Trump administration sending Marines to LA in response to immigration protests
The administration of US President Donald Trump says it is sending Marines to Los Angeles in response to protests over its immigration policy. It earlier deployed National Guard troops to the city.
The protests started last week over a crackdown on undocumented immigrants.
Some protesters have turned violent. On Monday, demonstrations took place in several locations in the central part of the city.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced on Monday about 700 Marines will be sent to the Los Angeles area.
The Wall Street Journal said that the last time Marines were deployed to quell civil unrest in the country was during the 1992 Los Angeles riots.
The Associated Press quoted a US official as saying Marines will have protective equipment including helmets, shields and gas masks.
California Governor Gavin Newsom has criticized the decision to deploy Marines as excessive.
Protests against the immigration policy have spread to other parts of the country including New York, San Francisco and cities in Texas.
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Japan Today
32 minutes ago
- Japan Today
Police detain more than 20 people on first night of curfew in downtown Los Angeles
A protester is arrested by California Highway Patrol near the federal building in downtown Los Angeles on Tuesday. By CHRISTOPHER WEBER, AMY TAXIN, JAKE OFFENHARTZ and JOHN SEEWER Police detained more than 20 people, mostly on curfew violations, on the first night of restrictions in downtown Los Angeles and used crowd-control projectiles to break up hundreds of protesters demonstrating against President Donald Trump's immigration crackdown, officials said Wednesday. But there were fewer clashes between police and demonstrators than on previous nights, and by daybreak, the downtown streets were bustling with residents walking dogs and commuters clutching coffee cups. Officials said the curfew was necessary to stop vandalism and theft by agitators after five days of protests, which have mostly been concentrated downtown. Demonstrations have also spread to other cities nationwide, including Dallas and Austin in Texas, and Chicago and New York, where thousands rallied and more arrests were made. LA's nightly curfew, which the mayor said would remain in effect as long as necessary, covers a 1-square-mile (2.5-square-kilometer) section that includes an area where protests have occurred since Friday in the sprawling city of 4 million. The city of Los Angeles encompasses roughly 500 square miles (1,295 square kilometers). "If there are raids that continue, if there are soldiers marching up and down our streets, I would imagine that the curfew will continue,' Mayor Karen Bass said. The tensions in LA and elsewhere emerged as immigration authorities seek to dramatically increase the number of daily arrests across the country. Bass said the raids spread fear across the city at the behest of the White House. 'We started off by hearing the administration wanted to go after violent felons, gang members, drug dealers,' she told a news conference. 'But when you raid Home Depots and workplaces, when you tear parents and children apart, and when you run armored caravans through our streets, you're not trying to keep anyone safe. You're trying to cause fear and panic.' Referring to the protests, she added: 'If you drive a few blocks outside of downtown, you don't know that anything is happening in the city at all.' Some 2,000 National Guard soldiers are in the city, and about half of them have been protecting federal buildings and agents, said Army Maj. Gen. Scott Sherman, head of Task Force 51, which is overseeing the deployment of National Guard and Marines to Los Angeles. About 700 Marines will soon join the Guard troops, but they are still undergoing training and will not be mobilized Wednesday, Sherman said. Another 2,000 Guard troops should be on the streets by Thursday, he said. Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom has accused Trump of drawing a 'military dragnet' across the nation's second-largest city with his escalating use of the National Guard, which Trump activated, along with the Marines, over the objections of city and state leaders. Newsom asked a court to put an emergency stop to the military helping federal immigration agents. The assistance includes some guardsmen now standing protectively around agents as they carry out arrests. A judge set a hearing for Thursday, giving the administration several days to continue its activities. The change moves the military closer to engaging in law enforcement actions such as deportations, as Trump has promised as part of his immigration crackdown. The Guard has the authority to temporarily detain people who attack officers, but any arrests would be made by law enforcement. The president posted on the Truth Social platform that the city 'would be burning to the ground' if he had not sent in the military. Meanwhile in New York City, police said they took 86 people into custody during protests in lower Manhattan that lasted into Wednesday morning. Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch said the vast majority of demonstrators were peaceful. A 66-year-old woman in Chicago was injured when she was struck by a car during downtown protests Tuesday evening, police said. Video showed a car speeding down a street where people were protesting. In Texas, where police in Austin used chemical irritants to disperse several hundred demonstrators Monday, Republican Gov. Greg Abbott's office said Texas National Guard troops were 'on standby" in areas where demonstrations are planned. Guard members were sent to San Antonio, but Police Chief William McManus said he had not been told how many troops were deployed or their role ahead of planned protests Wednesday night and Saturday. Two people accused of throwing Molotov cocktails at police during the LA protests over the weekend face charges that could bring up to 10 years in prison, the Justice Department announced Wednesday. No one was injured by the devices. One of the suspects is a U.S. citizen, and the other overstayed a tourist visa and was in the U.S. illegally, authorities said. 'We are looking at hundreds of people,' U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli said. 