What is happening in Los Angeles is not law enforcement, it’s occupation
The tools and tactics of the federal response to the LA protests are taken from the US imperial playbook.
The scenes unfolding in Los Angeles should alarm every American who values constitutional governance. Federal troops are being deployed to a major American city not in response to an insurrection or natural disaster, but to suppress protests against immigration enforcement operations. This represents a dangerous escalation that threatens the very foundations of our democratic system.
The Spark That Lit the Fire
What began as ICE raids on June 6, 2025, quickly spiraled into something far more ominous. Federal agents swept through Los Angeles, detaining 121 undocumented individuals from construction sites, food trucks, and apartment buildings. But this wasn't happening in shadows—it was conducted in broad daylight, with a calculated boldness that seemed designed to provoke.
The community's response was swift and emotional. By afternoon, protesters had gathered downtown, not as rioters but as a grieving community. Teachers, nurses, janitors, and undocumented high schoolers banged pots, carried signs, and shouted the names of those taken. Someone played corridos from a portable speaker. Someone else clutched a list of the missing and wept.
This was grief made public, anger given voice. But in today's America, even grief is not allowed to remain peaceful.
The Escalation Machine
What happened next reveals the true nature of this administration's approach to dissent. When protesters gathered outside the federal building, police responded with riot gear. Tear gas canisters flew. Flash-bang grenades exploded. A peaceful demonstration transformed into a battlefield—not because protesters chose violence, but because the state chose escalation.
President Trump's response was not de-escalation but amplification. He signed a memorandum deploying 2,000 National Guard troops to Los Angeles, with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth threatening to mobilize active-duty Marines if protests continued. Stephen Miller called the demonstrations an "insurrection," while Tom Homan announced the deployment on television like a general flexing battlefield plans.
This is where we must pause and ask: where is the legal basis for any of this?
The Constitutional Crisis Hidden in Plain Sight
Under the Insurrection Act (10 U.S.C. §§ 251-255), federal troops can only be deployed after a public proclamation calls for citizens to disperse. That proclamation has not been made. No notice has been filed in the Federal Register. No legal briefing has been submitted to the courts. Governor Gavin Newsom was not consulted—he was simply informed.
There is no widespread rebellion threatening the authority of the United States. There are no enemy combatants in Los Angeles. Just angry voices demanding dignity for their communities. What we're witnessing is not the lawful execution of federal authority but improvisation masquerading as law—the slow erosion of constitutional process, replaced by declaration, spectacle, and muscle.
If challenged in court, this deployment would likely be deemed illegal. But that may be the most chilling aspect of all: the quiet possibility that illegality no longer matters, that muscle has arrived with or without paperwork, that law is no longer the line but merely the costume.
The Boomerang Effect
This moment cannot be understood in isolation. As scholar Aimé Césaire observed in his analysis of colonialism, violence in the periphery inevitably returns to the metropole. The tools of oppression developed abroad always find their way home.
For over a year, the United States has enabled genocide in Gaza, violating its own laws while undermining international institutions. During this period, we've witnessed unprecedented attacks on free speech, with university presidents calling police to brutalize students protesting scholasticide. We've seen tenure revoked, protesters surveilled, and dissent criminalized—all in the name of fighting antisemitism while enabling actual atrocities.
These precedents matter. When HR 9495 passed the House with bipartisan support—a bill that would allow Congress to revoke tax-exempt status from any nonprofit accused of terrorist affinities—it was sold as targeting Palestine-related organizations. But such tools, once created, are never used for their stated purpose alone. Project Esther, a Heritage Foundation initiative, has already expanded its targets beyond Palestinian solidarity groups.
The Normalization of Repression
What makes the Los Angeles crisis particularly dangerous is how it builds on existing foundations of repression. Since October 7, 2023, Palestinians and their allies have endured a seven-fold increase in harassment, doxing, and employment loss. The shooting of three Palestinian American students in Vermont and the killing of six-year-old Wadea Al-Fayoume represent the violent extremes of a broader campaign of dehumanization.
But this targeting of Palestinians has always been a testing ground for broader authoritarian measures. The 2008 Holy Land Foundation trial introduced "secret evidence" in a U.S. criminal court for the first time, with an anonymous Israeli intelligence officer claiming he could "smell Hamas" on defendants. Georgia's prosecution of Cop City protesters under terrorism charges directly borrowed from this playbook, as did Tennessee's HB 2348, which allows the state to target environmental and racial justice movements.
The pattern is clear: repressive measures developed to target Palestinians become tools to suppress all dissent. What begins as "national security" ends as political control.
The Theater of Occupation
Tom Homan's television announcement of troop deployment—made before any official authorization—reveals the theatrical nature of this operation. This isn't about law enforcement; it's about power projection, about demonstrating that defiance will be met with overwhelming force.
The legal framework matters less than the spectacle. When federal agents fire flash-bang grenades at protesters outside Home Depot stores, when ICE directors accuse mayors of siding with "chaos and lawlessness," when FBI officials tweet about hunting down rock-throwers, we're watching the construction of a narrative that justifies any response.
This is how soft coups unfold: not with tanks rolling down Pennsylvania Avenue, but through executive memos, press briefings, and military logistics disguised as public safety. The Insurrection Act becomes a dead letter not through repeal but through irrelevance.
The Path Forward
If this precedent stands, federal troops will become the standard response to resistance. Cities that don't vote for the president will face occupation. Protest will be redefined as rebellion. The next time people gather in the streets demanding justice, they will face not rubber bullets but soldiers.
This is not hyperbole. When a president can deploy troops without following the law, and no one stops him, law ceases to exist. It becomes theater, costume, performance art for a system that has abandoned its own principles.
The questions we must demand answers to are simple: Where is the legally required proclamation? Who authorized this deployment? What intelligence justified military force? Are troops arresting civilians or surveilling protesters? Will the courts intervene before this precedent calcifies?
But beyond legal challenges, we need moral clarity. What's happening in Los Angeles is not law enforcement—it's occupation. What's being called an insurrection is actually resistance to injustice. What's being framed as public safety is actually political intimidation.
The boomerang has come home. The tools of empire, tested on Palestinians and perfected through decades of War on Terror legislation, are now being deployed against American cities. If we don't recognize this moment for what it is—a fundamental assault on constitutional governance—we will wake up in a country where military force is the primary language of politics.
The Constitution is only as strong as our willingness to defend it. In Los Angeles, that defense begins now.
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It is absolutely the case that the White House and Congress are following the Zionist playbook from Israel, and applying it to the US. People need to understand what this means. It means Nakba, not just occupation. Nakba is a the displacement, occupation, and fragmentation of national identity, of sovereignty, and of citizenship. Do the math, it's 3-cubed permutations. They can and will divide up America in the same way they have divided up Palestine, Lebanon, and now Syria. They divided up into pieces, and then they control the pieces. That is the kind of government we have devolved into in the US, and it is a full-blown dystopic tyranny warranting not only a rebellion, but a revolution. If We, the People, do not act to change this, and it will require partitioning the USA into different countries, we will live in a tyranny for the foreseeable future. I am not willing to do that. I will resist, rebel, and revolt, the remedies for Nakba, and you should too.
Valuable piece right now. The scenes coming from LA are horrifying.