Thousands of protesters marched up State Street and past the Wisconsin Forward statue at the state Capitol on Saturday. (Henry Redman | Wisconsin Examiner)

It was an encouraging week in Wisconsin. The state Supreme Court finally invalidated a cruel 1849 abortion ban, and Gov. Tony Evers declared victory after he and state legislative leaders reached a deal on the state budget he signed in the early morning hours on Thursday that adds back some badly needed support for schools and child care. The budget deal is not what a lot of Democrats and advocates wanted, but it’s better than the brutal austerity Republicans in the Legislature have imposed in the last several budget cycles. Most encouragingly, the end of gerrymandering forced Republicans to negotiate, since they needed Democratic votes in the Senate to get the budget passed.

Some Democrats still refused to vote ‘yes” on the budget. They pointed out that, while it includes a significant boost for special education, it leaves schools struggling with zero general state aid. A majority of school districts will see revenue go down, and most will have to beg local property owners to raise their own taxes. To make matters worse, the Trump administration is freezing billions in promised aid to K-12 schools. 

Child care advocates who fought for desperately needed state support got about one-quarter of the aid Evers had originally proposed. Some were relieved, but others told Examiner Deputy Editor Erik Gunn that it’s just not enough to save centers from going out of business and parents from losing access to care.

The health care outlook is also bleak. With the feds poised to make Medicaid cuts that could cause 60,000 Wisconsinites to lose health care, the state budget fails to expand Medicaid and won’t even cover postpartum care — making us one of only two states to refuse health care to low-income mothers of newborns.

The worrisome backdrop to all of this is the federal budget plan President Donald Trump and Republicans are pushing through Congress that simultaneously runs up giant deficits and takes an ax to safety net programs on a scale we’ve never before experienced. 

The massive bill that passed the U.S. Senate this week slashes health care and nutrition assistance and will lead to the closure of rural hospitals, decimate green infrastructure projects that have been a boon to Wisconsin and will make life harder and more expensive for most people — all to funnel millions of dollars in tax cuts to the richest Americans and to fund a chilling escalation of a militarized immigration police force. 

Our own U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson threatened to vote against the House version of the bill, which was projected to increase the deficit by $2.4 trillion, because, he said, the deficits it created were “mortgaging our children’s future.” But Johnson then voted for the Senate version, which ratchets up the deficit even more, to $3.3 trillion. So much for the self-described “numbers guy.” Kowtowing to Trump and making permanent the tax cuts Johnson personally benefits from was more important to him than his alleged concern about deficits.

It makes sense that much of the news about the Republican budget deal has centered around the devastating health care cuts and the ballooning federal deficit. But the $170 billion in the budget for immigration enforcement is sure to change the landscape of the United States — escalating raids, deportations without due process and a massive new system of private detention centers on the model of the detention camp in a Florida swamp that apparently thrilled Trump when he visited it during congressional budget deliberations.

Brace yourself for the impact of the supercharged ICE budget. Unlike Texas — where terrorized immigrant workers are staying home after raids, causing farmers to fear they’ll  go under as their labor force disappears — we haven’t experienced big workplace raids in Wisconsin. If ICE has a lot more manpower, that could change.

I spoke this week with a dairy farmer in the Western part of the state who reported that, despite the terrifying videos circulating online of violent arrests by masked immigration agents, his employees are carrying on as usual, coming to work, going out, not changing their plans. “We haven’t had any raids on dairy farms in Wisconsin,” he pointed out. 

It’s eerie how normal life continues to be in rural Wisconsin, where 70% of the labor on dairy farms is performed by immigrant workers, almost all of whom lack legal documents to live and work in this country, because Congress has never created a visa for year-round, low-skilled farmwork. The farmer I spoke with said he had just returned from watching a soccer match among immigrant workers and everyone was in a good mood.

He added that officials in Trump’s agriculture and labor departments have repeatedly reassured an industry group he’s part of that the administration understands how dependent employers are on their immigrant workers and that they don’t want mass deportation to harm them.

