Some National Guardsmen deployed by President Donald Trump to Los Angeles last month in response to anti-immigration enforcement protests will be taken off the deployment as California readies for an active, potentially life-threatening wildfire season.
U.S. Northern Command said in a statement Tuesday that approximately 150 members of the California National Guard were released from their federal mission protecting Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. The decision came after Gen. Gregory Guillot, head of the command, recommended their release back to state orders.
Several U.S. officials told Military.com on Monday that they believed the task force commanding troops stationed in LA had asked for permission to send closer to 175-200 California National Guardsmen back to their local commanders. The Associated Press also reported those figures.
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The move comes weeks after state officials in California argued in a lawsuit that the Trump administration's sudden deployment of 4,000 National Guardsmen and 700 active-duty Marines to respond to the protests was unlawful and put residents in a potentially dangerous situation amid what is anticipated to be an "early and active" wildfire season, per the state's fire agency.
Officials who spoke with Military.com wouldn't directly connect the ask for the stand-down with the fire season, but one official said the connection was "plausible."
The National Interagency Fire Center, a wildfire response coordination organization, has already declared that national resources like the National Guard are needed to sustain firefighting efforts in the U.S. New Mexico already deployed some of its Guard to fight a wildfire two weeks ago.
Meanwhile, it is not clear what, if anything, troops are doing since national attention shifted from the city. While protests against the administration's immigration and deportation policies have continued, they have diminished in scope and impact.
The enthusiasm from Pentagon leadership, including Hegseth, earlier in June to publicly argue with the California governor and to share images of the protests as well as Guardsmen standing alongside ICE agents or staring down protesters, has also given way to a relative silence in recent days.
Defense experts and National Guard advocates also told Military.com that the reassignment of Guardsmen back to the state signals other difficult decisions that may need to be made by governors -- some of whom have committed thousands of troops to the Trump administration's border mission as well as their own politically friendly deployments -- when wildfires, floods and hurricanes eventually take place and endanger lives.
Jennifer Kavanagh, a senior fellow and director of military analysis at the think tank Defense Priorities, told Military.com on Tuesday that governors supporting Trump's agenda who are willing to dedicate their state's reserve forces to various missions may find themselves between a rock and a hard place if natural disasters are imminent.
"I think that governors will have to make tough choices about how they use their Guards' personnel," Kavanagh said. "I think it will require, in some cases, pushing back on federal government requests, and the extent to which they're able to do that comfortably in the political space may depend on their political affiliation."
California Gov. Gavin Newsom and his state's Attorney General Rob Bonta sued the Trump administration early last month following the sudden deployment of forces to LA, citing, in part, the need to be prepared for wildfire season.
"This deployment comes when California is in the midst of peak wildfire season for both Northern and Southern California and may need to rely on their crucial support, as the state did during the Los Angeles fires earlier this year," the lawsuit read. "When the state faces simultaneous emergencies, the National Guard's resources can be stretched thin."
California cited examples in 2020, such as Guardsmen responding to COVID-19, wildfires and civil unrest all at the same time, adding "such overlapping emergencies cannot be predicted."
Upward of 5,000 National Guardsmen in Texas and an undisclosed number in Missouri were also put on standby for anti-immigration enforcement protests in cities throughout those states.
Military.com reported last month that Texas had reduced some of its forces on its long-standing state border enforcement mission known as Operation Lone Star, where approximately 4,000 Guardsmen were deployed on state orders. Additionally, around 10,000 active-duty troops have been sent to the U.S.-Mexico border since Trump took office.
Kavanagh said that committing a state's National Guard to a multitude of missions opens up a risk of being caught unprepared for sudden natural disasters.
"We shouldn't forget that there are a limited number of Guardsmen as well, and National Guard forces serve all kinds of functions within their states, responding to natural disasters being one of the top ones and one of the things they're most important for," Kavanagh said. "So to the extent that long-running immigration-related deployments are pulling them away from those missions, it does create a significant risk and burden for the states."
National Guard advocates told Military.com that the reserve forces of the 50 states and U.S. territories have long been agile to respond to a variety of missions ranging from overseas deployments to natural disasters.
Retired Maj. Gen. Francis McGinn, the president of the National Guard Association of the United States, which lobbies for the reserve component, said in an interview that he doesn't believe the National Guard is overworked with its current federal missions at the moment, but he added that "states would probably reassess" if disasters became more likely.
McGinn urged the Trump administration, if it continues to use the National Guard for its agenda, to increase funding for the component as well.
"We're underfunded ... so we certainly don't want that to get any worse, and we would really prefer it gets a little better again," McGinn said. "Especially on the, I would say, increased reliance on the Guard these days with this administration, we need to make sure that the resourcing matches that strategy."
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