.” said Newsom.

The hypocrisy here is overwhelming when we think about January 6. Talk about rebellion.

The National Guard sits precisely at that fault line where federal power meets civil rights. It is at once a state and federal force, capable of restoring peace or instilling fear, depending on who holds the reins and toward what end. The 2025 deployment in Los Angeles demands the same scrutiny we once gave to the Guard’s presence in Oxford, Mississippi, but the moral narrative has shifted.

The federalization of the National Guard during the integration of Ole Miss remains one of the rare moments when the U.S. government used military force to enforce constitutional rights. President Kennedy’s decision, though politically fraught, upheld a Supreme Court ruling and physically protected James Meredith from segregationist violence.

Contrast that moment with current events. The Guard was not sent to protect constitutional freedoms but to suppress those protesting the denial of them. Those detained in the ICE raids are being denied Constitutional due process protections. The demonstrators were met with tear gas and military force for exercising their First Amendment rights and fighting for the rights of others. This is the military securing a political agenda, not safeguarding civil rights. Unfortunately, this is not new.

The federal government has used the National Guard and other military forces to quell dissent, disrupt labor, and neutralize protests, but most often upon request by the state’s governor which distinguishes the deployment in Los Angeles. In each case, such as at Kent State, the rationale was “restoring order.” Order is not synonymous with justice.

The president’s authority to deploy federal troops domestically hinges on two primary statutes: the Insurrection Act of 1807 and the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878. The latter limits the use of federal military in domestic law enforcement. The former, however, creates broad exceptions, allowing deployment to suppress insurrection, domestic violence, or obstruction of federal law. It is vague by design, and dangerous in application.

When the National Guard is federalized under Title 10 of the U.S.C., as it is in Los Angeles at this very moment, state governors lose all command authority. Troops become extensions of the president’s will. Historically, presidents have used this power sparingly. Even during Black Lives Matter protests in 2020, there was hesitation to override state control. That restraint appears to have disappeared, which is unsurprising for an administration not known for restraint but chaos.

The legal foundation for the 2025 deployment may survive in court, but its ethical justification does not. There was no insurrection in Los Angeles. No widespread looting or lawlessness that exceeded local capacity. Newsom did not ask for help, as is the case with other times federal troops were deployed domestically. What there was was vocal, visual, multiracial dissent against a federal immigration policy that many in the state opposed. The dissent was met with soldiers, not dialogue.

In some ways, today’s immigration conflicts echo the schoolhouse doors of the past. Back then, it was Black students seeking admission. Now, it is immigrants and asylum-seekers seeking belonging. Both have been met with state resistance, violence, and legal barricades.

Unlike the National Guard’s role in integrating Ole Miss, its role in Los Angeles is to reinforce exclusion. The border may be hundreds of miles away, but militarized immigration enforcement has become a mobile enterprise, capable of erecting borders within cities, across neighborhoods, around schools and workplaces. This shift represents a fundamental change in the National Guard’s mission, from protecting the rights of citizens to enforcing the boundaries of belonging.

The National Guard is a mirror. It reflects our priorities, our fears, and our ideologies that are increasingly fractured and partisan. In 1962, it stood between a Black student and a violent mob. In 2025, it stands between a frightened immigrant community and the public calling for the protection of their civil rights. The same institution. Two sides of history.

We must not forget that history is not only about what we remember but about what we choose to repeat and what we refuse to learn. The Guard’s presence on Los Angeles streets should not be normalized. If we are to bend the arc of the moral universe toward justice, as Dr. King said, we must not allow that arc to be bent by guardsmen in fatigues responding to fear rather than principle.

The federal use of the National Guard in Los Angeles, without state consent, amid contested justification, and in response to community protest about the deprivation of Constitutional rights, sets a dangerous precedent. It is a test of our Constitutional balance and of our national character. Will we accept the military policing of our cities as routine? It is a slippery slope to martial law, the suspension of habeas corpus, loss of Constitutional rights, federal overstep, and arbitrary detention if we sit idly by and watch. As citizens, we must never confuse the appearance of control with the presence of justice.