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Since President Trump took control of the California State Guard and deployed thousands of troops in Los Angeles, calls from tormented soldiers and their families have been poured into the GI rights hotline.
Some National Guard members and their loved ones say they are struggling with the legality of the developments they are suing in federal court, according to Steve Woolford, a resource counselor at the hotline that provides confidential counseling to service members.
Others called saying that security guards should not be involved in federal immigrant attacks and that they were worried about immigrant families that might be swept away.
“They don’t want to expel uncles, their wives, or their brothers in law,” Woolford said. “… Some of the languages people used are: “I joined to protect my country. It’s really important to me, but No. 1 is a family and this is actually a threat to my family.”
While most active duty soldiers are restricted from commenting publicly about the order, veteran advocates in direct contact with the military say they are deeply concerned about the morale of around 4,100 National Guard members and 700 U.S. Marines being deployed in Los Angeles amid protests over immigrant raids.
In an interview with The Times, a spokesman for a six-veteran advocacy group said many troops are suffering from transfers.
Supporters also said they were concerned about the potential impact of domestic deployments on military retention and recruitment. This was rebounded a few years after various branches failed to meet their recruitment targets.
“What we’re hearing from our families is, ‘This isn’t something we signed up for,'” said Brandi Jones, organisation director at the Secure Family Initiative, a nonprofit that advocates for military spouses, children and veterans. “Our family is very concerned about morale.”
The horse rider will pass the US Marines near Paramount Home Depot during their Human Rights Unified Riding on June 22, 2025.
(Carlin Steel/Los Angeles Times)
“This is an unnecessary development given the operational situation,” said Janessa Goldbeck, a US Marine Corps veteran and CEO of the nonprofit VET Voice Foundation, in a former Marine Corps colleague she spoke in recent weeks.
“The fact that LAPD and local elected officials repeatedly said that deploying the National Guard and active-duty Marines was intense or inflammatory, made the US president ignored it and chose to deploy them anyway.
She added that “young man and woman who raised their right hands to serve their country” “didn’t sign up to police their neighbors.”
Trump repeatedly said that if Los Angeles hadn’t sent troops to help quell the protests, then Los Angeles was “burning on the ground.”
“We saved Los Angeles by putting in the troops,” Trump told reporters last week. “And the second night was much better. The third night was nothing. And on the fourth night, no one even bothered me.”
The Los Angeles army has no authority to arrest protesters and was deployed solely to defend federal functions, property and personnel, according to the military’s US Northern Command.
“While we cannot talk about the individual experiences of each service member, the general assessment of morale by leadership is positive,” Task Force 51, a Los Angeles military designation, said in an email Saturday.
The statement states that staff “quality of life” is “addressed through continuous improvement in living facilities, a balanced work rest cycle, access to pastors, licensed clinical social workers and behavioral health professionals.”
US Marines defend the federal building at the corner of Veteran Avenue and Wilshire Boulevard in Los Angeles.
(Genaro Molina/Los Angeles Times)
It is unclear whether the National Guard, federalized under Title 10 of US Act, was paid as of this weekend. Task Force 51 told the Times on Saturday that soldiers who received the 60-day operation order on June 7 “will start receiving their wages by the end of the month,” and that “people with financial concerns will have access to resources such as Army emergency relief.”
Rep. Derek Tran (D-Orange), an Army veteran and member of the House Armed Services Committee, said he asked Secretary of Defense Pete Hegses, “Because of his plans to manage the logistics of this military activity, he was unable to provide me with a clear answer.”
“This administration shows that our veterans and active duty veterans are dishonorable and will have a negative impact on the ability of America to suppress and maintain the military capabilities of the world to the world.”
Diana Crofts-Pelayo, a spokesman for Gov. Gavin Newsom, told me in an email that the governor “is worried about how this mission will affect the physical and emotional well-being that has been unnecessarily deployed in Los Angeles.”
On June 9th, Newsom posted a photo on X, depicting a National Guard soldier sleeping on a concrete floor and a loading dock. Newsom wrote that the president sent the troops “without fuel, food, water, no place to sleep.”
Task Force 51 told the Times that the soldiers in the photo “were not actively involved in the mission, so it took a long time to rest.” At the time, the statement continued, “It seemed too dangerous for them to travel to better accommodation.”
Since then, according to Task Force 51, the military has contracted for “sleeping tents, toilets, showers, hand washing stations, hot breakfast meals, dinner, late night meals and full laundry services.
