Pentagon to reportedly deploy hundreds of US marines to Los Angeles

The Guardian

4 hours ago

Hundreds of active-duty US marines are to be deployed in Los Angeles, it was reported on Monday, making good on Donald Trump's threat to send more troops to the city to quash protests against government immigration raids and deportations.
A US official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, told news agency Reuters that a battalion of 700 marines, reportedly from the Twentynine Palms base in southern California, would be sent to Los Angeles 'temporarily'. This was despite a relatively quiet day of protests in the city.
The official said there was no expectation that Trump was, for now at least, about to invoke the Insurrection Act, as some critics had suggested, Reuters reported. But the person added that the situation was 'fluid' and might change.
Senior ABC News senior national policy reporter Anne Flaherty wrote on X that the troops would be 'tasked with a support role, helping law enforcement only', while Reuters quoted the official as saying they would be 'protecting federal property and facilities'.
Twentynine Palms is home to US Marine Air Ground Task Force Training Command and Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center. Two defense department officials confirmed the number of 700 to NBC News.
On Saturday, Trump ordered 2,000 national guard troops to Los Angeles, which has seen three days of protests over raids by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) agency.
Pete Hegseth, the defense secretary, stated later the same day in a social media post that marines from Camp Pendleton, about 100 miles south of Los Angeles, were on 'high alert' and were ready to be mobilized.
On Monday, amid a feud with California's Democratic governor Gavin Newsom over the legality of such a move, Trump said he would not hesitate to send more troops.
'If I didn't get involved, if we didn't bring the guard in – and we would bring more in if we needed it, because we have to make sure there's going to be law and order – you had a disaster happening … they were overwhelmed, you saw what was happening,' the president said at a White House roundtable focused on business investment.
'It's lucky for the people in Los Angeles and in California that we did what we did. We got in just in time. It's still simmering a little bit, but not very much.'
Newson, meanwhile, called Trump's deployment of national guard troops in response to the largely peaceful protests an 'unmistakable step toward authoritarianism', as well as being 'illegal and immoral'.
'Every governor, red or blue, should reject this outrageous overreach,' he said in a statement.
'This is beyond incompetence. This is him intentionally causing chaos, terrorizing communities, and endangering the principles of our great democracy.'
Rob Bonta, the California attorney general, announced on Monday the state would file a lawsuit against the Trump administration for 'unlawfully' federalizing the state's national guard and deploying its troops to quell the protests.
Later in Monday's White House meeting, Trump insisted he had not yet made up his mind about sending marines. 'We'll see what happens,' he said when asked directly if he would do so.
'I think we have it very well under control. I think it would've been a very bad situation, it was heading in the wrong direction – it's now heading in the right direction.'
Some veterans have criticized Trump's decision to deploy national guard troops, warning he risked turning the traditionally neutral US military into a partisan political force.
'This is the politicization of the armed forces,' Maj Gen Paul Eaton told the Guardian.
'It casts the military in a terrible light – it's that man on horseback, who really doesn't want to be there, out in front of American citizens.'
NBC News said Monday that about 300 national guard troops were already in Los Angeles, with the remainder set to arrive by Wednesday.
US military personnel are prohibited from performing law-enforcement activities inside the country unless the president has invoked the Insurrection Act, an 1807 act of Congress that permits the federalization of national guard troops and deployment of standing units of the armed forces.
It was most recently invoked by President George HW Bush in May 1992 to suppress riots following the acquittal of Los Angeles police officers for beating the Black motorist Rodney King.