Donald Trump’s deployment of the national guard in Los Angeles in response to protests in the city over immigration raids cost taxpayers nearly $120m, the California governor’s office said on Thursday.
The US president sent 2,000 national guard troops into the city in June amid clashes between federal immigration agents and protesters. This week a judge ruled that dispatching the military to accompany authorities on immigration enforcement operations violated federal law.
More than 4,200 national guard soldiers and 700 marines were deployed in the region. Although relatively few assisted with raids, the costs mounted – $71m for food and necessities, $37m in pay and $3.5m in travel, among other expenses, Gavin Newsom’s office said in a statement.
About 300 troops remain in the city.
Newsom described the move as “waste, fraud and abuse”.
“Let us not forget what this political theater is costing us all – millions of taxpayer dollars down the drain, an atrophy to the readiness of guardsmembers across the nation and unnecessary hardships to the families supporting those troops,” the governor said.
Newsom was opposed to the deployment from the beginning. He filed a lawsuit in June, calling it an unprecedented and illegal move and an “unmistakable step toward authoritarianism”. Meanwhile, the president has moved to send the national guard into other Democratic cities across the US.
On Tuesday, Judge Charles Breyer ruled that the deployment was illegal, and said the president’s threats to send the national guard elsewhere amounted to creating “a national police force with the president as its chief”.
“Defendants instigated a months-long deployment of the national guard and marines to Los Angeles for the purpose of establishing a military presence there and enforcing federal law. Such conduct is a serious violation of the Posse Comitatus Act,” Breyer said in the judgment.
Newsom’s office submitted a public records request to determine the costs of federalizing the national guard and activating marines, which the federal government did not respond to, according to the statement. The state’s national guard provided calculations to the governor.
The office warned there were “real financial and societal costs” to such deployments, and highlighted the effects on soldiers – a rushed deployment process that left soldiers forced to sleep on the floors and use facilities without working plumbing.
In recent weeks, Trump has sent the national guard into Washington DC and threatened additional deployments in Chicago, New York and other cities.
