National Guard troops under the control of the federal government were drawn into a sprawling, chaotic Southern California immigration raid on short notice and with little guidance, an internal Army document shared exclusively with MS NOW states.

The after-action review prepared by U.S. Army North, which was part of U.S. Northern Command, also indicates the Department of Homeland Security had the soldiers perform duties that, according to experts who reviewed the document, potentially violated a law that largely bars the use of the military for domestic law enforcement.

The degree and nature of the military’s involvement in the federal immigration enforcement operation, which have not been previously reported, raise concerns among experts and advocates about President Donald Trump’s use of the armed forces to advance his political objectives. Its disclosure comes less than a month before the midterm elections in which the president is again refusing to rule out invoking the Insurrection Act to deploy troops.

“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,” said Ben Farley, special counsel at the National Immigration Law Center, which obtained the document through the Freedom of Information Act.

The report on the large-scale immigration raid on a Ventura County cannabis farm captures the Army’s own concerns about the risks involved in putting armed troops in combustible situations with hostile civilians and little guidance as to the bounds of the soldiers’ authority.

The document, according to experts consulted by MS NOW, strongly suggests that troops from the National Guard’s 49th Military Police Brigade were directly involved in taking custody of and transporting immigrant detainees from the cannabis farm to a naval base nearby. It also indicates that the military’s actions during the operation were largely improvised, with little planning or coordination between the Department of Defense and the Department of Homeland Security.

“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 document states in one of several places where it discusses that question.

In a statement, a spokesperson for U.S. Northern Command denied that its units were involved in detaining or transporting detainees.

“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.”

U.S. Northern Command did not respond to follow-up questions about the apparent conflict between that account and its own after-action review. The document states that DHS agents did not have a clear plan for transporting detainees; that military personnel on the scene were told the Defense Department had authorized Guard troops to transport detainees in military vehicles; and that hundreds of detainees were transported to Naval Base Ventura County. The review does not explicitly state who ultimately drove the detainees or whose vehicles were used.

DHS did not respond to questions about the respective roles played by National Guard troops and federal agents during the operation, referring all questions on that subject to the Defense Department.

The raid took place July 10, 2025, in Camarillo, about 50 miles northwest of Los Angeles. It happened in the context of widespread, aggressive and indiscriminate immigration sweeps conducted by Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Border Patrol agents in Los Angeles and its surroundings, which triggered a wave of protests that lasted for weeks.

In a presidential memorandum, Trump called the protests “a form of rebellion against the authority of the Government of the United States” and, over the objections of Gov. Gavin Newsom, federalized 2,000 National Guard troops and ordered them to protect federal agents and property.

The surge brought thousands of federal law enforcement and military personnel to the Los Angeles area from outside the region. The troops who responded to the raid in Camarillo belonged to the 49th Military Police Brigade, headquartered in Fairfield, near San Francisco.

The raid drew media attention at the time due to its scale and its chaotic nature: One immigrant died after falling from a roof while trying to flee, and hundreds of protesters blocked government vehicles and threw rocks and other objects at federal agents. Some 500 ICE and Border Patrol personnel detained at least 361 people on immigration counts over the course of several hours. Four U.S. citizens were charged with assaulting or resisting officers.

Accounts from reporters and photographers on the scene and court records described National Guard troops as helping to establish a security perimeter around the farm, but the after-action review shows the more than 200 soldiers on the scene wound up far more directly involved.

The document is not time-stamped but indicates it would have been prepared on or shortly after July 19, 2025.

Border Patrol had initially requested support from the National Guard for the operation, but canceled its request two days prior, only to then call for military assistance once again when the raid was already underway, the Army’s report states.

The rushed and unplanned nature of the military involvement, the document says, resulted “in units responding without an in-brief and no information on staging, routes, ingress, egress, and supporting medical facilities.”

Additionally, the federal agents conducting the operation “were not tracking the plan or did not have a plan when it came to moving detainees,” according to the document. The lead federal agent then told military personnel that the Department of Defense had issued approval for Guard “personnel to transport detainees in military vehicles.”

“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 after-action review indicates detainees were taken from the cannabis farm to Naval Base Ventura County, which was seemingly ill-prepared to receive them. “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.

Independent experts consulted by MS NOW said the document suggests that National Guard troops were put in a legally tenuous position that raises concerns about violations of the Posse Comitatus Act, a law from the late 19th century that prohibits the use of the armed forces for domestic law enforcement.

“Detention and traffic management would both count as execution of the laws in the terms of the Posse Comitatus Act,” said Chris Mirasola, an assistant professor at the University of Houston Law Center who was previously an attorney with the Department of Defense. “Those are usually very straightforward examples of a violation.”

Experts said the document itself is not enough to conclude that troops violated the Posse Comitatus Act, a law that they noted has rarely been tested in the courts. For instance, the document does not indicate whether there were federal agents on board the vehicles that were used to transport the detainees. If there were, Mirasola said, the government could argue that it was the federal agents, not military personnel, who technically had custody of the detainees.

But even if federal agents were present alongside troops in securing and transporting the detainees, the more relevant question is which agency took the lead in planning and executing that part of the operation, said Daniel Maurer, an associate professor of law at Ohio Northern University and retired Army lieutenant colonel and judge advocate.

“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, that’s concerning — it approaches unlawfulness, because it has the military executing the law to some extent.”

Farley, of the National Immigration Law Center, which opposes Trump’s immigration enforcement policies, said the after-action review leads him to conclude that the National Guard engaged in a clear violation of the Posse Comitatus Act.

“Having the military take custody — physical control — of people in this country is a shocking development,” he 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.”

In September 2025, a federal judge ruled in a lawsuit filed by the state that the Trump administration had violated the Posse Comitatus Act when it deployed National Guard troops alongside immigration agents in Southern California. That ruling, which discussed the Camarillo raid in detail, did not take into account any evidence indicating that troops had been involved in physically taking custody of and transporting detainees, and was limited to the facts about military involvement that were publicly known at the time: that troops had been involved in setting up security perimeters and controlling traffic.

The Trump administration appealed the ruling to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, but the litigation stalled after the federalized troops were returned to California’s control.

Beyond the questions about the legality of the troops’ involvement in the raid, the experts interviewed by MS NOW said the after-action review showed a troubling lack of planning.

“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. 

The after-action review indicates that there were tense moments between troops and protesters. “During the operation, our freedom of movement was hindered by civilian vehicles in our formation,” the document reads. “This left vehicles vulnerable to protestors who eventually climbed on vehicles and threw items at our Soldiers.”

Maurer pointed out that this is a highly unusual experience for soldiers, “because normally, when the military deploys domestically, it’s for natural disaster relief, and they’re welcomed with open arms.”

Since the raids in California in 2025, there has not been a domestic deployment of military personnel alongside federal law enforcement of the same scale and public visibility. A deployment during similar immigration raids in Chicago was much smaller, and other efforts to use National Guard troops to quell protests, such as in Portland, were blocked by the courts. 

But given Trump’s repeated threats to invoke the Insurrection Act and use troops in response to domestic unrest, advocates and experts say the military’s involvement in the Camarillo raid carries significance beyond that operation — it represents a lowering of the legal and institutional barriers to using the military in domestic conflicts. 

The Camarillo episode, they said, established a troubling precedent: using troops to help round up immigrants.

“That’s not what the military does,” Maurer said.

CLARIFICATION (Oct. 7, 2026, 12:45 p.m. ET): A previous version of this article stated that the after-action review regarding the Camarillo raid was prepared by U.S. Northern Command. The report was prepared by U.S. Army North, which was a component of U.S. Northern Command under its operational control.

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