ICE raids and escalation in Los Angeles
In the last few months, immigration management in the United States has reemerged as a central topic of international debate. Last June 2025, the White House ordered ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement), the federal agency responsible for enforcing immigration laws, to drastically increase raids to reach a record target of 3,000 arrests per day, up from about 1,000 previously.
In the days that followed, ICE agents intensified their raids on workplaces and public spaces in Los Angeles, arresting numerous undocumented migrants. The operations sparked tensions: the first demonstrations led to violent clashes with federal agents, which continued for several days. Some demonstrators blocked a highway, set fire to Waymo taxis near the Metropolitan Detention Center, and threw debris at Border Patrol vehicles. Police responded with tear gas, rubber bullets, and flash-bangs to disperse the crowd.
Faced with the escalation, President Donald Trump ordered the deployment of 2,000 members of the California National Guard to support federal operations, a measure that sparked considerable controversy, not least because it was taken against the advice of local authorities. Gavin Newsom, in fact, argued that it was up to him, as governor of California, to decide on the use of the National Guard, calling Trump’s action “an unequivocal step toward authoritarianism.”
A few hours later, the White House announced that a battalion of about 700 Marines, trained in crowd control and de-escalation, had also been prepared for possible intervention.
The protests quickly spread to other states, including Texas, Arizona, New Mexico, and Nevada. In Texas, Governor Greg Abbott mobilized more than 5,000 National Guard troops and more than 2,000 state police officers to assist local law enforcement.
The National Guard, technically a reserve force under state command but which the president can place under federal control, is not part of the regular army: it acts as a bridge between civil and federal military authorities. However, its deployment to stop the protests, together with that of the Marines, has reignited the debate on the role of the armed forces in domestic contexts.
A distrust rooted in American history
These events have brought to light a historical tension that has marked American political identity: the difficult balance between the need for security and the idea, rooted since the time of the Founding Fathers and fueled by Protestant ethics, that the use of the military against citizens represents a potential danger to civil liberties. More than just news stories, the protests of June 2025 demonstrate how this historical distrust of the military continues to shape perceptions of federal power in the United States.
In the United States, the idea of individual freedom is not only a legal principle, but a cultural belief rooted in Protestantism. Protestant ethics, with its emphasis on individual self-determination, has shaped American identity and the way Americans conceive of political power from the very beginning: the state must be limited, controlled, and always subordinate to the rights of citizens.
From Republican origins to the Cold War
Opposition to a standing army was one of the pillars of the US Constitution. It reflected the principles for which the colonies had fought against the British mother country: the defense of freedom and the rejection of any power capable of turning into tyranny. The Founding Fathers wanted at all costs to avoid replicating the European model of the state, based on a strong fiscal and military apparatus that risked suppressing individual freedoms.
However, the young confederation of thirteen states, with a weak Congress and no stable armed forces, had to face a complex geopolitical reality: defending its borders, dealing with the native populations, and countering Spanish and British ambitions. At a certain point, creating a permanent army became inevitable to ensure the security of the state. But this choice represented a threat to the founding principle of individual freedom and fueled fears of an overly strong central power.
The United States was therefore not born as a modern democracy in today’s sense, but as a republic in which power had to be strictly contained in order to guarantee the rights of American citizens. Thus, the concept of individual freedom was linked to republican civic virtue: good citizens had to be ready to defend their community. In this context, security was based on the mobilization of local militias rather than a standing army, which would have been too reminiscent of the British model.
It was in this context that the Second Amendment was passed: a compromise that, by entrusting security to local militias and armed citizens, made it possible to protect the state without building a centralized military apparatus based on the European model.
In fact, until World War II, US political practice dictated that, once a conflict was over, the armed forces would be downsized and placed under the control of Congress, considered the expression of the will of the people. To ensure the primacy of civil power over military power, the Constitution entrusted Congress with the power to declare war and finance the army. With the Cold War, however, this balance changed radically: the global threat led to a stable army and a strengthening of executive power, especially after the Gulf of Tonkin resolution.
Alexander Hamilton had already intuited this dynamic, observing that “it is in the very nature of war to strengthen the authority of the executive at the expense of the legislative.”
The geographical position of the United States, protected by oceans and far from the European fronts, had long allowed it to avoid a standing army. Hamilton argued that, if united and wise, Americans could enjoy this almost insular privilege for a long time.
At the same time, however, they compensated for their international isolationism with westward expansion, which was already well underway at the time.
A tension that still survives today
This historical distrust of a standing army has left a deep mark on US political culture. Even today, many Americans are not accustomed to seeing the armed forces intervene to quell internal protests: in their tradition, internal security has always been the prerogative of state militias or civilian law enforcement agencies, not the federal army.
Thus, when the military is deployed on national territory, as happened recently during tensions related to immigration, public opinion reacts with surprise and distrust, as it evokes the risk of political repression and appears to be a betrayal of the spirit of the Constitution.
A Reuters/Ipsos poll on June 12, 2025 showed a divided country: 48% of Americans approve of the use of military forces to quell violent protests, while 41% oppose it. Other polls, such as those by the Washington Post–Schar School and YouGov, confirm this division: support is widespread among Republican voters but low among Democrats and independents, with particular opposition in states such as California, where the intervention took place.
Trump’s strategy: security or authoritarianism?
Trump’s choice responds to a specific political strategy: to project an image of strength and border control, speaking directly to his electoral base, for whom illegal immigration is not only a security issue but also a symbol of identity.
At the same time, the deployment of federal forces on the streets sends a message to opponents: the government is willing to use all means at its disposal to impose order, especially in Democratic cities.
However, this decision has fueled accusations of authoritarianism and renewed fears that the executive branch may overstep its constitutional limits, turning the military into a means of internal repression. This divide in public opinion shows how the delicate balance between security and individual freedoms continues to be one of the central issues of American political identity.