Wisconsin dairy farmers and other employers are hoping Trump continues to be influenced by the people in his administration who tell him he shouldn’t destroy the U.S. agriculture, construction and hospitality industries. They felt encouraged by Trump’s recent statement that “we’re going to take care of our farmers and hotel workers,” and his claim that he’s working on deportation exemptions for whole classes of immigrant workers who don’t have authorization, but on whom U.S. industries rely.

But the Stephen Miller wing of the administration doesn’t care about any of that. 

The whole narrative promoted by Miller, Trump’s anti-immigrant deputy chief of staff, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and Trump himself, that the U.S. is suffering an “invasion” by a large number of immigrants who commit violent crimes is nonsense. Immigrants commit crimes at lower rates than U.S. born citizens. They are an absolutely essential part of the U.S. economy. And they are loved and valued members of our communities. Most of the people the Trump administration has been rounding up have never been convicted of any crime, let alone violent crime. They are landscapers, roofers, farmworkers, students, parents driving home from work — just like the  people Trump claims he is going to protect. As the administration ramps up its program to incarcerate and deport them, with a militarized push on a scale our country has never seen, Trump is trying to have it both ways — reassuring employers that he won’t target the “good” immigrants who work for them, while peddling the lie that there are tons of “bad” immigrants who deserve to be kept in cages in an alligator-infested swamp. 

The idyllic, peaceful atmosphere in Wisconsin, where we feel far away from violent kidnappings by unidentified, masked federal agents, could change in a dramatically dark fashion once the ICE receives the tens of billions of new dollars in the Republicans’ federal budget plan. We saw the showy arrest of Judge Hannah Dugan and immigrants who, trusting the legal system, showed up for their court dates in Milwaukee. We saw the needlessly cruel forced departure of Milwaukee teacher’s aide Yessenia Ruano and her U.S.-born little girls back to El Salvador — the country Ruano fled after her brother was murdered there by gang members and where she felt her life was threatened.

With tens of billions of dollars in new money to spend and quotas to meet for its mass deportation program, ICE could begin rounding up the hardworking immigrants who keep our dairy industry going, in parts of the state that overwhelmingly vote for Republicans.

That spectacle, along with the hideous cuts to health care, education, food assistance and other programs that make life livable in Wisconsin, will surely provoke a backlash against the politicians who enabled it. Let’s hope it’s not too late.

Immigration officials questioned and detained contractors working on apartment buildings in Tallahassee, Fla., on May 29. Construction employs more immigrant laborers, many likely living here illegally, than any other industry, and the industry is starting to draw more attention — even in conservative states — as the Trump administration pushes for more deportations. (Photo by Jay Waagmeester/Florida Phoenix)

As President Donald Trump sends mixed messages about immigration enforcement, ordering new raids on farms and hotels just days after saying he wouldn’t target those industries, he has hardly mentioned the industry that employs the most immigrant laborers: construction.

Nevertheless, the Trump administration is going after construction workers without legal status to meet its mass deportation goals — even as the country has a housing shortage and needs new homes built. A shortage of workers has delayed or prevented construction, causing billions of dollars in economic damage, according to a June report from the Home Builders Institute.

Almost a quarter of all immigrants without a college degree work in construction, a total of 2.2 million workers as of last month, before work site raids began in earnest. That’s more than the next three industries combined: restaurants (1.1 million), janitorial and other cleaning services (526,000) and landscaping (454,000), according to a Stateline analysis of federal Current Population Survey data provided by ipums.org at the University of Minnesota.

Within the construction industry, immigrant workers are now a majority of painters and roofers (both 53%) and comprise more than two-thirds of plasterers and stucco masons. U.S. citizens in construction are more likely to work as managers and as skilled workers, such as carpenters.

