Tag Archives: Federal Law Enforcement

Washington Post: A night in D.C. after Trump’s National Guard deployment

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Spend the night with us in one of D.C.’s nightlife hubs, as federal police roam, crowds are smaller, bartenders worry and clubgoers try to enjoy themselves.

The sunlight dimmed along this stretch of U Street to the familiar soundtrack of a city ready for the weekend: rumbling buses taking home tired commuters, high heels clacking along sticky sidewalks and chattering crowds ready to order their first round.

Then a group gathered on a street corner with pots and pans, jingling them as the darkness grew closer. They whooped and cheered for a few minutes, a brief moment of joyful resistance seeking to counteract the image of the crime-ridden city described by the president.

Among the clubgoers in miniskirts and sweat-soaked T-shirts, there were federal agents hopping in and out of unmarked cars. A protester held a sign reading “America has no kings.” Police officers were met with boos and phones ready to record.

Welcome to the first Friday night in D.C. since President Donald Trump announced he was placing the local police under federal control and sending in National Guard troops to a city where 9 in 10 voters cast ballots for his opponent. The next morning, the White House would announce that the overnight operation yielded 52 arrests and the seizure of three illegal firearms. Twenty-two multiagency teams were deployed throughout the city.

Trump justified the exertion of executive power to reduce crime by depicting the city as a lawless wasteland, despite violent crime reaching 30-year lows. But many of those gathered around the bars and clubs in Northwest Washington on Friday night said they felt more unsettled by the federal presence than any other safety concerns.

Washington Post journalists spent Friday night in a popular section of U Street — a nightlife hub that is among the areas of the city with the highest number of crimes reported this year. Earlier this summer, D.C. police implemented a youth curfew over concerns about rowdy crowds in some areas.

Nearby, two nights earlier, a mix of local and federal authorities pulled over drivers for seat belt violations or broken taillights while onlookers chanted: “Go home, fascists.”

On Friday, crowds were smaller, bartenders and club managers said, and they wondered if patrons were staying inside to avoid federal authorities. And yet, there were still people ready to party.

The largest police response The Post witnessed Friday night was over a claim of a stolen bike. It was around 8:30 p.m., and the sky was ink blue.

One couple heading home from an event at a nearby synagogue looked on with furrowed brows. They spotted a few D.C. police cruisers blocking traffic and agents donning vests labeled “HSI” — Homeland Security Investigations. They hadn’t seen that before, not here.

A pair of French tourists, in D.C. for the first time and looking for a bar, paused when they saw the police cruisers and growing crowd. Earlier, they had strolled by the White House and marveled at the Capitol, and now they were trying to make sense of the flashing lights.

They had loosely followed the week’s headlines and were still thrilled to be visiting.

“We’re on vacation, so we try to cut [out] the news,” Solène Le Toullec said, and they walked on.

At the sight of local and federal law enforcement throughout the night, people pooled on the sidewalk — watching, filming, booing.

“Get out!”

“Go!”

“Quit!”

Such interactions played out again and again as the night drew on. Onlookers heckled the police as they did their job and applauded as officers left.

…

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A night in D.C. after Trump’s National Guard deployment

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/a-night-in-d-c-after-trump-s-national-guard-deployment/ar-AA1KFJnn

This U.S. Citizen Recorded an Immigration Arrest. Officers Told Him To Delete It or Face Charges.

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The peaceful traffic stop in Florida turned violent after immigration officers arrived and used chokeholds and a stun gun to make arrests.

Immigration officers were caught on video celebrating proudly after using chokeholds and a stun gun to arrest two undocumented immigrants in Florida. The owner of the video, an 18-year-old American citizen, was threatened and charged after he refused to delete the footage revealing the harsh tactics used by immigration authorities to meet the Trump administration’s mass deportation goals.

Kenny Laynez-Ambrosio was on his way to work on the morning of May 2 with his mother and two other men in North Palm Beach, Florida, when the vehicle was pulled over by a Florida Highway Patrol (FHP) officer, reported The Guardian. The initial reason for the stop is unclear, but after the FHP called in Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officers, the peaceful traffic stop quickly turned violent.

Laynez-Ambrosio began recording when CBP agents arrived, and a female officer can be heard asking if anyone in the car is an undocumented immigrant. One of Laynez-Ambrosio’s friends answered that he was. “That’s when they said, ‘OK, let’s go,'” Laynez-Ambrosio told The Guardian. Before anyone was able to exit the vehicle, CBP officers became aggressive. “[One officer] put his hand inside the window,” he said, “popped the door open, grabbed my friend by the neck and had him in a chokehold.”

