Latest news with #TaskForce51
Los Angeles Times
3 hours ago
- Politics
- Los Angeles Times
Marines on streets of L.A. bring peril, questions
After days of fiery protest against federal immigration raids, Los Angeles residents and officials braced for the arrival of hundreds of U.S. Marines on Tuesday in what some called an unprecedented and potentially explosive deployment of active-duty troops with hazy mission objectives. As Trump administration officials vowed to crack down on 'rioters, looters and thugs,' state local officials decried the mobilization of 700 troops from the Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center in Twentynine Palms, calling it a clear violation of law and civility. L.A. Mayor Karen Bass even likened the deployment to 'an experiment' that nobody asked to be a part of. According to the U.S. Northern Command, which oversees troops based in the United States, the Marines will join 'seamlessly' with National Guard troops under 'Task Force 51' — the military's designation of the Los Angeles forces. Air Force Gen. Gregory Guillot told The Times on Tuesday that the troops are in Los Angeles only to defend federal property and federal personnel and do not have arrest power. 'They are not law enforcement officers, and they do not have the authority to make arrests,' Guillot said. 'There are very unique situations where they could detain someone if detaining was necessary to defend, but they could only detain that person long enough to hand it off to a proper law enforcement official.' 'We're very highly trained, professional and disciplined,' he said. But military experts have raised practical concerns about the unclear parameters of the Marines' objective. They also warn that sending in Marines without a request from a governor — a highly unusual step that has not been made since the civil rights erain 1965 — could potentially inflame the situation. U.S. Marines are trained for overseas conflict zones, with deployments in recent decades in Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan. But the roles they play in those nations — including providing artillery support to coalition forces fighting against Islamic State militants and advising and training local security forces in Afghanistan — are quite different from what they might face as they confront American protesters in Los Angeles. 'Marines are trained to fight, that's the first thing they're trained to do,' said Jennifer Kavanagh, director of military analysis at Defense Priorities, a military research group. 'So I think you do have a little bit of mismatch in skills here.... 'In a crisis, when they're forced to make a snap decision, do they have enough training and experience to make the one that de-escalates the situation rather than escalates it? I think that's a question mark.' President Trump told U.S. Army troops at Ft. Bragg in North Carolina on Tuesday — hours after Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth told congressional lawmakers that the mobilization of troops to Los Angeles to curtail protests would cost $134 million — that he deployed thousands of National Guard troops and hundreds of Marines 'to protect federal law enforcement from the attacks of a vicious and violent mob.' But city and state officials have repeatedly said that troops are not necessary to contain the protests. On Monday night, California Gov. Gavin Newsom called the deployment of Marines 'a blatant abuse of power' and filed a lawsuit seeking to overturn the deployment. Los Angeles Police Chief Jim McDonnell warned that — 'absent clear coordination' — the prospect of Marines descending on Los Angeles 'presents a significant logistical and operational challenge for those of us charged with safeguarding this city.' It remains unclear exactly when and where Marines would arrive in Los Angeles. By Tuesday afternoon, a convoy of Marine vehicles from Twentynine Palms had arrived at Orange County's Naval Weapons Station Seal Beach under police escort. 'The Marines are on the base,' said Lt. Chris Hendrix of the Seal Beach Police Department. 'That started last night.' Northern Command confirmed only that members of the 2nd Battalion, 7th Marines had arrived in the Greater L.A. area, and declined to give specific information. It is rare for U.S. Marines to be sent to an American city. The last time they were deployed in the U.S. was after riots broke out in Los Angeles in 1992 after the acquittal of four LAPD officers who were recorded beating a Black motorist, Rodney G. King. Back then, President George H.W. Bush acted at the request of California Gov. Pete Wilson and Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley after what The Times described as 'three days of the worst urban unrest in Los Angeles history.' Deploying Marines to Los Angeles is not only a dramatic escalation of events, but also potentially illegal, according to Abigail Hall, a defense scholar and senior fellow at the Independent Institute, a nonprofit think tank based in Oakland. Bringing in the Marines to L.A., she said, violates the Posse Comitatus Act, an 1878 law enacted after the Civil War, which forbids active-duty federal forces to provide regular civilian law enforcement unless authorized by Congress or the president invokes the Insurrection Act. Trump has yet to invoke the Insurrection Act. 