Many immigrant workers are likely living here illegally, although there are some working legally as refugees or parolees, and others are asylum-seekers waiting for court dates. There’s also a small number of legal visas for temporary farmworkers, construction workers and others.

The pool of immigrant workers Stateline analyzed were employed noncitizens ages 18-65 without a college degree, screening out temporary workers with high-skill visas.

About half of the immigrant laborers in construction are working in Southern states, including conservative-leaning Florida, North Carolina and Texas, where there is more building going on, according to the Stateline analysis. Another 584,000, or one-quarter, are in Western states, including Arizona, California and Nevada.

In recent months, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, better known as ICE, has conducted construction worksite raids in Florida in Tallahassee and near Ocala, and in South Texas and New Orleans, as well as more immigrant-friendly California and Pennsylvania.

Roofers may have been the first targeted by new workplace raids because of their visibility, said Sergio Barajas, executive director of the National Hispanic Construction Alliance, a California-based advocacy group with chapters in five other states.

“That’s the first place we heard about it. Roofers are right out there where you can see them,” Barajas said. He added that all segments of construction work have been targeted for ICE raids, and that even some legal workers are not showing up for work out of fear.

“Six or eight weeks ago, I would have said we weren’t affected at all. Now we are. There’s a substantial reduction in the number of workers who are showing up, so crews are 30%, 40% smaller than they used to be,” Barajas said.

In residential construction, a system of contractors and subcontractors opens the door to abuses, said Enrique Lopezlira, director of the Low-Wage Work Program at the University of California, Berkeley Labor Center. Lopezlira said contractors hire workers, often immigrant laborers, for low-wage jobs and pay them in cash, to save money on benefits and make the lowest possible bid for projects.

“It becomes a blame game. The developers can say, ‘I hired this contractor and I thought he was above board and paying people a decent wage.’ And the contractors can say, ‘I rely on subcontractors,’” said Lopezlira. “It becomes a race to the bottom.”

In many places, residential construction draws more immigrant labor because of looser state and local regulations and lower pay. But in some states with weaker unions and rules that are less strict, such as Texas, the commercial construction industry also employs many immigrants who are here illegally.

Commercial construction labor costs are 40% lower in Texas than they are in large Northeastern cities where unions are more powerful, said David Kelly, a lecturer in civil and environmental engineering at the University of Michigan.

“The large difference [in cost] suggests workers and their employers in some regions are not paying for income taxes, overtime, Social Security or unemployment insurance,” Kelly said in an email. “Since undocumented workers have limited employment options they may be more willing than others to accept these conditions.”

Despite political claims that Democratic policies result in immigrants taking jobs others need, noncitizen immigrant laborers were about 7% of jobholders nationally as of May — about the same as 2015, according to the Stateline analysis.

That share has hardly budged over the past 10 years, including in 2019 under the first Trump administration, dipping to 6% only in 2020 and 2021.

In construction, however, the share of jobs held by immigrant laborers has increased from 19% in 2015 to 22% in 2024, according to the analysis. Immigrant laborers have gotten more than a third of the 1.5 million jobs added between 2015 and 2024, as home construction reached historic levels.

Editor’s note: This story has been updated with the full name of  the University of California, Berkeley Labor Center and to clarify David Kelly’s remarks on regional labor costs. Stateline reporter Tim Henderson can be reached at thenderson@stateline.org.

Stateline is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Stateline maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Scott S. Greenberger for questions: info@stateline.org.

California National Guard members stand guard at an entrance to the Wilshire Federal Building on June 13, 2025 in Los Angeles, California.  (Photo by Mario Tama/Getty Images)

Vice President J.D. Vance took a victory lap to Los Angeles Friday, following a federal appeals court’s ruling that the administration could retain control of the California National Guard troops responding to protests earlier this month over immigration raids in the city.

“BIG WIN in the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals on the President’s core power to call in the National Guard!” President Donald Trump wrote on social media following the decision.

Vance was scheduled to visit an FBI building being used by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, meet with law enforcement leadership and U.S. Marines and deliver remarks, according to a White House release Friday morning.

