National Guard soldiers under federal control were pulled into a chaotic immigration raid in Southern California on short notice and with little guidance, according to an internal Army document obtained exclusively by MS NOW. The after-action review, written by U.S. Northern Command, also shows the Department of Homeland Security gave the soldiers duties that legal experts say may have broken a law that largely bars the military from domestic law enforcement.
The operation took place July 10, 2025, at a cannabis farm in Camarillo, about 50 miles northwest of Los Angeles. The military’s role has not been reported before. It comes to light less than a month before the midterm elections, while President Donald Trump continues to refuse to rule out invoking the Insurrection Act to deploy troops.
The National Immigration Law Center obtained the document through the Freedom of Information Act. The center opposes Trump’s immigration enforcement policies. Ben Farley, its special counsel, said the review fits a pattern.
“This is yet more evidence of the willingness of the Trump administration to blow the hinges off the constraints of what the military can do domestically,” Farley said.
What the Army’s own review says
The report records the Army’s concerns about putting armed troops into volatile situations with hostile civilians and little direction on the limits of their authority. Experts who reviewed it for MS NOW said it strongly suggests soldiers from the National Guard’s 49th Military Police Brigade helped take custody of immigrant detainees and moved them from the farm to a nearby naval base.
The document also indicates the military’s actions were largely improvised, with little planning or coordination between the Defense Department and DHS. In one of several passages on the subject, it says: “A mission of this scale should have been planned out with DoD for support to work through those potential issues and have a better plan in place for transporting detainees.”
The review carries no time stamp. It indicates it was written on or shortly after July 19, 2025.
Northern Command denies its units moved detainees
A U.S. Northern Command spokesperson denied that troops took part in detaining or transporting anyone.
“Personnel did not conduct arrests, searches, seizures, detention, or detainee transportation during this operation, and no military vehicles were used to transport detainees,” the spokesperson said. “Federal law enforcement personnel retained responsibility for law enforcement and custody functions.”
Northern Command did not answer follow-up questions about the apparent conflict between that statement and its own review. The review says DHS agents had no clear plan for moving detainees. It says military personnel on the scene were told the Defense Department had authorized Guard troops to transport detainees in military vehicles. It says hundreds of detainees were taken to Naval Base Ventura County. It does not state who drove them or whose vehicles carried them.
DHS did not respond to questions about the roles of troops and federal agents. It referred all questions on the subject to the Defense Department.
A raid that came after weeks of protests
The Camarillo raid took place amid broad immigration sweeps by Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Border Patrol agents in Los Angeles and surrounding areas. Those sweeps set off protests that lasted weeks. In a presidential memorandum, Trump called the protests “a form of rebellion against the authority of the Government of the United States.” Over the objections of Gov. Gavin Newsom, he federalized 2,000 National Guard troops and ordered them to protect federal agents and property.
Thousands of federal law enforcement and military personnel arrived in the Los Angeles area from outside the region. The troops who responded to Camarillo belonged to the 49th Military Police Brigade, headquartered in Fairfield, near San Francisco.
The raid drew attention at the time for its scale and disorder. About 500 ICE and Border Patrol personnel detained at least 361 people on immigration counts over several hours. One immigrant died after falling from a roof while trying to flee. Hundreds of protesters blocked government vehicles and threw rocks and other objects at federal agents. Four U.S. citizens were charged with assaulting or resisting officers.
Reporters, photographers and court records described Guard troops helping set up a security perimeter around the farm. The Army review shows the more than 200 soldiers on the scene did far more than that.
Troops arrived without a briefing or routes
Border Patrol first asked the Guard for support, canceled the request two days before the raid, then asked for military help again after the operation had started, the review states.
That timing left units with almost nothing to work from. The document says it resulted “in units responding without an in-brief and no information on staging, routes, ingress, egress, and supporting medical facilities.”
The federal agents running the operation, it says, “were not tracking the plan or did not have a plan when it came to moving detainees.” The lead federal agent then told military personnel the Defense Department had issued approval for Guard “personnel to transport detainees in military vehicles.”
