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A classic confrontation over immigration enforcement continues to intensify in California. Despite strong objections from Gov. Gavin Newsom and Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass, President Donald Trump mobilized the California National Guard and Marines to Los Angeles to ensure that federal immigration operations can proceed unencumbered.

As protests persist — at times with violent consequences — it is hard to imagine a more contentious clash between state and federal authority over the political third rail, immigration.

Although President Trump’s use of the military may be unprecedented to assist ICE in arresting immigrants at their workplaces, churches and courthouses, mass removals of Latinos have occurred several times in U.S. history. Important lessons can be learned from those deportation efforts. Besides injuring vulnerable immigrants, the measures had political consequences in the long run, with some even benefiting immigrants.

Military Deployment Without State Request

Neither Newsom nor Bass requested help from the National Guard — let alone the Marines. In fact, they feared that the involvement of the U.S. military would only inflame a potentially incendiary situation. The last time a president deployed the National Guard without a state’s request was to enforce civil rights laws in 1965. While Trump declares the protesters to be “insurrectionists,” they view themselves as defending the civil rights of immigrants.

There is little evidence that federal immigration officers needed protection from protesters. Rather, the vast majority of them were peaceful and simply wanted it to be known that they object to the Trump administration’s extreme immigration enforcement measures.

The operations in Southern California in recent weeks bear an eerie resemblance to the Mexican repatriation campaign during the Great Depression. Federal, state, and local governments worked together to remove people of Mexican ancestry — U.S. citizens as well as immigrants — with mass arrests in the heart of Los Angeles, near what is now Olvera Street, which ironically enough pays homage to the City’s Mexican roots.

Political Calculations and Historical Precedent

The political goal was to quiet domestic dissent by saving jobs and public benefits for so-called true Americans. An estimated 1 million people, including some who self-deported, were removed from the country.

The Trump administration evidently sees the news coverage of the military marching on the streets of Los Angeles as helpful publicity for its mass deportation campaign. As suggested by the social media posts of high level administration officials, they evidently believe that using the military to help enforce law and order, targeting many Latinos, will help Republican election prospects.

There is precedent for the use of immigration as a sinister political tool. In 1994, California Gov. Pete Wilson, a Republican, won reelection by getting behind Proposition 187, an anti-immigrant ballot measure that would have barred undocumented students from the public schools, denied them any and all public benefits, and required police officers to verify the immigration status of everyone they encountered.

Although the initiative passed by a 2 to 1 margin, a court declared the law unconstitutional and held that it intruded on the federal power to regulate immigration.

Prop. 187 marked the death knell of the Republican Party in California (as well as Wilson’s political career). Latinos mobilized, immigrants naturalized, and voter turnout soared. They elected Democratic legislators in record numbers, including many Latinos. California would later declare itself to be a sanctuary state.

Immigration enforcement measures to curry political support are nothing new to U.S. politics or to Latinos in the United States. But history teaches us that the Trump immigration measures will have devastating impacts on the Latino community and that, in the long run, a political price will be paid.

About the Author

Kevin R. Johnson is a distinguished professor of public interest law and Chicano studies at UC Davis. He was dean of the UC Davis School of Law from 2008-24.

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This article was originally published on CalMatters and was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license.