The trip was announced about 12 hours after the administration’s win at the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, which held that Trump could keep control of the 4,000 National Guard troops he’d ordered to Los Angeles.

Three judges on the appeals court issued a unanimous opinion Thursday evening that courts had to afford the president wide discretion to decide when a state National Guard can be federalized, leaving command in Trump’s hands while California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s lawsuit challenging the deployment is ongoing. The case has been closely watched by leaders of states around the country.

The order overturns a lower court’s ruling that Trump return control of the troops to Newsom, a Democrat who opposed sending the National Guard to Los Angeles. Newsom has said the Guard troops’ presence has only inflamed tensions between anti-ICE protesters and law enforcement.

The president has the authority to deploy troops to a state with or without the governor’s consent, the panel of appeals judges said Thursday.

The state’s “concerns have more bearing on the question of whether the President should have federalized the California National Guard, not whether he had the authority to do so,” the panel, made up of two judges appointed by Trump and one by former Democratic President Joe Biden, wrote.

They opted to revoke the district court’s temporary restraining order, reasoning that the federal government stood a good chance of ultimately prevailing on the case.

Quelling rebellion, enforcing laws

Attorneys for the state had argued in federal court that Trump’s order was invalid because he did not show the conditions that the statute Trump cited, Section 12406 of U.S. Code Title X, required for federalization of a National Guard had been met and because the order was sent to the California National Guard adjutant general, not to Newsom himself.

The 9th Circuit panel rejected both arguments.

Based on the language of the statute alone, the judges might have required greater support for the federal government’s position, which may have helped California’s case, the order said.

But under U.S. Supreme Court precedent, the president only must meet a low standard to show that deployment is warranted to enforce laws or quell a rebellion, the judges wrote in language that resembled what Judge Jennifer Sung, the Biden appointee, said during oral arguments Tuesday.

“We are not writing on a blank slate,” they wrote. “The history of Congress’s statutory delegations of its calling forth power, and a line of cases …  interpreting those delegations, strongly suggest that our review of the President’s determinations in this context is especially deferential.”

The federal government’s evidence that protesters had thrown rocks and other objects at ICE officers, vandalized federal property and attacked vans used by ICE was enough to satisfy that standard, the judges wrote.

Trump quickly took to social media. “The Judges obviously realized that Gavin Newscum is incompetent and ill prepared, but this is much bigger than Gavin, because all over the United States, if our Cities, and our people, need protection, we are the ones to give it to them should State and Local Police be unable, for whatever reason, to get the job done,” Trump wrote.

In amicus briefs in the case, Democratic state leaders have said they see Trump’s use of the National Guard as a threat to their ability to use their Guards for state-level functions, including drug interdiction and natural disaster relief.

Some reviewability

The opinion did, however, reject the U.S. Justice Department’s argument that a president’s federalization order could never be questioned in court.

In a statement, Newsom praised that aspect of the ruling and pledged to “press forward” with the case.

“The court rightly rejected Trump’s claim that he can do whatever he wants with the National Guard and not have to explain himself to a court,” Newsom said. “The President is not a king and is not above the law.”

U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer canceled oral arguments at a previously scheduled Friday morning hearing in the trial court, after the 9th Circuit order.

Breyer anticipated that the state may pursue a challenge based on a potential violation of the Posse Comitatus Act, which prohibits the military from engaging in domestic law enforcement, and asked each side to file a brief by noon Pacific time on June 23 arguing whether the trial court or appeals court should first hear that issue.

U.S. Sen. Alex Padilla, a California Democrat, speaks on the Senate floor on June 17, 2025, about how he was forcibly removed from a press conference with the secretary of Homeland Security. (Screenshot from Senate webcast)

WASHINGTON — U.S. Sen. Alex Padilla, a California Democrat who was forcibly removed from a press conference with the secretary of Homeland Security, said Tuesday that his home state is the testing ground for President Donald Trump’s push to deploy the military within the United States.

