In a Saturday morning tweet from Florida, President Trump took aim at  California Gov. Jerry Brown (D), who a day earlier pardoned five immigrants who were facing deportation.

“Governor Jerry ‘Moonbeam’ Brown pardoned 5 criminal illegal aliens whose crimes include (1) Kidnapping and Robbery (2) Badly beating wife and threatening a crime with intent to terrorize (3) Dealing drugs. Is this really what the great people of California want? @FoxNews,” Trump tweeted. “Moonbeam” was a nickname given to Brown partly because of his interest in space exploration during his earlier terms as California’s governor in the 1970s.

Trump’s tweet, sent while the president was traveling from his Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Fla., to the nearby Trump International Golf Club, may have been prompted by a report during the 6 a.m. hour of “Fox and Friends,” which Trump watches regularly. The show aired a segment titled “Lawless in California.” As an infographic described the crimes for which the five pardoned men were convicted, the show’s weekend hosts tore into Brown, suggesting that he was putting Californians at risk.

“He wants to show mercy,” Fox chief national correspondent Ed Henry said. “But show mercy toward people who maybe have committed a misdemeanor and are now rehabbed. If they’re dealing drugs to our children, these are not the folks you want to pardon.”

According to Brown’s office, the governor granted pardons Friday to 56 people who had completed their sentences years ago after being convicted of drug-related and other nonviolent crimes. Five of those are immigrants facing deportation, the Sacramento Bee reported. All five have since led law-abiding lives, according to Brown’s office.

Trump’s tweet is part of the rising tension between his administration and California. On Monday, the state sued the Trump administration over its decision to add a question about citizenship to the 2020 Census. And three weeks earlier, the Justice Department sued California over state laws considered to be friendly to undocumented immigrants.

Two of the immigrants who were granted pardons came to the United States as child refugees.

[ A deported veteran has been granted U.S. citizenship, after 14 years of living in Mexico ]

Sokha Chhan came from Cambodia at age 13. His family had escaped from the brutal  Khmer Rouge regime in the 1970s. Chhan lost his U.S. legal status in 2002 when he was convicted of inflicting corporal injury on spouse or cohabitant and threatening a crime with the intent to terrorize, both misdemeanors. He served nearly a year in jail and three years of probation. According to Brown’s office, Chhan served in the Army Reserve and volunteers at his local temple.

After he served his sentence, Chhan raised his five children as a single father by “working in the fields, working as a mechanic, or baking donuts for 12-13 hours every day with no days off,” according to one of his daughters, who was quoted in the pardon statement.

Phann Pheach was born at a refugee camp in Thailand and came to the United States as a Cambodian refugee when he was 1, according to a GoFundMe page created by his wife. Sopeant Pheach wrote that her husband grew up in a bad neighborhood and committed drug crimes to “fit in.” Phann Pheach was convicted in 2005 of possession of a controlled substance for sale and obstructing a police officer. He served a six-month custodial sentence and 13 months on parole.

The three others who received pardons are Francisco Acevedo Alaniz, Daniel Maher and Sergio Mena.

Alaniz was convicted in 1997 of vehicle theft and served a five-month custodial sentence and 13 months on parole. The pardon statement said that Alaniz is active in his church and volunteers for a youth sports program.

Maher was convicted in 1995 of kidnapping, robbery and firearm charges. He served five years in prison and three years on parole. Originally from Macau, a small Chinese territory, Maher and his family moved to the United States legally when he was 3 years old, KQED reported.

[ Trump pardons former Arizona sheriff Joe Arpaio ]

Maher is now the recycling program director of Ecology Center, a nonprofit organization based in Berkeley, Calif. He had been under the threat of deportation to China since at least 2015, according to the center, which launched a petition, held news conferences and organized a rally in San Francisco on Maher’s behalf.

“Daniel’s case is of a person who made one mistake as a young adult, served his time and then completely turned his life around,” the center said. “He is an asset to all who know him.”

Mena was convicted in 2003 of possession of a controlled substance for sale and served three years of probation.

A gubernatorial pardon does not guarantee that a person will not be deported, but it does erase the conviction that triggered possible deportation. It also makes a person eligible to apply for naturalization, said Margaret Stock, a retired Army officer and an Anchorage-based immigration lawyer.

“Normally, it’s not done lightly, and normally it’s only done when somebody has shown rehabilitation,” Stock said. “We also have a principle in America that we allow people to rehabilitate themselves. … It’s a power given to governors and presidents because people think that you should be allowed to forgive people.”

Trump’s tweet criticizing Brown is “odd,” Stock said, “because the president himself has exercised the pardon power.” She cited Trump’s decision to pardon Joe Arpaio, a former sheriff of Maricopa County, Ariz., and one of the president’s staunchest political allies and a hard-liner on immigration. The August pardon came less than a month after Arpaio was convicted of criminal contempt for ignoring a judge’s order to stop detaining people merely because he suspected them of being undocumented immigrants.

Friday’s executive actions weren’t the first time Brown has pardoned immigrants facing deportation. In December, the governor pardoned two men who, like Chhan, fled Cambodia as children during the Khmer Rouge regime and later lost their legal status after committing crimes.

In April, Brown pardoned three deported veterans who committed crimes after leaving the military. One is Hector Barajas-Varela, an Army veteran who was granted U.S. citizenship last week, 14 years after he was deported to Mexico.

David Weigel and Matt Zapotosky contributed to this article.