“At this point, most contracts are met,” the military said.
“We should apologise for attempting to have a political debate using a miswritten photo of a national security guard,” White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson said in a statement in The Times.
“Under President Trump’s leadership, the military’s morale is high because our military knows that in the end they always have patriotic commanders who have their backs,” Jackson wrote.
The forces are listed outside the federal building at the increasingly quiet Civic Center, only four blocks within the 500-square-mile city.
Their interaction with the public is very different from the one that began this year when Newsom deployed the National Guard to LA County to help Newsom with efforts to recover from the wildfires following the fires of Eton and Palisades.
At checkpoints in Burnzone, we found members of the National Guard often chatting with locals. Some of them brought food and water to thank them for keeping the marauders away.
But in downtown, soldiers stood stone face behind the riot shield as ferocious protesters turned them over, vowed to them, questioning their integrity.
Members of the California State Guard began attending thousands of people in downtown Los Angeles on June 14th to protest “No Kings”;
(Genaro Molina/Los Angeles Times)
During the loud “No Kings” protest on June 14, a woman posted a mirror in the military outside a federal building in downtown with the words, “This is not your job, it’s your heritage.” On a quiet Wednesday morning, the UCLA professor stood solo outside a federal building, saying, “It’s called the Constitution, what we call the Constitution.”
James M. Branham, an attorney working with the National Lawyers Guild’s Military Law Task Force, said in recent weeks the task force has received two or three times more regular referrals and in-person calls. The upward trend began after Trump took office, people called for war in Gaza and increased military deployments to the US southern border, but he said that he was called after the troops were sent to Los Angeles.
“A lot of these people came in because they wanted to fight people they see as terrorists,” Branam said. “They want to fight the US enemies. They didn’t expect them to be deployed on the US streets.”
In a June 7 memo to federate the National Guard, Trump called for the deployment to be made in places where protests against federal immigration enforcement are occurring or “probably occurring.” This memo does not designate Los Angeles or California.
California officials sued the president for the development, claiming in a federal complaint that the Trump administration’s instructions were “expressed in an ambiguous way and suggests a potential misuse of the federal national security forces.”
“Securities across the country are on guard, [thinking] Along with the Vet Voice Foundation, Goldbeck said.
Jones said military families, along with the Secure Family initiative, are “very nervous at this moment.”
“They are very unprepared about what is going on and are very afraid to talk publicly,” she said.
Jones said she was communicating with the wife of a national guard who she said she had suffered a recent stroke. The woman said her husband was on medical leave with her family. The woman said his leave was not recognized by the military due to domestic allocations. He’s deployed in Los Angeles and she’s having a hard time finding a caregiver, Jones said.
Jones said her own husband, an active Marine, was deployed in Iraq in 2004 and the same infantry unit was convened in Los Angeles in the 7th Marine Regiment, based in the 2nd Battalion, Twentin Palms.
The unit was a huge hit in Afghanistan in 2008, killing at least 20 Marines, and the year’s development was highly promoted, resulting in a high suicide rate.
Jones said she was unsure about learning a battalion deployed in Los Angeles – a battalion called the War Dog.
“I said, ‘Wait, that’s 2/7 they’re sending in? War dogs? Will they release them in Los Angeles?’ That was nuts for me,” Jones said. “It brings a lot to me for my family that I’ve served for 20 years to hear this unit belong to.”
The deployment of Los Angeles comes at a time when the California National Guard is often engaged in wildfire control operations.
On June 18th, Colonel Lascheda Bilal was revitalized by the California National Guard and assigned to Sacramento. There, half of its members are deployed in Los Angeles, filling in the operational role of rattlesnakes in the Joint Task Force, a National Guard fire unit currently understaffed.
“It’s a big part of retracting that mission… So you have to activate additional security guards to cover those missions,” Bilal said. of California.
National Guard members are primarily part-time soldiers and are invited to active duty until they work in civilian work or attend university. California is a prone to wildfires, earthquakes and floods.
Many of the same National Guard soldiers in downtown Los Angeles are just like those who just finished 120 days of revitalization to recover from wildfires, she said.
“You have a national response to fire, and revitalizing the federal government is going to be tense,” Bilal said.
“They aren’t complaining,” she added. “Soldiers vote on their own feet. We are mostly quiet experts and take a lot of pride in our work. [But] You can squeeze a large amount of lemon before it dries. California security guards can only slam without affecting retention or hiring. ”
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