Trump is using immigrants in the country without legal status as scapegoats to send in troops, said Padilla, who in a speech on the Senate floor choked up as he related how he was wrestled to the ground by law enforcement officials. “I refuse to let immigrants be political pawns on his path toward fascism,” Padilla said.

It’s the first floor speech the senior senator from California has given since the highly publicized incident in Los Angeles last week. The Secret Service handcuffed Padilla after he tried to question Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, who was defending to reporters Trump’s decision to send 4,000 National Guard members and 700 Marines to LA.

Trump sent in the troops following multi-day protests over Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids and against California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s wishes. An appeals court Tuesday is hearing arguments on a suit by California contending that the president unlawfully took control of the state National Guard.

“He wants the spectacle,” Padilla said of the president. “To justify his undemocratic crackdown and his authoritarian power grab.”

The LA protests were sparked after ICE targeted Home Depots, places where undocumented day laborers typically search for work, for immigration raids.

Arrests, confrontations

The Padilla incident, widely captured on video, was a stark escalation of the tensions between Democratic lawmakers and the administration over Trump’s drive to enact mass deportations.

A Democratic House member from New Jersey is facing federal charges on allegations that she shoved immigration officials while protesting the opening of an immigrant detention center in Newark. And on Tuesday, in New York City, ICE officers arrested city comptroller and mayoral candidate Brad Lander while he was escorting an immigrant to their hearing in immigration court, according to The Associated Press.

In a statement to States Newsroom, DHS Assistant Secretary of Public Affairs Tricia McLaughlin said Lander “was arrested for assaulting law enforcement and impeding a federal officer.”

“No one is above the law, and if you lay a hand on a law enforcement officer, you will face consequences,” McLaughlin said.

The president late Sunday directed ICE to conduct immigration raids in New York, LA and Chicago, the nation’s three most populous cities, all led by elected Democrats in heavily Democratic states.

“We will follow the President’s direction and continue to work to get the worst of the worst criminal illegal aliens off of America’s streets,” McLaughlin said.

‘They opened the door for me’

Padilla in his Senate remarks gave an account of the events that led to him being handcuffed and detained last week.

On June 12, he had a meeting scheduled with General Gregory M. Guillot, commander of the U.S. Northern Command, to discuss the military presence in LA.

Padilla, the top Democrat on a Judiciary panel that oversees DHS and immigration policy, said his meeting with the general was delayed because of a press briefing across the hall with Noem. 

Padilla said he has tried to speak with DHS because for weeks LA has “seen a disturbing pattern of increasingly extreme and cruel immigration enforcement operations targeting non-violent people at places of worship, at schools, in courthouses.”

So Padilla said he asked to attend the press conference, and a National Guard member and an FBI agent escorted him inside.

“They opened the door for me,” he said.

As he listened, he said a comment from Noem compelled him to ask a question.

“We are not going away,” Noem, the former governor of South Dakota, told the press. “We are staying here to liberate the city from the socialists and the burdensome leadership that this governor and that this mayor have placed on this country and what they have tried to insert into the city.”

Padilla said her remarks struck him as “an un-American mission statement.”

“That cannot be the mission of federal law enforcement and the United States military,” he said. “Are we truly prepared to live in a country where the president can deploy the armed forces to decide which duly elected governors and mayors should be allowed to lead their constituents?”   

Padilla said before he could finish his question, he was physically removed and the National Guard member and FBI agent who escorted him in the room “stood by silently, knowing full well who I was.”

As he recounted being handcuffed, Padilla paused, getting emotional.

“I was forced to the ground, first on my knees, and then flat on my chest,” he said.

Padilla said a flurry of questions went through his head as he was marched down a hallway, and as he kept asking why he was being detained: Where are they taking me? What will a city, already on the edge from being militarized, think when they see their U.S. senator being handcuffed just for trying to ask a question? What will my wife think? What will our boys think?

