A new report suggests that President Donald Trump’s administration sent National Guard troops in Los Angeles to assist the Drug Enforcement Administration in a law enforcement operation about 130 miles outside the city, in a move that experts say seems unlawful.
According to the report, around 315 National Guard troops were sent to the eastern Coachella Valley region to help the DEA search a local marijuana growing operation. The DEA asked the National Guard for assistance due to the “magnitude and topography” of the operation.
Legal experts expressed alarm at the move.
“This is the slippery slope,” Ryan Goodman, law professor at New York University, wrote on Bluesky.
Federal law prohibits the National Guard from replacing local law enforcement agencies under the Posse Comitatus Act. There are limited instances where the National Guard can be used in law enforcement operations, such as to quell a rebellion. But the guardsmen have to be invited by a state’s governor under the law.