According to court documents filed Monday by the Trump administration, National Guard troops were mobilised to help respond to immigration protests in Los Angeles before being sent more than 100 miles away to protect federal agents enforcing immigration laws on marijuana farms in the Coachella Valley.

According to a DEA spokesperson, approximately 315 National Guard troops assisted the Drug Enforcement Administration in carrying out a federal search warrant Wednesday on suspected illegal marijuana farms in Thermal, a desert community about 25 miles south-east of Palm Springs.

During the operation, Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents arrested between 70 and 75 workers on suspicion of lacking documentation, according to the spokesperson. A US citizen was arrested on suspicion of impeding law enforcement.

The use of the National Guard in this operation has become a new point of contention in the ongoing legal battle between Gov. Gavin Newsom and President Trump over whether the president has the authority to command approximately 4,000 National Guard members to quell unrest in Los Angeles.

The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the violence in Los Angeles likely provided sufficient justification for Trump’s June 7 decision to deploy troops to protect federal personnel and property, and it overturned a temporary restraining order that would have returned the National Guard to Newsom’s control. The appeals court ruled that Trump can continue to control military troops in Los Angeles while Newsom’s objections to their deployment are heard in federal court.

In a federal court filing on Monday, attorneys for California Attorney General Rob Bonta questioned whether current conditions in Los Angeles justify the continued use of National Guard members, particularly in missions such as the marijuana farm raid, which are “untethered to protection against the kinds of harms against federal personnel and property that the Ninth Circuit concluded likely justified the initial federalisation.”

Lawyers for the Trump administration argued that the Coachella Valley operation was “in the same vein of other uses of service members to provide protection for immigration enforcement” and that Bonta’s team provided “no persuasive factual or legal reason to question Defendants’ [the Trump administration’s] continued use of military service members.”

Trump’s attorneys argue that protests and violence continue to undermine federal agents’ ability to enforce immigration law, citing a statement made Wednesday by Ernesto Santacruz, director of ICE’s enforcement and removal operations in Los Angeles, about ongoing unrest in the city.

“The presence of the National Guard and other Department of Defence personnel has enabled ICE to continue to carry out its congressionally mandated duties in the Los Angeles area,” Santacruz wrote in an email Wednesday. “Because of the current threat, we would not be able to carry out as many immigration enforcement operations as we have been able to with the Guards’ assistance.”

The declaration, however, makes no mention of any incidents of violence or unrest in Riverside County.

The DEA’s Los Angeles Field Division stated that it requested assistance from multiple federal agencies in carrying out a search warrant on the Coachella Valley marijuana farms due to the “topography and magnitude” of the operation, which spanned 787 acres and occurred in temperatures as high as 112 degrees. The operation involved 500 people, including members of Customs and Border Protection, ICE, the National Guard, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosions, the United States Marshals Service, and the Internal Revenue Service.