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The teenager was one of at least 15 people killed in the Gaza Strip by Israeli forces on Friday during what Palestinian factions billed as a peaceful “March of Return” to mark Land Day, the anniversary of the expropriation of Arab-owned land by the Israeli government in 1976. But it ended as the bloodiest day in the 140-square-mile territory since the 2014 war between Israel and Hamas, the militant group that controls Gaza.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu praised the Israeli military for guarding the country’s borders. “Israel will act firmly and decisively to protect its sovereignty and the security of its citizens,” he said in a statement Saturday.

The Israeli military has warned that it will “expand” its response if violence continues. Hamas and other factions in Gaza have vowed to keep up demonstrations, raising fears of more clashes.

Video posted to YouTube appears to show the moment Abdul Fattah Abdul Nabi was shot.

Abdul Fattah’s family is among those demanding an investigation into the Israeli response to the protest, saying videos show he posed no threat. More than 700 people were injured with live ammunition in the demonstration, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry in Gaza. Forty-nine were wounded Saturday, it said.

The United Nations on Saturday said it was “deeply concerned” and called for a transparent, independent investigation. The Israeli human rights group Adalah and the Gaza-based Al Mezan Center for Human Rights wrote to Israeli Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit to demand accountability.

In the letter, they said the use of live fire against civilians was a “blatant violation of international laws.” 

Israel said it stuck to strict rules of engagement to deal with a 30,000-strong crowd along the border, saying “rioters” threw molotov cocktails and stones, burned tires, and tried to break through the fence.

The Israeli military did not immediately respond Saturday to requests to clarify the rules of engagement that were followed. In the days preceding the demonstration, the military dropped leaflets warning residents of Gaza to stay at least 300 meters from the border fence or risk being shot. 

Israel accused Hamas of using the cover of peaceful demonstrations to carry out attacks. Hamas said five of those killed were members of its military wing, releasing their names and pictures.

Israel put the number of Hamas militants killed at eight, including a 20-year-old with a name similar to Abdul Fattah’s. Israel said two others among the dead also were members of militant groups.

Abdul Fattah’s family said he worked in his brother’s falafel shop during the week and in a kitchen on Fridays. They said he did not belong to an armed faction.

Unlike at funeral tents for dead militants, there were no signs indicating he had an allegiance to any group.

Posters bearing his photo in the funeral tent showed him wearing a black bow tie rather than the military garb typical of fighters. The Israeli military did not respond to a request for comment Saturday to clarify the name discrepancy.

His family, though, made no effort to hide the fact that Abdul Fattah went to demonstrations and threw stones. That was no reason for him to be shot, they said.

“They were throwing stones, but the stones never even reached the fence,” said 28-year-old Alaa Abdul Nabi, another brother of the slain demonstrator. “It’s a message, to throw a stone from our land.”

Many demonstrators said they were there to protest peacefully. The family of 20-year-old Badr Sabbagh said he had just arrived to watch the demonstrations when he was shot. They rejected the Israeli army’s assertion that everyone killed was involved in violence.  

“He asked for a cigarette, I gave it to him, he had two puffs, and then he was shot in the head,” said Mohammed Sabbagh, his 29-year-old brother. “He’d only been there 10 minutes.” 

“I took my grandchildren. We went to a peaceful demonstration,” said his father, Fayik Sabbagh, 64. “We went there to tell them this is our land, but what we found was different.” 

The demonstrations, which Hamas and other Palestinian factions hope to sustain for another month and a half, had subsided Saturday, with thinner crowds at the border than a day earlier.

In response to the video of Abdul Fattah’s killing, the Israeli military warned that Hamas had published several videos of Friday’s events, “some of which only depict parts of incidents while others are edited or completely fabricated.” 

Two other videos circulated online showed the shooting from different angles, while witnesses said Abdul Fattah was clearly running away from the fence. 

Palestinian photographer Mahmoud Abu Salama was taking pictures at the time and captured Abdul Fattah’s last moments. He said a man seen wearing a green shirt in the video had run toward the border fence to retrieve a tire left there earlier in the morning. He is seen in the video crawling on his belly toward the tire, then picking it up and running back to the crowd as bullets kick up dust around his feet. As he stumbles, Abdul Fattah runs to help him and grabs the tire. 

Abdul Fattah was shot from behind a few hundred meters away from the fence, Salama said. 

“He was killed in cold blood,” Alaa said. “We will report that to the United Nations. We want to know who participated in killing him. He wasn’t armed.” 

But he had little hope that anyone would be held accountable, a sentiment echoed by the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem. 

“These are the predictable outcomes of a manifestly illegal command: Israeli soldiers shooting live ammunition at unarmed Palestinian protesters,” said Amit Gilutz, a spokesman for the group. “What is predictable, too, is that no one — from the snipers on the ground to top officials whose policies have turned Gaza into a giant prison — is likely to be ever held accountable.” 

Abdul Fattah, like the majority of Gazans of his generation, had never left the Gaza Strip. Israel has imposed tight restrictions on the movement of goods and people since Hamas took control of the enclave in 2007.  

Over the past year, though, the United Nations has warned that the humanitarian situation in Gaza is rapidly deteriorating, adding that the economy and services may collapse. The unemployment rate is estimated to be about 50 percent. 

Israel blames Hamas for the worsening humanitarian situation, saying the group diverts money it should use for the benefit of its civilians to nefarious military activities.  

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Today’s coverage from Post correspondents around the world

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