'If you took part in these riots and were looking to cause trouble, we will come looking for you.' Trump has called the protesters 'animals' and 'a foreign enemy' and described Los Angeles in dire terms that the governor says is nowhere close to the truth. Newsom called Trump's actions the start of an 'assault' on democracy. 'California may be first, but it clearly will not end here. Other states are next,' he said. The protests began Friday after federal immigration raids arrested dozens of workers in Los Angeles. Protesters blocked a major freeway and set cars on fire over the weekend, and police responded with tear gas, rubber bullets and flash-bang grenades. Thousands of people have peacefully rallied outside City Hall and hundreds more protested outside a federal complex that includes a detention center where some immigrants are being held following workplace raids. Despite the protests, immigration enforcement activity has continued throughout the county, with city leaders and community groups reporting U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement present at libraries, car washes and Home Depots. School graduations in Los Angeles have increased security over fears of ICE action, and some have offered parents the option to watch on Zoom. Los Angeles police detained 200 people related to the protests throughout the day on Tuesday, including 67 who were occupying a freeway, according to the city's chief. The majority of arrests since the protests began have been for failing to disperse, while a few others were for assault with a deadly weapon, looting and vandalism. At least seven police officers have been injured. Associated Press writers Julie Watson in San Diego, Jesse Bedayn in Denver, Jim Vertuno in Austin, Texas, contributed to this report. © Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.
Japan Today
32 minutes ago
- Japan Today
Trump administration reviewing Biden-era submarine pact with Australia, UK
FILE PHOTO: U.S. President Donald Trump speaks during a swearing-in ceremony of Special Envoy Steve Witkoff in the Oval Office at the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S., May 6, 2025. REUTERS/Kent Nishimura/File Photo By Phil Stewart, Idrees Ali and David Brunnstrom U.S. President Donald Trump's administration has launched a formal review of a defense pact worth hundreds of billions of dollars that former President Joe Biden made with Australia and the United Kingdom, allowing Australia to acquire conventionally armed nuclear submarines, a U.S. defense official told Reuters. The formal Pentagon-led review is likely to alarm Australia, which sees the submarines as critical to its own defense as tensions grow over China's expansive military buildup. It could also throw a wrench in Britain's defense planning. AUKUS is at the center of a planned expansion of its submarine fleet. "We are reviewing AUKUS as part of ensuring that this initiative of the previous administration is aligned with the President's America First agenda," the official said of the review, which was first reported by Financial Times. "Any changes to the administration's approach for AUKUS will be communicated through official channels, when appropriate." AUKUS, formed in 2021 to address shared worries about China's growing power, is designed to allow Australia to acquire nuclear-powered attack submarines and other advanced weapons such as hypersonic missiles. Vocal skeptics of the AUKUS deal among Trump's senior policy officials include Elbridge Colby, the Pentagon's top policy advisor. In a 2024 talk with Britain's Policy Exchange think-tank, Colby cautioned that U.S. military submarines were a scarce, critical commodity, and that U.S. industry could not produce enough of them to meet American demand. They would also be central to U.S. military strategy in any confrontation with China centered in the First Island Chain, an area that runs from Japan through Taiwan, the Philippines and on to Borneo, enclosing China's coastal seas. "CROWN JEWEL" "My concern is why are we giving away this crown jewel asset when we most need it," Colby said. The Australian and UK embassies in Washington did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The U.S. National Security Council also did not immediately respond to a request for comment. AUKUS is Australia's biggest-ever defense project, with Canberra committing to spend A$368 billion ($240 billion) over three decades on the program, which includes billions of dollars of investment in the U.S. production base. News of the U.S. review comes hours after the British government announced plans to invest billions of pounds to upgrade its submarine industrial base, including at BAE Systems in Barrow and Rolls-Royce Submarines in Derby, to allow the increase in submarine production rate announced in Britain's Strategic Defence Review. Britain said this month it would build up to 12 next-generation attack submarines of the model intended to be jointly developed by the UK, U.S. and Australia under AUKUS. Only six countries operate nuclear submarines: the U.S., the UK, Russia, China, France and India. AUKUS would add Australia to that club starting in 2032 with the U.S. sale of Virginia-class submarines. Before that, the U.S. and Britain would start forward rotations of their submarines in 2027 out of an Australian naval base in Western Australia. Later, Britain and Australia would design and build a new class of submarines, with U.S. assistance, with the first delivery to the UK in the late 2030s and to Australia in the early 2040s. Although Australia has declined to say ahead of time whether it would send the submarines to join U.S. forces in any conflict between the U.S. and China, Colby noted Australia's historic alliance with Washington, including sending troops to Vietnam. "I think we can make a decent bet that Australia would be there with us in the event of a conflict," Colby said last year. Speaking in Congress on Tuesday, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said "we're having honest conversations with our allies." On Australia, Hegseth said: "We want to make sure those capabilities are part of how they use them with their submarines, but also how they integrate with us as allies." Former Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, who signed a previous agreement to acquire French submarines that was shelved in favor of AUKUS, told CNBC last week it was "more likely than not that Australia will not end up with any submarines at all, but instead, simply provide a large base in Western Australia for the American Navy and maintenance facilities there." © Thomson Reuters 2025.