In the video, he can be heard telling the officers, “You can’t grab me like that,” while three officers pull the second man from the van, and tell him to “get your fucking head down, on the ground.” When the man lands on his feet while being pulled from the vehicle, officers push him to the ground and then pull him back to his feet while one officer keeps him in a headlock. Laynez-Ambrosio, who was also forced to the ground, can be heard yelling, “That’s not how you arrest people. If y’all going to arrest people, y’all have to arrest people regular.” He then tells his friend, in Spanish, “Don’t resist. Don’t resist.” The commotion ends when an officer uses his stun gun on Laynez-Ambrosio’s friend, who falls to the ground, crying out in pain. 

“You’re scaring the dude,” Laynez-Ambrosio says to an officer shortly after. “That’s not how you arrest people.” “Why?” an officer callously responds. After asserting his “rights to talk,” an officer tells Laynez-Ambrosio, “You’ve got no rights here. You’re a migo, brother.” 

The recording continues after the three men are in custody and captures the officers’ candid remarks. A couple of officers can be heard cracking jokes about how one man smells and bragging about the stun gun use. One officer remarks on how “they’re starting to resist more now.” Another responds, “We’re going to end up shooting some of them… because they’re going to start fighting.” 

“Just remember, you can smell that [inaudible] with a $30,000 bonus,” one officer says amidst post-arrest celebrations. 

After his arrest and six-hour detention at a CBP station, Laynez-Ambrosio told The Guardian he was threatened with charges if he didn’t delete the exposing video. When he refused, he was charged with obstruction without violence for having allegedly interfered with CBP officers’ arrest—a first-degree misdemeanor punishable by up to a $1,000 fine and one year of incarceration. He was ultimately sentenced to 10 hours of community service and a four-hour anger management course. The two undocumented men were transferred to the Krome detention center in Miami. Laynez-Ambrosio “believes they were released on bail and are awaiting a court hearing, but said it has been difficult to stay in touch with them.”

Florida has led the nation in cooperation with federal immigration authorities, sparking privacy and civil liberty concerns for both undocumented immigrants and American citizens alike. But rather than change course, the Trump administration has doubled down on mass deportation goals and recently appropriated nearly $75 billion to dramatically increase immigration detention capacity and immigration arrests to reach 3,000 arrests per day. The appropriation includes funding for hiring, retention, and performance bonuses for federal immigration officers.

“The federal government has imposed quotas for the arrest of immigrants,” Laynez-Ambrosio’s attorney, Jack Scarola, told The Guardian. “Any time law enforcement is compelled to work towards a quota, it poses a significant risk to other rights.” 

Scarola’s warning appears to be right. The Department of Homeland Security posted on Monday that it will “stop at nothing to hunt [undocumented immigrants] down.” The brutal tactics used by federal officers under the Trump administration, against mostly nonviolent immigrants—including people on their way to work and who pose no threat to public safety—will only serve to degrade constitutional protections and subject more people to the government’s abuse of power.

https://reason.com/2025/07/29/this-u-s-citizen-recorded-an-immigration-arrest-officers-told-him-to-delete-it-or-face-charges

Popular Information: Trump manufactures a crisis in LA

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For years, President Trump has dreamed of mobilizing the military against protesters in the United States. On Saturday night, Trump made it a reality, ordering the deployment of 2,000 members of the California National Guard — against the wishes of state and local officials — in response to protests against federal immigration raids on workplaces in and around Los Angeles. By the time Trump issued the order, the protests consisted of a few dozen people at a Home Depot.

The move violated longstanding democratic norms that prohibit military deployment on American soil absent extraordinary circumstances. The last time the National Guard was mobilized absent a request from local officials was in 1965 — to protect civil rights protesters in Alabama marching from Selma to Montgomery.

Trump strongly advocated for using the military to quell racial justice protests in the summer of 2020. He encouraged governors to deploy the National Guard to “dominate” the streets. “If a city or state refuses to take the actions necessary to defend the life and property of their residents, then I will deploy the United States military and quickly solve the problem for them,” Trump said.

Behind the scenes, Trump was even more ruthless. According to a 2022 memoir by former Defense Secretary Mark Esper, Trump asked Esper if the military could shoot at people protesting George Floyd’s murder. “Can’t you just shoot them?” Trump allegedly asked. “Just shoot them in the legs or something?”

On another occasion that summer, according to a book by journalist Michael Bender, Trump announced that he was putting Army General Mark Milley, the former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, in charge of quelling the protests. This reportedly led to a shouting match:

“I said you’re in f—ing charge!” Trump shouted at him.

“Well, I’m not in charge!” Milley yelled back.

