The Deportation Wars Begin
Trump has a mandate, but protests in California show the trouble that might lie ahead.
By The Editorial Board
Members of the California National Guard and officers with the Federal Protective Service in Los Angeles on Sunday. Photo: brehman/epa-efe/shutterstock/ShutterstockRounding up and deporting millions of illegal migrants was never going to go down without protest.
But President Trump is determined to do it, and no one can say he didn’t tell voters during the campaign.
But there are risks for both sides of this dispute, and especially for the country if it turns violent and triggers a military response from the White House.
The weekend’s clashes in Los Angeles are a sign of what could be ahead.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement has been staging raids around the city hunting for migrants, including at businesses where they are thought to work.
Workers, union leaders and pro-migrant activists hit the streets in protest.
The clashes turned nasty in some places, some officers were hurt, and ICE and local police made arrests, including of a prominent union leader for interfering with federal officers.
President Trump then invoked a little-used law to override what is typically state control and sent in 2,000 troops from the California National Guard.
Cue the outrage from Democrats and cries of law-breaking on both sides.
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Mr. Trump has largely solved the country’s most urgent immigration problem, which is closing the border to migrants using asylum claims to gain entry.
Illegal border crossings have slowed to a trickle in four months.
ICE has also arrested dangerous gang members and others accused of crimes in the U.S.
On this Mr. Trump has overwhelming public support.
But the White House, led by deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller, wants to deport everyone here illegally.
This means millions of people who arrived illegally but have since led law-abiding, productive lives.
They have formed families and taken jobs that employers say they struggle to fill—in construction, hospitality, agriculture, healthcare, and much more.
Mr. Miller and the restrictionists want to deport everyone to send a message never to come again.
But the lost contributions to the U.S. labor force will be great, especially since neither Mr. Miller nor Big Labor will tolerate more legal immigration.
The labor-market impact is already showing up in the monthly Bureau of Labor Statistics report.
There is also the risk of unrest, as we’ve seen in California.
It’s fanciful to think that raiding restaurants to snatch busboys, or Home Depot to grab stock clerks, won’t inspire a backlash.
All the more so when ICE acts in heavy-handed fashion, as its agents sometimes do.
Some on the pro-migrant left will do the same, and that’s when things get ugly.
The political risks for Mr. Trump will grow if families are broken up, legal migrants are deported by mistake, or tales of hardship proliferate.
Yet Mr. Trump can fairly say he has a mandate for mass deportation, however unwise, and he has broad legal authority to do it.
That seems to include his call out of the California Guard.
He used a provision in a law rarely invoked to deploy the Guard despite no request from Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass or Gov. Gavin Newsom.
A White House statement cited “violent mobs” and the “invasion of illegal criminals” to justify deploying the Guard under the statute, which may be challenged in court.
Our guess is that the White House had teed up this authority to use when needed, and Mr. Trump was itching to do so.
He knows Americans don’t like protests that include burning tires or broad disruptions of commercial traffic and public order.
Mr. Newsom says there was no need to call in the Guard, and that may be true, but that means Democrats who run “sanctuary” cities or states need to maintain order.
If they tolerate obstruction against ICE, they are giving Mr. Trump an excuse to call in the military.
When Rep. Maxine Waters says she wants the protesting crowds to “grow and grow and grow,” she is playing into Mr. Trump’s hands.
The California Governor is right that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth was needlessly provocative in tweeting that Marines at Camp Pendleton are on alert to intervene if asked.
The country doesn’t want the military patrolling American streets except in the worst circumstances.
But Mr. Trump could invoke the Insurrection Act to deploy the military, as George H.W. Bush did to quell the 1992 L.A. riots, and our guess is that the President and Mr. Miller are looking for the chance.
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This is the tragedy of American immigration politics in 2025.
The Biden Administration’s de facto open-border policy created mayhem and costs that have changed the immigration debate for the worse.
Border security was one of Mr. Trump’s most popular issues in 2024.
This means he has leeway to solve the problem.
He may go too far, as he so often does, but Democrats should look in the mirror for giving him the political opening.
We’d call for common sense on both sides, but that’s probably not in the offing.
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