President Donald Trump’s move to federalize the National Guard and deploy troops in Los Angeles without the approval of the Governor of California, Gavin Newsom, triggered a debate on the question of whether the White House could in fact feed the troubles.
Juliette Kayyem, principal CNN national security analyst and former assistant secretary of the Department of Internal Security, led the situation as two convergent distinct crises.
“One is the question of immigration – the concerns about ice – and you see the demonstrators, some legal, certain illegal, protesting against a federal action on the application of the Immigration Act,” Kayyem told Brian Abel de CNN.
The second issue, said Kayyem, is the federalization of the National Guard, carried out against the wishes of the governor.
“(We see) the deployment of a federal military asset mainly in Los Angeles”, as well as “the tweets and talks of the White House of things like the insurrection,” said Kayyem.
The demonstrations seemed to have been “manageable from a point of view of the application of laws, the local state and even the national guard,” she said, but the White House has always taken action.
Kayyem also expressed his concern about the lack of clarity surrounding the deployment. “No rule of commitment. No mission statement. And now the threat of active soldiers-raises a certain question of whether the White House is being de-escaped or climbing,” she said.
She described the federal response as a clear break in past practices, calling that a disturbing escalation in the last 24 hours.
“We generally do not send a federal military deployment for something that honestly resembles this,” she said, adding that the administration owes the public an explanation of its justification and its standards for the deployment of the troops of the National Guard.
Kayyem underlined the Los Angeles riots from 1992 as a precedent, noting that the federal response at the time was coordinated with state representatives.