“You can’t f—ing talk to me like that!” Trump said. …

“Goddamnit,” Milley said to others. “There’s a room full of lawyers here. Will someone inform him of my legal responsibilities?”

The lawyers, including Attorney General Bill Barr, sided with Milley, and Trump’s demand was tabled. (Trump called Bender’s book “fake news.”)

During a March 2023 campaign rally in Iowa, Trump pledged to deploy the National Guard in states and cities run by Democrats, specifically mentioning Los Angeles:

You look at these great cities, Los Angeles, San Francisco, you look at what’s happening to our country, we cannot let it happen any longer… you’re supposed to not be involved in that, you just have to be asked by the governor or the mayor to come in, the next time, I’m not waiting. One of the things I did was let them run it, and we’re going to show how bad a job they do. Well, we did that. We don’t have to wait any longer.

In October 2023, the Washington Post reported that Trump allies were mapping out executive actions “to allow him to deploy the military against civil demonstrations.”

In an October 2024 interview on Fox News, Trump again pushed for the National Guard and military to be deployed against “the enemy within,” which he described as “radical left lunatics.”

“We have some very bad people. We have some sick people, radical left lunatics,” Trump said. “And I think they’re the big — and it should be very easily handled by, if necessary, by National Guard, or if really necessary, by the military, because they can’t let that happen.”

Were there “violent mobs”?

White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said Trump’s mobilization of the National Guard was necessary because “violent mobs have attacked ICE Officers and Federal Law Enforcement Agents carrying out basic deportation operations in Los Angeles, California.” Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said the National Guard would “support federal law enforcement in Los Angeles” in response to “violent mob assaults on ICE and Federal Law Enforcement.”

These claims were directly contradicted by the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD), which described Saturday’s protests as “peaceful.”

The LAPD statement said it “appreciates the cooperation of organizers, participants, and community partners who helped ensure public safety throughout the day.”

There were some reports of violence and property damage in Paramount and Compton, two cities located about 20 miles south of Los Angeles. The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department said it “arrested one person over the protest in Paramount” and “two officers had been treated at a local hospital for injuries and released.” As for property damage, “one car had been burned and a fire at a local strip mall had been extinguished.”

Trump’s order, however, says the unrest in California is so severe it constitutes “a form of rebellion against the authority of the Government of the United States” that necessitates the mobilization of military personnel. Although any violence and property destruction is a serious matter, local law enforcement appears fully capable of responding to the situation.

Trump’s Unusual Legal Theory

The Posse Comitatus Act generally prohibits using the military for domestic law enforcement without specific statutory (or Constitutional) authority. The most famous exception to the Posse Comitatus Act is the Insurrection Act, which permits the President to deploy the military for domestic law enforcement under specific circumstances. But, historically, the Insurrection Act has “been reserved for extreme circumstances in which there are no other alternatives to maintain the peace.” It also requires the president to issue a proclamation ordering “the insurgents to disperse and retire peaceably to their abodes within a limited time.”

Trump, however, invoked a different federal law, 10 U.S.C. 12406. That provision lacks some of the legal and historical baggage of the Insurrection Act, but it also confers a more limited authority. That is why Trump’s proclamation authorizes the National Guard to “temporarily protect ICE and other United States Government personnel who are performing Federal functions, including the enforcement of Federal law, and to protect Federal property, at locations where protests against these functions are occurring or are likely to occur.” In other words, the National Guard is not authorized to engage in law enforcement activities, but to protect others doing that work. It remains to be seen whether the administration will respect these limitations in practice.

Trump is Confused

At 2:41 a.m. on Sunday morning, Trump posted: “Great job by the National Guard in Los Angeles after two days of violence, clashes and unrest.” At the time, the National Guard had not yet arrived in Los Angeles. Trump had spent the evening watching three hours of UFC fighting in New Jersey.

Trump also asserted, without evidence, that those protesting the immigration raids were “paid troublemakers.”

The National Guard arrived in Los Angeles much later on Sunday morning, when the streets were already quiet.

Trump told reporters on Sunday that he did not consider the protests an “insurrection” yet. About an hour later, Trump claimed on Truth Social that “violent, insurrectionist mobs are swarming and attacking our Federal Agents to try to stop our deportation operations.”

Trump’s order mobilizing the National Guard, however, likely inflamed tensions — and that may have been the point. Federal and state authorities clashed with protesters in downtown LA on Sunday afternoon. Law enforcement “used smoke and pepper spray to disperse protesters outside a federal detention center in downtown Los Angeles,” according to the Los Angeles Times.

Trump manufactures a crisis in LA
For years, President Trump has dreamed of mobilizing the military against protesters in the United States.

https://popular.info/p/trump-manufactures-a-crisis-in-la