Trump's National Guard troops are questioning their mission in LA

Straits Times

a day ago

LOS ANGELES - When the California National Guard rolled into Los Angeles to respond to devastating wildfires in January, Southern Californians largely hailed the troops as heroes. Celebrities thanked them for their service in Pacific Palisades. Suburban homeowners competed to chat them up at traffic checkpoints in Altadena.
Seven months later, much of that goodwill is gone.
Protesters jeer the troops as they guard federal office buildings. Commuters curse the behemoth convoys clogging freeways. Family members grill members with questions about whether they really have to obey federal orders.
The level of public and private scorn appears to have taken a toll on the National Guard deployment to Los Angeles that President Donald Trump announced in June, citing protests over immigration raids.
Interviews with nearly two dozen people – including soldiers and officers as well as officials and civilians who have worked closely with the troops – show that many members of the Guard are questioning the mission.
The deployment's initial orders to quell scattered protests have given way to legally disputed assignments backing up federal immigration agents.
'They gave Disneyland tickets to the people who worked in the wildfires,' one soldier said. 'Nobody's handing out Disneyland tickets now.'
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Six members of the Guard – including infantrymen, officers and two officials in leadership roles – spoke of low morale and deep concern that the deployment may hurt recruitment for the state-based military force for years to come.
Those who were interviewed spoke on the condition of anonymity, because military orders bar Guard personnel from publicly discussing the federal deployment and they feared retribution for talking to the media.
All but one of the six expressed reservations about the deployment. Several said they had raised objections themselves or knew someone who objected, either because they did not want to be involved in immigration crackdowns or felt the Trump administration had put them on the streets for what they described as a 'fake mission'.
The New York Times reached out to a broad pool of soldiers seeking interviews about the deployment. While a small sample, the six soldiers' comments aligned with other signs of poor morale.
At least 105 members of the deployment sought counseling from behavioural health officers, and at least one company commander and one battalion commander who objected to the mission were reassigned to work unrelated to the mobilisation, the Guard officers said.
Some troops became so disgruntled that there were several reports of soldiers defecating in Humvees and showers at the Southern California base where the troops are stationed, prompting tightened bathroom security.
The California National Guard had 72 soldiers whose enlistment was set to expire during the deployment. Of those 72, at least two have now left the Guard and 55 others have indicated that they will not extend their service, according to the office of Governor Gavin Newsom, who is fighting Mr Trump's deployment in court. That number, if troops act on it, would amount to a 21 per cent retention rate, far lower than the Guard's typical 60 per cent rate, officials said.
'The moral injuries of this operation, I think, will be enduring,' one of the two Guard officials said. 'This is not what the military of our country was designed to do, at all.'
The six soldiers are a fraction of the thousands of troops who have been deployed to Los Angeles. Many members of the Guard have had no trouble taking part in the operation and have voiced no personal conflicts or concerns. It's not uncommon for soldiers in Guard deployments to complain about their assignments, question the reasons they were called up or seek counselling during deployments.
Earlier in 2025, after National Guard soldiers were called in to keep order in the New York state prison system after corrections officers went on strike, some troops described feeling unprepared and took issue with not being provided pepper spray or other means of protecting themselves.
Officials with the military's Northern Command, which is overseeing the president's military response in California, said the deployment was more organised than the interviewed soldiers suggested. The officials declined to comment on the morale of the troops, their behavioural health, the reassignments or the deployment's impact on re-enlistment.
Mr Trump began deploying thousands of troops on June 7 to Southern California, making the case that the state's Democratic leaders were failing to protect federal agents and property after immigration raids sparked protests. The president commandeered a total of 4,100 California National Guard members who ordinarily are controlled by the governor, and dispatched an additional 700 Marines.
Since then, the military presence in California has been a flashpoint of debate, as armed soldiers have faced down protesters outside federal buildings and accompanied federal agents conducting raids in the Los Angeles region. Several operations have drawn intense backlash, including a show of force in MacArthur Park and an immigration raid on a cannabis farm in Ventura County where a fleeing farmworker fell from a greenhouse and later died.
The deployment has started scaling back. On July 1, the president agreed to release about 150 Guard troops in a specialised wildfire fighting unit, and on July 15, the Pentagon announced that 1,990 members of the Guard's 79th Infantry Brigade Combat Team begin demobilisation.
It was unclear if the president would end the mission after 60 days, as his order initially suggested. The other half of the deployment – 1,892 members of the 49th Military Police Brigade – remains.
Missions have come under intense scrutiny for potential constitutional violations. California authorities have challenged the legality of the deployment, citing a 19th-century law, the Posse Comitatus Act, which generally makes it illegal to use federal troops for law enforcement on domestic soil unless there is an insurrection.
Trump administration officials and Justice Department lawyers have argued that troops are 'not engaged in law enforcement' but are merely protecting federal agents. Civil liberties groups have disputed that portrayal, pointing to the temporary detention of one man by Marines early in the deployment.
A federal judge has set a trial for August to determine whether the use of the National Guard and Marines has violated federal law.
Most troops have been stationed at the Joint Forces Training Base in Los Alamitos, a federally owned facility operated by the California National Guard near Long Beach. The soldiers said breakfasts are hearty – eggs, hash browns, sausage, pancakes – and accommodations are comfortable. Despite efforts to keep them busy, however, they reported long stretches of downtime and frustration with missions that leaked or were cancelled by the time lumbering convoys reached their destinations.
In Los Alamitos, a coastal suburb of about 12,000 people, the troops have crowded into a 2-square-mile facility that is shared with other government agencies, which have balked at the encroachment. In emails obtained through a public records request, workers in a joint programme to eradicate the Mediterranean fruit fly complained that troops shaving and brushing their teeth are crowding the bathrooms and that scientists are unsettled by nearby trucks full of explosives.
Soldiers meander down new walkways between a huge tent city and new semi-permanent buildings. 'I've lived here 33 years and this is the first I've seen anything like this,' the mayor of Los Alamitos Shelley Hasselbrink said. 'We call it the circus – they look like big circus tents.'
Two Democratic officials who were granted brief access to the base – Mr Josh Fryday, a Navy veteran who leads community engagement for the governor's office, and Representative Derek Tran, an Army veteran who represents Los Alamitos – said the massive military presence, which has been projected to cost US$134 million, seemed excessive and extreme.
'If they can do this here,' Mr Fryday said, 'they can do it in any community.' NYTIMES