'I don't see any way that this is not a direct violation of the Posse Comitatus Act,' Hall said. 'We're not at war, we've not invoked the Insurrection Act of 1807 — and even if we did, that's what the National Guard is for. It's not what the Marines are for.' Gregory Magarian, a law professor at Washington University in St. Louis, said that deploying active-duty troops in a domestic law enforcement setting — without the request or even consent of the state and local officials — is 'just another step down a very dangerous road.' 'What are they going to use these troops for?' Magarian asked. 'In order to use the federal forces for law enforcement purposes, particularly the active-duty military, Trump would need to invoke the Insurrection Act. That's the next big line in the sand. If he invokes the Insurrection Act, that's worse. That's a really huge problem.' Kavanagh didn't comment on the deployment's legality but called it unprecedented in modern times, and worried that could make its mission and parameters unclear for troops. The last time the military was deployed without a governor's request or approval, military experts said, was to facilitate desegregation in Southern states during the civil rights movement in the 1960s. Kori Schake, senior fellow and director of foreign and defense policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute, said the Trump administration appeared to be trying out a new way to get around the restrictions on domestic law enforcement by the American military. 'The authority the president is claiming is his constitutional authority under what's called the Take Care clause ... he's claiming the federal responsibility to protect federal agents and federal property operations. That authority has never been tested in court.' Such an approach, Schake said, was fraught with more than legal risk. 'If violence burgeons, tempers are running high, the Marines are armed, this could spiral out of control,' Schake said. The L.A. deployment, Kavanagh said, could be a jarring mission for Marines who signed up to go abroad and defend America's freedom — and instead are facing off with fellow citizens. 'Does everyone know the rules of engagement?' Kavanagh asked of the L.A. mission. 'Are they clear?' 'Military personnel are generally trained to respond to crises abroad and they're trained for offensive operations and engagement with the enemy, not necessarily crowd control or protest management,' Kavanagh said. 'So it would seem to me that unless there's a pressing need or a clear, demonstrated gap that local law enforcement can't fill — which, from my understanding, is not the case — then this is not the time for any type of military force to be called in.' Of all the military branches, the Marines retain the youngest service member on average due to the intense physical nature of the training. Nearly three-quarters of active-duty enlisted members of the Marine Corps are 25 or younger, according to a 2022 Department of Defense report. The average age is 24, compared with 27 for the Army and 28 for the Air Force. Marines may be the youngest cohort in the military, Schake said, but they are also well trained in de-escalation tactics. 'The wars that the United States has been fighting for the last 25 years have required incredible discipline on the use of force by the military in Afghanistan and in Iraq in particular, so they are trained for de-escalating conflict,' Schake said. 'I think actually, it's quite possible they're better trained at de-escalation of violence than the police forces are.' Still, Schake said, she was less worried about violence than 'creeping authoritarianism.' 'The way the president, that Homeland secretary, the secretary of Defense, the White House press spokesman are talking is incendiary and reckless,' Schake said. 'They're calling the city of Los Angeles — where 1 in 40 Americans live — a hellscape, and everybody in the city a criminal. They're describing protests that are really peaceful as an insurrection. And that's a very reckless thing to do in a in a difficult situation.' Times staff writers Hayley Smith and Christopher Buchanan contributed to this report.