Sorting that out on the ground took time. “That information had to be deconflicted on the ground, taking additional time to get the detainees transported out of the area,” the document reads. “Ingress and egress routes were not identified, leading to vehicles being blocked in” by protesters’ vehicles.
The naval base was not ready either. “Naval Police did not have the capability to receive us at the same time as the arrival of the Federal Agents, resulting in unnecessary moves and confusion,” the document reads.
Soldiers also faced a hostile crowd. “During the operation, our freedom of movement was hindered by civilian vehicles in our formation,” the review states. “This left vehicles vulnerable to protestors who eventually climbed on vehicles and threw items at our Soldiers.”
Daniel Maurer, an associate professor of law at Ohio Northern University and a retired Army lieutenant colonel and judge advocate, called that an unusual experience for troops. “Normally, when the military deploys domestically, it’s for natural disaster relief, and they’re welcomed with open arms,” he said.
What legal experts say about the Posse Comitatus Act
The Posse Comitatus Act, a law from the late 19th century, prohibits using the armed forces for domestic law enforcement. Independent experts consulted by MS NOW said the document puts the Guard troops in a legally shaky position.
Chris Mirasola, an assistant professor at the University of Houston Law Center and a former Defense Department attorney, said the duties described in the review fall within the law’s reach.
“Detention and traffic management would both count as execution of the laws in the terms of the Posse Comitatus Act,” Mirasola said. “Those are usually very straightforward examples of a violation.”
The experts did not say the document alone proves a violation. They noted that courts have rarely tested the law. The review does not say whether federal agents rode in the vehicles that carried detainees. If they did, Mirasola said, the government could argue the agents, not the troops, technically had custody.
Maurer said that even with agents aboard, the more relevant question is which agency took the lead in planning and carrying out that part of the operation.
“The issue is, what are those federal agents doing?” Maurer said. “Are they acting like a brain for the operation, or more like the muscle for the operation?” If the military dominated that part of the operation, he said, “that’s concerning,” and it “approaches unlawfulness, because it has the military executing the law to some extent.”
Farley went further. He said the review leads him to conclude the Guard clearly violated the act.
“Having the military take custody, physical control, of people in this country is a shocking development,” Farley said. “There is a reason we don’t see the military doing this: There’s a 250-year history of people in this country being very, very opposed to and fearful of the military doing exactly this sort of thing.”
A federal judge has already ruled on the deployment
In September 2025, a federal judge ruled in a lawsuit filed by California that the Trump administration violated the Posse Comitatus Act when it deployed National Guard troops alongside immigration agents in Southern California. The ruling discussed the Camarillo raid in detail.
That decision did not consider any evidence that troops physically took custody of detainees and transported them. It covered only what was public at the time: troops had set up security perimeters and controlled traffic.
The administration appealed to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. The case stalled after the federalized troops returned to California’s control.
Questions about training and planning
The experts also pointed to the lack of planning the review describes. Mirasola raised the question of who ends up doing the work when DHS hands off enforcement tasks.
“It should concern all of us if we have DHS offloading law enforcement functions onto, most likely, incredibly young military personnel who don’t necessarily have any training in handling these kinds of interactions with protesters, with the public, and with detainees,” Mirasola said.
What comes next
No domestic deployment of military personnel alongside federal law enforcement has matched the scale and public visibility of the 2025 California operations. A deployment during similar immigration raids in Chicago was much smaller. Courts blocked other efforts to use Guard troops against protests, including in Portland.
Trump has repeatedly threatened to invoke the Insurrection Act and use troops against domestic unrest. Advocates and experts say that makes the Camarillo episode matter beyond one raid. In their view, it lowers the legal and institutional barriers to using the military in domestic conflicts, and it set a precedent for using troops to help round up immigrants.
“That’s not what the military does,” Maurer said.
Several questions remain open. Northern Command’s denial conflicts with its own after-action review, and the agency has not explained the gap. DHS has pointed to the Defense Department for answers about who did what. The review does not say who drove the detainees. The appeal over the September 2025 ruling has not moved since the troops left federal control.
