Here’s why what’s happening in Los Angeles should be chilling both to immigrant communities and their allies

As America prepares to celebrate Juneteenth this month — this nation’s truest Independence Day — recent protests in Los Angeles against mass deportations have triggered the use of the National Guard to defend U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents as they pursue foreign-born residents.

These aren’t members of MS-13 or drug cartel members. These law-abiding families simply wish to make a better life for themselves.

The Trump administration’s actions are a reminder that law enforcement is an arm of the state; they have no duty to protect people, only property.

The law used by President Donald Trump allows the president to federalize National Guard members under certain circumstances. However, there’s concern he would use the Insurrection Act of 1807, which activates the military or National Guard during times of rebellion or unrest.

The Insurrection Act is among the most powerful emergency powers at the disposal of a president, according to Mireya Navarro, editor-in-chief of the Brennan Center for Justice. The measure places few constraints on a president’s power — neither Congress nor the courts play a role in deciding what constitutes an obstruction or rebellion — and the law does not limit what actions military forces may take once deployed.

Thus, protests of Trump policies can be declared an act of “insurrection.”

What’s happening in Los Angeles is an act of solidarity, but is being labeled an insurrection.

However, the kind of insurrection that inspired the Insurrection Act is rooted in Black resistance to enslavement, and the language to stop “insurrections” is first found in the Constitution … to protect enslavers’ “property.”

The word slavery isn’t found in the Constitution. However, four clauses exist that directly address it: the three-fifths clause, the importation clause, the fugitive slave clause, and the insurrection clause.

Why all these clauses? Because Africans were chattel, they were named the property of their captors, and they represented the economic and political power of the planter class. Truthfully, property rights are as central to the Constitution as the freedom Americans believe they’re entitled to.

But as long as foreign-born residents can be snatched from their communities, none of us is free.

Apart from defending African Americans (ironically) during the Reconstruction and civil rights eras, the act has previously been used to put down labor riots, secure settler colonial lands, end Nat Turner’s rebellion, and suppress the LA uprising of 1992 in protest of the verdict in the Rodney King trial.

The deployment of 2,000 National Guard members for at least 60 days is to “protect” ICE agents so they can carry out mass deportations, which is work and sets a bad precedent. According to Erwin Chemerinsky, one of the nation’s leading constitutional law scholars, “Using the military domestically to stop dissent … is very frightening to see …”

California has the nation’s largest foreign-born population, with more than 10 million people, which represents about a quarter of the state’s population. Most foreign-born residents come from Latin America: 23% from Mexico, 10% from the Caribbean, 9% from Central America, and 9% from South America. So there should be no doubt that mass deportations are a deliberate attempt to target people of color.

And that kind of targeting by the U.S. government is something with which African Americans have a deep familiarity.

What’s of genuine concern here is that Trump’s deployment of the National Guard is without a request from California Gov. Gavin Newsom. However, deployment of the National Guard against protesters is always a concern. Even more worrisome is the possibility that Marine units will be deployed on the streets of LA.

Think about this: 24% of New Jersey’s population is foreign-born. ICE is here; they’ve circled the streets where I teach a classroom filled with predominantly Latino students. Could I face the guns of the armed forces for standing in solidarity with my students and their families? It’s likely.

But Juneteenth serves as a reminder that freedom is never given; it is taken. Like the African Americans who engaged in a general strike against the peculiar institution, exchanging their plantation tools for those of a soldier, it’ll take a general strike of American citizens to protect those who cannot protect themselves.

In protest of police brutality, we were demonized for the phrase Black Lives Matter. The typical response was that All Lives Matter.

Well, America, here is your chance to make good on your word. If all lives truly matter, you’ll stand against mass deportations.

Rann Miller is an educator and freelance writer based in South Jersey. His Urban Education Mixtape blog supports urban educators and parents of children attending urban schools. Miller is also the author of “Resistance Stories from Black History for Kids,” which was reissued in 2024.