“I also remember asking myself, if this aggressive escalation is the result of someone speaking up about the abuse and overreach of the Trump administration, was it really worth it?” Padilla asked. “If a United States senator becomes too afraid to speak up, how can we expect any other American to do the same?”

Padilla-Noem meeting

In a statement, DHS, said that the Secret Service did not know Padilla was a U.S. senator, although video of the incident shows that Padilla stated that he was a member of the Senate.

“I’m Sen. Alex Padilla and I have questions for the secretary,” he said as four federal law enforcement officers grabbed him and shoved him to the ground.

Noem met with Padilla after he was handcuffed, his office told States Newsroom.

“He raised concerns with the deployment of military forces and the needless escalation over the last week, among other issues,” according to his office. “And he voiced his frustration with the continued lack of response from this administration. It was a civil, brief meeting, but the Secretary did not provide any meaningful answers. The Senator was simply trying to do his job and seek answers for the people he represents in California.”

U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson has suggested that the Senate take action against Padilla, such as a censure. Johnson criticized the senator’s actions and accused him of charging at Noem, which Padilla is not seen doing in the multiple videos of the incident.

“I’m not in that chamber, but I do think that it merits immediate attention by other colleagues over there,” the Louisiana Republican said. “I think that behavior, at a minimum, rises to the level of censure. I think there needs to be a message sent by the body as a whole.”

Senate Democrats have coalesced their support around Padilla. During a Tuesday press conference, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer praised Padilla for his speech on the Senate floor.

“It was basically a strong plea for America to regain the gyroscope of democracy, which has led us forward for so many years and now we’re losing it,” the New York Democrat said. “It’s a wake-up call to all Americans.”

Jennifer Shutt contributed to this report. 

An Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer's badge is seen as federal agents patrol the halls of immigration court in New York City on June 10, 2025. (Photo by Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON —  President Donald Trump announced late Sunday that he was directing U.S. Immigration Customs and Enforcement officers to conduct immigration raids in New York, Los Angeles and Chicago, the nation’s three most populous cities that are all led by elected Democrats in heavily Democratic states.

The announcement escalates a week-long conflict in Los Angeles, where large protests started after immigration officials began arresting day laborers at Home Depot stores across the city. Trump directed 4,000 National Guard troops and 700 Marines to LA amid the protests without California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s consent.

“I want ICE, Border Patrol, and our Great and Patriotic Law Enforcement Officers, to FOCUS on our crime ridden and deadly Inner Cities, and those places where Sanctuary Cities play such a big role,” Trump wrote on social media, referring to cities that don’t coordinate with federal immigration officials for civil enforcement. “You don’t hear about Sanctuary Cities in our Heartland!”

Trump’s Sunday social media post to target immigration enforcement in cities came after a June 12 post in which he acknowledged that his immigration crackdown was harming the tourism and agriculture industries. Republican-leaning states generally have fewer big cities and more rural areas.

“Our great Farmers and people in the Hotel and Leisure business have been stating that our very aggressive policy on immigration is taking very good, long time workers away from them, with those jobs being almost impossible to replace,” Trump wrote last week.

The president directed ICE to pause raids on farms, after speaking with Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins, according to the New York Times.

The Agriculture Department has estimated that roughly 40% of farm workers do not have legal authorization.

However, advocates for farmworkers, such as United Farm Workers, said that immigration officials have not paused on enforcement.

“If President Trump is actually in charge, he needs to prove it: stop the sweeps on hardworking Californians,” UFW said in a statement.

A June 10 immigration raid at a meat processing plant in Omaha, Nebraska, where roughly 80 workers were detained, set off several protests in the city.

Trump wrote in his social media post that it should be taken as a presidential directive.

“ICE Officers are herewith ordered, by notice of this TRUTH, to do all in their power to achieve the very important goal of delivering the single largest Mass Deportation Program in History,” he wrote.