Yahoo
6 hours ago
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Celebrities react to LA protest against ICE detention policies
Following Donald Trump's deployment of the National Guard to Los Angeles, artists have been speaking out against U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) deportation raids and offering support to protestors in LA. As reported by Euronews, Trump deployed another 2,100 National Guard members and 700 US Marines, in what the authorities have dubbed Task Force 51 meant to "provide continuous coverage of the area" as unrest in Los Angeles continues. Many celebrities posted messages on social media supporting the protestors and criticising the National Guard's deployment, including Eva Longoria and Mark Ruffalo. Longoria took to Instagram to express her frustration and described the actions as 'Un-American', while Ruffalo shared a lengthy message to Instagram with the caption: "When you have working class people going after the poor and other working class people you know you are living in an oligarchy." He added: "The billionaire up at the top is stealing you blind, and you are worried about the poorest of the poor ruining your life? You are pointing your guns in the wrong direction... The president is a grifter." Ruffalo's post went viral, racking up to 200,000 likes—including from other celebrities, including Jennifer Garner and Halle Berry. Voir cette publication sur Instagram Une publication partagée par Mark Ruffalo (@markruffalo) Green Day's Billie Joe Armstrong posted a scene from one of the LA protests to his Instagram over the weekend, which he captioned with a middle finger emoji and an ice cube emoji, while Tyler, The Creator wrote on his Instagram Story: 'FUCK ICE.' Singer and actress Reneé Rapp also condemned ICE's actions, writing: 'Fuck ICE fuck this administration fuck all of yall who are complicit in ensuring that this happened this is a fucking disgrace.' One of the most notable reactions came from Oscar-winning singer-songwriter Finneas, brother of Billie Eilish, who attended the 'very peaceful protests' himself and claimed to have been teargassed by authorities. 'Tear-gassed almost immediately at the very peaceful protest downtown. They're inciting this,' he wrote on Instagram. Finneas also reposted a clip that appeared to show a reporter, Lauren Tomasi, being shot in the leg with a rubber bullet by law enforcement while she was reporting from the scene. Elsewhere, Grammy-winning rapper Doechii spoke out against the immigration raids in Los Angeles at the 2025 BET Awards last her speech, Doechii said that though she was 'honoured' by the award, she wanted to 'address what is happening right now outside of the building'. 'There are ruthless attacks that are creating fear and chaos in our communities in the name of law and order,' she continued, citing Trump's deployment of the National Guard. 'Trump is using military forces to stop a protest,' Doechii added. 'I want you all to consider what kind of government it appears to be when every time we exercise our democratic right to protest, the military is deployed against us. What type of government is that?'The heated situation has also prompted a fierce political backlash. Governor Gavin Newsom took to X to announce his plans to sue the federal government over the National Guard deployment, calling it 'an unconstitutional act.' "This is exactly what Donald Trump wanted. He flamed the fires and illegally acted to federalize the National Guard. The order he signed doesn't just apply to CA (California). It will allow him to go into ANY STATE and do the same thing. We're suing him."
Yahoo
7 hours ago
- Politics
- Yahoo
Hundreds of Marines Deployed to Los Angeles Amid Protests
Members of the California National Guard stand watch outside the Edward R. Roybal Federal Building. Credit - Ronaldo Schemidt —Anadolu via Getty Images Around 700 Marines are deploying to the Los Angeles area to protect federal buildings and law enforcement in the wake of protests over the Trump Administration's immigration raids. The troops will join the thousands of National Guard members who were already activated by President Donald Trump over the weekend without the consent of California's governor Gavin Newsom. 'If I didn't 'SEND IN THE TROOPS' to Los Angeles the last three nights, that once beautiful and great City would be burning to the ground right now, much like 25,000 houses burned to the ground in L.A. due to an incompetent Governor and Mayor,' Trump posted on Truth Social Tuesday morning, referring to the January wildfires that were caused by dry conditions and strong winds. Read more: Inside Donald Trump's Mass-Deportation Operation The deployment of the 2nd Battalion, 7th Marines—based at the Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center in Twentynine Palms, Calif.—marks the first time in over three decades that Marines have been mobilized inside the United States to respond to civil unrest. Their presence represents a striking escalation of federal involvement in what began as local protests over immigration enforcement. Asked if he would invoke the Insurrection Act, a rarely used 1792 statute allowing the president to use the military to suppress domestic unrest, Trump told reporters Tuesday that 'if there's an insurrection, I would certainly invoke it. We'll see. But I can tell you, last night was terrible. The night before that was terrible.' Trump has not invoked the Insurrection Act. Instead, he is relying on a broader presidential authority to protect federal property. Legal experts say that distinction may ultimately determine whether the deployments are deemed lawful. The Posse Comitatus Act of 1878 prohibits the use of the military for domestic law enforcement without specific legal authorization—a principle the Trump Administration insists it is not violating, since the Marines will not be arresting or directly interacting with protesters. 