Japan Today
42 minutes ago
- Japan Today
Los Angeles protests follow weeks of intensifying immigration enforcement
By VALERIE GONZALEZ Police use pepper spray as they move protesters away from a van leaving the Federal Building in Santa Ana, Calif., on Monday, June 9, 2025. (Jeff Gritchen/The Orange County Register via AP) The Pentagon's deployment of about 700 Marines to Los Angeles to join the National Guard's response to immigration protests follows weeks of rapid-fire developments as President Donald Trump pursues his top domestic priority for mass deportations. Stephen Miller, the White House deputy chief of staff and chief architect of Trump's immigration policies, said late last month that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement should make at least 3,000 arrests a day. That would mark a dramatic increase from Jan. 20 to May 19, when the agency made an average of 656 arrests a day. Miller's target has brought new strains on immigration detention and increased ICE's presence to a level with no recent parallels. Tensions soared in Los Angeles after a series of sweeps starting last week, including in the city's fashion district and a Home Depot, pushed the tally of immigrant arrests in the city past 100. A prominent union leader was arrested while protesting and accused of impeding law enforcement. Trump sent the National Guard and Marines over objections of state officials. But even before Los Angeles, ICE stepped up its presence with rare shows of force featuring officers in heavy tactical gear firing flash bangs. Officers engaged in a tense standoff at a popular Italian restaurant in San Diego's trendy South Park neighborhood on May 30 in an operation that resulted in four immigration arrests. In Massachusetts, a high school student was arrested on May 31 on the way to volleyball practice. Asked why ICE detained an 18-year-old with no criminal record, acting ICE Director Todd Lyons answered, 'I didn't say he was dangerous. I said he's in this country illegally and we're not going to walk away from anybody.' ICE has also worked with the Tennessee Highway Patrol, which conducted nearly 600 traffic stops and arrested about 200 people in recent weeks. With no additional funding and limited staff, ICE is drawing from other federal agencies and local police to carry out deportations. The number of 287(g) agreements to deputize local police to enforce federal immigration laws has more than quadrupled — to about 650 — since Trump took office in January. ICE also lacks the detention space to carry out Trump's agenda, leading to overcrowding in some locations. The agency is budgeted to detain about 41,000 people but held more than 53,500 at the end of May, approaching the all-time highs of 2019. A massive spending bill winding through Congress calls for $45 billion to go toward increasing immigration detention capacity to 100,000 and $8 billion to add 10,000 ICE personnel. The Los Angeles arrests have created an opening for Trump to tie into one of his favorite targets: state and local governments that limit cooperation with federal immigration authorities. California limits cooperation except when people in the country illegally are convicted of serious crimes. The White House recently published a list of more than 500 'sanctuary' jurisdictions but removed it from its website after widespread criticism that it was inaccurate, including from allies like Huntington Beach, California. The volume of immigration policy changes has not slowed since Trump took office, reaching a breakneck pace in recent weeks. On Friday, Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Salvadoran man mistakenly deported and imprisoned without communication, was returned to the United States to face criminal charges related to human smuggling. People showing up for hearings to pursue legal status at immigration courtrooms have been met with a spate of arrests across the country. And a travel ban and restrictions on 19 countries took effect Monday. © Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.