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security did not respond to States Newsroom’s request about details on the president’s Sunday directive to ICE officers.

Noncitizen voting

Trump took aim at Illinois Democratic Gov. J.B. Pritzker, saying during an interview at the G7 Summit with world leaders in Canada on Monday that Chicago was “overrun with criminals.”

“They think they’re going to use them to vote,” Trump said of people without citizenship who live in cities run by Democrats.

The president, without evidence, claimed in his Sunday post that the “Core of the Democrat power center” of Chicago, Los Angeles and New York allowed people without citizenship to vote in federal elections, which is not true. The practice is illegal and, according to studies, exceedingly rare.

A federal judge last week blocked Trump’s executive order that would have required states to mandate voters in federal elections provide documents proving their citizenship.

Last week, Pritzker and the Democratic governors of Minnesota and New York testified before Congress for eight hours on their states’ policies to not coordinate with federal immigration officials.

House Republicans brought in the mayors of Boston, Chicago and Denver in March on the same issue.

Focus for protests

The president’s directive to ICE followed a weekend military parade to celebrate the Army’s 250th anniversary that also coincided with Trump’s 79th birthday and sparked anti-Trump protests.

Millions of people across the country held “No Kings” protests against the Trump administration, according to estimates from organizers. The protests often included rebukes of ICE’s aggressive immigration crackdown.

The protests in LA, which have led to a legal standoff between the administration and the state, have been over immigration raids.

Since returning to the White House, the Trump administration has given immigration officers expanded authority to rapidly deport immigrants.

In Trump’s second week in office, DHS reinstated a 2019 policy known as expedited removal, meaning that immigrants without legal authorization anywhere in the country who encounter federal enforcement must prove they have been in the U.S. continuously for more than two years.

If they cannot produce that proof, they will be subject to a fast-track deportation without appearing before an immigration judge for due process. 

U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth testifies before the House Appropriations Committee's Defense Subcommittee at the U.S. Capitol on June 10, 2025 in Washington, D.C. Tuesday was the first time Hegseth testified before Congress since his confirmation hearings in January.  (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

The Trump administration’s deployment of National Guard troops and U.S. Marines to protests over immigration raids in Los Angeles will cost the federal government about $134 million, a Pentagon budget official said Tuesday, as the response to the protests further divided officials in California and Washington, D.C.

The situation in the country’s second-largest city captured the attention of lawmakers in the nation’s capital, even as the Republican-led Congress charted a path forward for the Trump-backed tax and spending cut bill.

Democrats in Congress on Tuesday warned the administration’s actions bordered on authoritarianism, while President Donald Trump said his intervention saved the city from destruction.

“If we didn’t send in the National Guard quickly, right now, Los Angeles would be burning to the ground,” Trump said in the Oval Office Tuesday.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom, meanwhile, sought a restraining order blocking the 4,000 National Guard troops and 700 U.S. Marines deployed to Los Angeles from assisting with domestic law enforcement. Trump ordered the troops to the city over Newsom’s and Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass’ objections.

Budget question

Democrats on Capitol Hill criticized the administration over several aspects of the deployment, saying Trump was instigating violence, overstepping his authority and wasting taxpayer money.

At a previously scheduled Appropriations Defense Subcommittee hearing, Democratic Reps. Betty McCollum of Minnesota and Pete Aguillar of California asked Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth the financial cost of placing 4,000 National Guard troops and 700 Marines in Los Angeles.

Hegseth, who is originally from Minnesota, declined to answer McCollum’s question directly, instead invoking the riots in Minneapolis following the murder of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer in 2020 and saying Trump sought to avoid similar chaos in Los Angeles.

“President Trump recognizes a situation like that, improperly handled by a governor, like it was by Gov. (Tim) Walz, if it gets out of control, it’s a bad situation for the citizens of any location,” he said.

When Aguillar asked a similar question about cost, Hegseth deferred to acting Pentagon comptroller Bryn MacDonnell, who estimated the current cost at $134 million, mainly for housing, travel and food. That money came out of existing operations and maintenance accounts, she said.

