Governor Deploys Guard Across Texas
to Keep "Peace & Order" at ICE Protests
Capitol Inside
June 11, 2025
Texas Governor Greg Abbott announced on Wednesday that he's deploying the National Guard to unspecified destinations around the state to head off trouble from ICE deportation protests that got under way in Los Angeles this week.
Abbott ordered the Texas Guard to San Antonio initially on Tuesday night for a demonstration that had been planned there in a show of solidarity for protesters in LA and other major metropolitan areas including New York City.
But the Republican governor expanded the scope of the Guard deployment in Texas statewide shortly before midnight on Tuesday.
"Texas National Guard will be deployed to locations across the state to ensure peace & order," Abbott said in a post on X. "Peaceful protest is legal. Harming a person or property is illegal & will lead to arrest.
"@TexasGuard will use every tool & strategy to help law enforcement maintain order," the Texas leader added.
Abbott declined to elaborate on the National Guard's role in the ostensible peacekeeping mission. But the Guard could take a page from the Texas Department of Public Safety playbook after the state police used tear gas and pepper spray in an attempt to contain a rowdy demonstration at the state Capitol on Monday night.
Abbott said the state and local police arrested more than a dozen people at the ICE protest in downtown Austin. DPS said Tuesday night on social media that its officers made four arrests during the protest in the Capitol City.
The governor appears to be following the lead of President Donald Trump, who deployed 700 U.S. Marines to LA on Tuesday in a move that California Governor Gavin Newsom blasted as a "blatant abuse" of power. Newsom sent the California National Guard to Los Angeles on Monday before Trump intervened in a development that critics say was designed more for political theater than the public's safety and protection.
Trump said on Tuesday that he might invoke the Insurrection Act of 1807 as legal justification for the use of the military against American citizens. The president did not see the riot at the U.S. Capitol on January 6 in 2021 as act of insurrection while Congress was in the process of certifying the election that Trump lost to Democrat Joe Biden won in 2020. Trump was impeached before leaving office for inciting the riot that trashed the citadel of American government and culminated in jail and prison sentences for hundreds of MAGA loyalists.
The Texas governor hasn't indicated whether he thinks Trump should send the Marines or other U.S. armed forces members to the Lone Star State to assist the National Guard in the policing of anti-deportation rallies here.
But Abbott could be pushed to the side if Trump revived the Insurrection Act in a decision that would make it possible for the president to federalize the National Guard in selective states. California would be the most likely location for the Guard's federalization in light of Trump's disdain for the nation's largest blue state and its Democratic governor.
The Texas leader will be hoping in the meantime that he hasn't set the stage for a replay of a protest at Kent State University in 1970 when Ohio National Guard members killed several unarmed students who they'd been sent there to protect.
more to come ...
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