Thousands of protesters took to the streets in Los Angeles Monday, outraged by President Donald Trump’s decision to deploy the National Guard in their city over the weekend.

Retired federal judge Nancy Gertner condemned the president’s deployment of troops, saying in her analysis it’s legally questionable.

“The disturbance was minor and under control,” Gertner said on Boston Public Radio on Monday. “The language of the order would seem to give Trump the authority to do this anywhere in the United States at any time… this is in part about Los Angeles, but is mostly about an extraordinary usurpation of power.”

The last time the National Guard was deployed without a governor’s consent was during the 1965 Selma-to-Montgomery marches, when President Lyndon B. Johnson invoked federal authority to enforce a federal desegregation order in 1965 to protect civil rights demonstrators. The statute Trump referenced allows for such deployment in the case of a “rebellion or danger of a rebellion against the authority of the Government of the United States.”

The Los Angeles protests over the weekend were sparked in part by anger over recent immigration enforcement actions by the Trump administration. In one case, the mistaken deportation of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Maryland man who was forcibly removed to El Salvador without due process in March. He has since been returned to the U.S. to face federal charges.

Gertner expressed doubt on the legitimacy of those charges.

“There were no formal extradition proceedings,” she said, which is the standard legal process when requesting that a foreign country return someone to face U.S. charges. “None of that happened here.”

Gertner suggested the charges may be an example of a “cover charge”—a legal term used when authorities file charges to obscure their own misconduct.

Though the charges against Abrego Garcia are serious, Gertner questioned their timing and substance.

“In 2022 when he was picked up, there was an investigation…and they let him go,” she noted. “This has all the earmarks of a contrivance and what in the law we call a vindictive prosecution.”

Not because of the merits of the case, but for political gain, she explained.

“Unfortunately, Mr. Abrego-Garcia is caught in the headwinds.”