Hegseth told the panel the deployment was authorized for 60 days.

Just 2 miles away at the White House, though, Trump implied the decision could be more open-ended, saying during the Oval Office event that troops would stay in Los Angeles “until there’s no danger.”

“When there’s no danger, they’ll leave,” he said.

Restraining order

California’s federal lawsuit challenging the deployment, which state leaders filed Monday, includes a request for the court to issue a restraining order by 1 p.m. Pacific time Tuesday. U.S. District Judge Charles R. Breyer did not issue such an order by that deadline.

The administration intended to use the military personnel “to accompany federal immigration enforcement officers on raids throughout Los Angeles,” the request for a restraining order said.

“These unlawful deployments have already proven to be a deeply inflammatory and unnecessary provocation, anathema to our laws limiting the use (of) federal forces for law enforcement, rather than a means of restoring calm,” the state said.

“Federal antagonization, through the presence of soldiers in the streets, has already caused real and irreparable damage to the City of Los Angeles, the people who live there, and the State of California. They must be stopped, immediately.”

Democrats in California’s congressional delegation and members of the congressional caucuses for Black, Hispanic and Asian and Pacific Islander Democrats also blasted the administration’s role in inflaming the standoff between protesters and Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents who’d conducted recent raids on workplaces in the area.

“President Trump’s unlawful decision to deploy the National Guard onto the streets of Los Angeles is a reckless and inflammatory escalation, one designed not to restore calm, but to provoke chaos,” Congressional Black Caucus Chair Yvette D. Clarke said at a press conference.

“Let’s be clear about how this began: with peaceful protests sparked by the unlawful and inhumane targeting, detention and deportation of our immigrant neighbors.”

Clarke, a New York Democrat, said in response to a reporter’s question that she believed the sending in of troops constituted an impeachable act by Trump.

“I definitely believe it is, but we’ll cross that bridge when we get to it,” she said.

‘Met with force’

Other Democrats on Capitol Hill have said Monday and Tuesday that Trump engineered the conflict to distract from unpopular provisions of Republicans’ “big, beautiful bill” and other issues.

“Donald Trump, cornered by his own failures – from pushing a heartless bill that would rip health care away from 16 million Americans, to raising costs from his reckless tariffs, to waging war with Elon Musk – Trump is desperately seeking a distraction,” Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer said on the floor Tuesday.

“His order to deploy the National Guard and Marines – our own troops – on Americans is not just outrageous and provocative, it’s a dangerous authoritarian overreach that threatens the very fabric of our democracy.”

Rep. Jimmy Gomez led a press conference of California’s U.S. House Democrats Tuesday where he warned that the militarization in Los Angeles could happen elsewhere.

“If it can happen in Los Angeles, it can happen in any state in the union,” he said.

Later, at the Oval Office, Trump said protesters at his military parade on Saturday would be “met with very strong force.”

‘Tarred and feathered’

U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson told reporters Trump acted responsibly to protect Southern Californians and blamed Newsom for “failed leadership” that he said led to the clash this weekend.

Asked if, as Trump and White House border czar Tom Homan have suggested, Newsom should be arrested for interfering with immigration enforcement, Johnson initially demurred before suggesting an 18th-century punishment.

“I’m not going to give you legal analysis on whether Gavin Newsom should be arrested,” the Louisiana Republican said.

“But he ought to be tarred and feathered… He’s standing in the way of the administration and the carrying out of federal law. Right? He is applauding the bad guys and standing in the way of the good guys. He is trying to — he’s a participant, an accomplice — in our federal law enforcement agents being not just disrespected but assaulted.”

Johnson said House Republicans were fully behind Trump’s actions and deflected a question about if there was a point at which he would oppose the administration’s efforts.

“He is fully within his authority right now to do what he is doing,” Johnson said. “We have to maintain order.”