The Trump administration is accelerating the deployment of military forces to Los Angeles as protests against mass immigration operations spread to several US states.

As Major General Scott Sherman announced on Wednesday, 700 Marines are being retrained in crowd control techniques and are expected to enter the city soon.

At the same time, another 4,000 National Guard men have already been deployed by order of the president.

The military presence, intended, among other things, to protect federal ICE agents during sweep operations, has provoked strong political and legal reactions.

California Governor Gavin Newsom called the intervention a gross abuse of power and filed a lawsuit against the White House and the Pentagon, seeking the exclusion of the military from civilian operations.

Trump responded by publicly suggesting Newsom's arrest.

Tensions are escalating against the backdrop of Trump's plan for mass deportations of millions of immigrants.

According to data from the Department of Homeland Security, the Immigration Service (ICE) is now making over 2,000 arrests per day, a number that is more than four times the daily average of 311 arrests in 2024, under the Biden presidency.

On Tuesday, the largest workplace raid of the Trump presidency took place at a meatpacking plant in Omaha, Nebraska, with 75–80 arrests.

At the same time, protests are breaking out in major cities (New York, Atlanta, Chicago)  with the central slogan of rejecting ICE policy and the militarization of public order.

In downtown Los Angeles, Mayor Karen Bass imposed a nighttime curfew, while police reported mass arrests after looting of businesses in five blocks.

California Attorney General Rob Bonda warned that using the military to support ICE could violate the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878, which prohibits the military from participating in civilian policing.

The escalation is peaking ahead of Saturday, where more than 1,800 demonstrations are planned by the No Kings movement, under the slogan rejection of authoritarianism and the billionaires first policy.

The demonstrations coincide with the military parade for the 250th anniversary of the US Army in Washington and Trump's 79th birthday, where armored vehicles and tens of thousands of police and federal agents are expected on the streets.

Trump says the military's mission prevented the outbreak of violence. Newsom's staff responds that the violence was caused precisely because of this mission.

Los Angeles is thus becoming the epicenter of the most aggressive militarization of the domestic political scene in the US in decades — with the army, for the first time since 1992, returning to the role of protector of domestic order without a request from the State.