(The Center Square) — California Gov. Gavin Newsom said on Monday he plans to sue the Trump administration over its deployment of the state’s National Guard to Los Angeles.

But shortly afterward, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security defended the move as necessary because of the violence on a weekend where protesters burned cars, threw fireworks and other objects at law enforcement, and approached federal facilities.

"As rioters have escalated their assaults on our DHS law enforcement and activists’ behavior on the streets becomes increasingly dangerous, the federal government is calling in the California National Guard for additional support to ensure the safety of all citizens, law enforcement and public property,” Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin of Homeland Security told The Center Square Monday in an email.

“Politicians need to turn down the temperature — our ICE enforcement officers face a 413% increase in assaults against them as they are just trying to do their jobs,” McLaughlin said.

On Monday, Hilda Solis, chair pro tem of the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors, told CNN the situation in Los Angeles had calmed down after “probably one of the most volatile nights” in the city. “There’s still a major freeway, on-ramps, off-ramps and road closures. People are coming back into the city to work, but it’s very, it’s very measured.”

The Los Angeles Unified School District said schools were operating as usual Monday.

On Friday and Saturday, riots preceded the arrival of about 300 of 2,000 deployed California National Guard members at 4 a.m. Sunday. The deployment came under an order from President Donald Trump but without Newsom’s approval.

On Sunday, protesters marched from the Boyle Heights neighborhood to the Metropolitan Detention Center in downtown Los Angeles, and the Los Angeles Police Department declared the gathering an illegal assembly.

The downtown LA site is where protesters clashed with National Guard soldiers Sunday afternoon and evening, as seen in reports that aired live on Los Angeles TV stations. CBS News Los Angeles showed the National Guard using what the Studio City-based TV news outlet called tear gas and non-lethal rounds at demonstrators. Some protesters walked onto a major freeway, Highway 101, in downtown Los Angeles, and blocked traffic as seen in reports televised by local TV stations.

Newsom, meanwhile, criticized the National Guard deployments and Trump in posts Sunday and Monday on X.

“He flamed the fires and illegally acted to federalize the National Guard,” Newsom said Monday. “The order he signed doesn’t just apply to CA. It will allow him to go into ANY STATE and do the same thing. We’re suing him.”

On Sunday, David Sapp, Newsom's legal affairs secretary, wrote Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and asked that the deployment be rescinded. Sapp called it a "serious breach of state sovereignty that seems intentionally designed to inflame the situation ..." Sapp said the National Guard wasn't needed.

Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass Sunday criticized the deployment as well and urged protesters to be peaceful.

"Deploying federalized troops on the heels of these raids is a chaotic escalation," Bass said in a statement.

But Todd Lyons, acting director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, criticized the mayor and noted it took over two hours, despite repeated calls, for the Los Angeles Police Department to respond Friday when anti-ICE protesters confronted federal agents and surrounded Edward R. Roybal Federal Building in downtown Los Angeles. In a statement Saturday, Lyons said ICE officers were outnumbered as “over 1,000 rioters surrounded and attacked a federal building.”

"As rioters attacked federal ICE and law enforcement officers on the LA streets, Mayor (Karen) Bass took the side of chaos and lawlessness over law enforcement," Lyons said, defending the immigration raids that preceded the riots.

"The brave men and women of ICE were in Los Angeles arresting criminal illegal aliens including gang members, drug traffickers and those with a history of assault, cruelty to children, domestic violence, robbery, and smuggling," Lyons said.

ICE reported on X that it arrested 118 illegal immigrants last week, including "five gang members and numerous criminal aliens."

The Democratic Governors Association, meanwhile, blasted Trump's deployment of the National Guard as "an alarming abuse of power" and criticized the president's comments that Marines from Camp Pendleton could be deployed.

"Governors are the Commanders in Chief of their National Guard and the federal government activating them in their own borders without consulting or working with a state’s governor is ineffective and dangerous," the association said in statement Sunday.

While taking charge of a National Guard without a governor’s support is a rare move by a federal government, it isn’t without precedent. It last happened in 1965 when President Lyndon Johnson took control of the Alabama National Guard without consulting with Gov. George Wallace to protect civil rights marchers in Selma.

In 1962, President John F. Kennedy federalized the Mississippi National Guard to enforce the enrollment of James Meredith as the first Black student at the University of Mississippi in Oxford. That came after Kennedy and his brother, Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, tried unsuccessfully to get Gov. Ross Barnett’s cooperation during a series of phone calls. Despite the negotiations, Barnett continued to defy the U.S. Supreme Court ruling ordering Meredith’s enrollment.