Op-Ed: The Line We Draw Today in L.A.

History doesn’t knock. It deploys.

On June 9, 2025, President Donald Trump—now serving as the 47th President of the United States—authorized the deployment of 700 U.S. Marines and 2,000 National Guard troops into Los Angeles to suppress ongoing migrant-rights protests . This is no longer political theater. It’s militarization on U.S. soil.

The President invoked Title 10 to justify the deployment, bypassing both Governor Gavin Newsom and Mayor Karen Bass, who have denounced the operation as unlawful and inflammatory . This is not law enforcement—it is federal force imposed without state or local consent.

To be clear: being undocumented is not a federal felony. Most undocumented immigrants are committing a civil offense, not a criminal one . A felony charge only arises when someone re-enters the country after deportation, especially with prior criminal convictions . So why are troops being used as if we’re facing an armed invasion?

The danger here is not just the deployment—it’s the pattern. In 2020, we saw federal agents in Portland, Oregon, use unmarked vans and crowd control weapons to detain protesters without local coordination. The move was condemned by state officials and became a national symbol of overreach . We let Portland happen. We must not let it happen again.

Some comparisons are exaggerated. Others are warnings. Kristallnacht, in 1938 Germany, was when the state’s rhetoric against Jews became state-sponsored violence . It began with shattered glass and ended in genocide. No, we are not there—but when federal troops suppress local dissent and override elected officials, we follow tracks laid by history .

I’m loathsomely tired of having to say it: do not resort to violence against these oppressors. I won’t belabor the obvious. President Trump is an evil man—and if we remain silent or inactive, he wins. Worse still, his supporters are equally culpable. They rally around his lawlessness under the guise of patriotism, but make no mistake: this is not patriotism—it’s devotion to a cult of hate, fueled by a warped idea of rugged individualism that has deteriorated into something unrecognizable in American history.

This is not how America functions—unless America is dysfunctional.

References
ACLU. (2010). Criminalizing Undocumented Immigrants.
American Immigration Council. (2021). Prosecuting People for Coming to the United States.
Benz, W. (2009). A Concise History of the Third Reich. University of California Press.
Brooks, B., Ross, J., Stewart, P., & Ali, I. (2025, June 9). Trump administration deploys Marines to Los Angeles, vows to intensify migrant raids. Reuters.
NPR. (2025, June 9). Trump sends Marines and more National Guard to Los Angeles.
Shear, M. D., & Baker, P. (2020, July 25). Trump Threatens to Send Federal Law Enforcement Forces to More Cities. The New York Times.
Snyder, T. (2017). On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century. Tim Duggan Books.
Watson, K. (2025, June 9). Trump invoked Title 10 to deploy the National Guard in Los Angeles. CBS News.
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