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Silicon Valley politicians and community activists rallied in downtown Palo Alto on Sunday to protest the Trump Administration’s deployment of the National Guard in Los Angeles, calling the move reckless, illegal and designed to terrorize and traumatize the immigrant community.
The event was organized just hours after troops from the National Guard arrived in Los Angeles at the direction of the White House ostensibly to help law enforcement in the face of community protests against immigration raids by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). The deployment of the National Guard came despite opposition from Gov. Gavin Newsom, who is normally in charge of the state’s National Guard, and despite assurances by Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass that the Los Angeles Police Department is capable of maintaining peace without federal intervention.
In announcing the deployment, Trump indicated that he is sending at least 2,000 National Guard personnel to locations where “protests against (federal) functions are occurring or are likely to occur based on current threat assessments and planned operations.” The White House memorandum states that violent protests “threaten the security of and significant damage to Federal immigration detention facilities and other Federal property.”
“To the extent that protests or acts of violence directly inhibit the execution of the laws, they constitute a form of rebellion against the authority of the Government of the United States,” the memo states.
Local politicians strongly denounced the action. U.S. Rep. Sam Liccardo, whose office organized the event, said that it’s a crime to use the military on domestic soil. The provision that Trump had relied on to deploy the military applies to situations where federal troops are needed to quell rebellions and insurrections. It requires the White House to go through the state’s governor, he said.
“The use of military for the domestic law enforcement puts our nation on the precipice of authoritarian rule,” Liccardo said. “I’m outraged by the reckless militarization in response to protest in LA, hours after the Los Angeles Police Department deemed the protest being peaceful and well within control.”
He suggested that the White House is looking for excuses to seize control from civilian authorities with the intent to invoke the Insurrection Act and impose martial law.
“For this reason and many other reasons, we encourage all protesters, ‘Do not take the bait!’” he said.
The event at Kings Plaza followed weeks of escalation immigration enforcement raids by ICE in California and in other states. Belinda Hernandez-Arriaga, founder of Ayudando Latinos A Soñar (ALAS), a Half Moon Based-group which provides mental health services to immigrant communities, called the federal actions “devastating.”
She said her organization has heard reports from immigrants who are afraid to go to any events, to the bank or even to medical appointments. The actions by immigration enforcement are tantamount to “psychological warfare on our immigrant communities and on all of us.”
“When people say it’s not happening here yet, in our minds and in our homes and in the lives of our children this is happening every minutes, every day that they step out and they’re scared of what is happening to them. … They are frozen, paralyzed.”
Santa Clara County Supervisor Betty Duong has also been hearing from residents affected by the immigration raids. Duong’s district in downtown San Jose, which includes Little Saigon, Japan Town, Little Italy and Little Portugal, had more of ICE raids and arrests than any other district the county, she said.
“The fear is palpable at every conversation I have in my neighborhoods,” Duong said. I’m not going to tell people not to be afraid, this is a scary time. Fear is a natural response to danger, but fear does not need to equate to powerlessness.”
She urged those present to join the Rapid Response Network, which is provides legal support to immigrants in the face of increased enforcement.
State Sen. Josh Becker also made the case for assisting the region’s immigrant communities. He said that he was on a Zoom call on Saturday night with his colleagues in Southern California and a representative from the ACLU. Becker said he has a colleague who was pepper-sprayed during the Saturday confrontation between demonstrators and law enforcement. He also referenced David Huerta, president of SEIU California, who was injured and detained as he was documenting ICE raids in Los Angeles.
The people who are being targeted by law enforcement are hard-working immigrants like his grandmother and grandfather, a seamstress and a corner-store owner who immigrated to pursue the American Dream, Becker said. Now, the administration is not only unleashing ICE on these people but also the National Guard.
“We’re here to say that is not right, that is not going to happen on our watch and we stand with immigrant communities,” Becker said.
U.S. Rep. Kevin Mullin, whose congressional district represents most of San Mateo County, said the president’s recent move on immigration is consistent with White House’s broader attacks on California, including its efforts to pull money from the state.
“This is straight out of the Stephen Miller playbook – to divide, to deride California. And we stand together to say, ‘Enough!’” Mullin said, referring to one of Trump’s political advisors.
Mayors, supervisors and council members from various Peninsula cities, including Mountain View, East Palo Alto, San Mateo and Campbell, gathered at King Plaza and stood behind the speakers as they criticized the federal actions. San Mateo County Supervisor Ray Mueller, a former Menlo Park mayor, called the troop deployment “political folly” that is meant to distract from Trump’s contentious budget bill.
Trump, he said, is creating a “reality television theater” and risking human lives to provoke retaliation and distract from his proposed budget cuts. Standing alone, the actions constitute a “self-inflicted wound” to the state and national economy, he said.
“But these actions aren’t meant to stand alone,” Mueller said. “They are not meant to protect anyone. They are meant to ensure Trump’s big blunder of a budget bill gets passed.”
State Assembly member Marc Berman, whose district includes Palo Alto and Menlo Park, couldn’t attend the Sunday event but denounced the Trump administration in a statement, calling the president’s team “some of the pettiest, most vindictive, and childish people to occupy the White House in our nation’s history.”
Berman compared Trump, Miller and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth to sheriffs in the pre-Civil Rights south who would exploit any opportunity to use excessive force and violence to intimidate and terrorize black communities. They are intentionally trying to provoke local communitiees, Berman said.
“They are hellbent on bullying, intimidating, and threatening hard working immigrant communities on American soil not because they need to, but because they want to,” Berman said. “These are not American values. They are the first steps in the authoritarian playbook.”
Local cities and counties are already leading the charge against numerous executive orders that Trump had signed since taking office in January. Santa Clara County is suing the White House over its attempts to withhold funding for “sanctuary” jurisdictions, which do not cooperate with federal agencies on immigration enforcement, and to direct federal departments to plan for massive staffing reductions. Last month, the Palo Alto City Council agreed to join that suit pertaining to sanctuary cities.
Vice Mayor Vicki Veenker, who supported joining the legal effort opposing the federal actions, said the recent move by the White House to deploy the National Guard in Los Angeles sets a “dangerous precedent.”
“This is not just about LA,” Palo Alto Vice Mayor Vicki Veenker said. “If the president does this in LA, he can do it in Palo Alto, Menlo Park, Sunnyvale and San Jose. That is not OK.”
While the elected leaders shared their frustrations over Trump’s actions, they acknowledged that their options to counteract are limited. Becker noted in an interview that the state is already engaged in several lawsuits against the Trump Administration, while Liccardo said that he has been speaking to his Republican colleagues to “prod and probe, to understand at what point are their Constitutional sensitivities provoked by these outrageous actions.”
“What I hear privately varies dramatically from what I hear publicly,” Liccardo said. “I will continue to prod and probe until we can get members of Congress to stand up and control the outrageous, authoritarian actions. … As the president’s support declines over time, some of those Republican members may grow a backbone, so we need to continue to push at it.
“And the public response is incredibly important. We need people across the ideological spectrum to say that our Constitution and our nation is more important than our party.”
Sure. It’s Trumps fault, even though there was an OPEN BORDER FOR FOUR YEARS. CA leaders are an absolute joke.