'There were certain areas of Los Angeles' on Monday night that 'you could have called it an insurrection,' Trump said. 'It was terrible.' The estimated cost of deploying the National Guard and the Marines to the Los Angeles area is $134 million, according to Bryn MacDonnell, a top Pentagon official testifying before the House on Tuesday. While the Marines are expected to avoid direct engagement with demonstrators, the symbolism of active-duty troops patrolling the streets of Los Angeles has reignited deep political tensions and legal debates over the limits of federal power. The Marines are tasked with protecting federal facilities and personnel, according to a statement from U.S. Northern Command, and will operate under Task Force 51—a contingency unit created to coordinate military support for domestic emergencies. Read more: Can the President Activate a State's National Guard? "We believe ICE agents should be allowed to be safe in doing their operations, and we have deployed National Guard and the Marines to protect them in the execution of their duties," U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said during a hearing in Congress on Tuesday when asked about the deployment of Marines and National Guard troops to Los Angeles. Newsom, who has publicly condemned the federal response as both unlawful and inflammatory, described the Marine deployment as 'unprecedented' and 'completely unwarranted.' 'They shouldn't be deployed on American soil facing their own countrymen to fulfill the deranged fantasy of a dictatorial President,' Newsom said on X. His office filed a lawsuit on Monday seeking to block the deployment, arguing that Trump had 'trampled' the state's sovereignty by bypassing both the governor and Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass. The protests began Friday after Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents carried out coordinated raids across Los Angeles, detaining dozens of workers at warehouses and other worksites. The arrests sparked immediate backlash, with demonstrators converging outside federal buildings, blocking freeways, and in some cases clashing with police. Read more: Why Waymo's Self-Driving Cars Became a Target of Protesters in Los Angeles By Sunday, as images of burning self-driving cars and confrontations near the downtown federal detention center spread across social media, Trump issued a presidential order deploying 2,000 National Guard troops. A second order followed Monday night, calling for an additional 2,000 troops. Pentagon officials confirmed that about 1,700 Guard members were already active in the greater Los Angeles area by late Monday, and the Marines would be joining them in a 'support' capacity. The deployments have touched a raw nerve in California, where Democratic leaders say Trump is overstepping his constitutional authority in pursuit of political spectacle. The governor's office said that only a fraction of the initially deployed Guard members had been given orders, and many remained inside federal facilities awaiting direction. 'This isn't about public safety,' Newsom said on X. 'It's about stroking a dangerous President's ego.' Mayor Bass echoed those sentiments, calling the influx of troops 'a deliberate attempt to create disorder and chaos in our city.' She urged the federal government to halt the raids and allow local authorities to manage the situation. Los Angeles Police Chief Jim McDonnell also expressed frustration with the federal operation, warning that the sudden arrival of troops presented 'significant logistical and operational challenges.' In a statement, McDonnell emphasized the need for clear communication between agencies, noting that the LAPD had successfully handled large-scale protests in the past. Sheheryar Kaoosji, the executive director at Warehouse Workers Resource Center, a nonprofit that seeks to improve working conditions in the warehouse industry, warns that both the immigration raids and the Administration's response to the protests could deal a blow to businesses in the area—and the broader economy. 'Between the actual ICE activity and then the escalation by the Administration to suppress protest, it's not just affecting people going to work, but there's not gonna be tourism in L.A.,' he says. 'It's going to kill the economy of not just California but the country.' The federal government has framed the move as a necessary precaution amid what it says are credible threats to federal personnel and infrastructure, claiming the military's presence was meant to deter violence and protect immigration officers working in increasingly volatile conditions. The last time Marines were deployed to the streets of Los Angeles was in 1992, following days of rioting after the acquittal of officers in the beating of Rodney King. In that case, President George H.W. Bush acted at the request of then-Gov. Pete Wilson and invoked the Insurrection Act. Read more: The Most Memorable Photos of Protests Erupting in Los Angeles Over Immigration Raids Despite the dramatic federal presence, most of Monday's demonstrations remained peaceful. Thousands gathered at City Hall for a union-led rally demanding an end to immigration raids. Outside the federal detention center, protesters held hands and chanted, 'Free them all!' and 'National Guard, go away.' Still, by evening, confrontations had resumed. Police began using tear gas and flash-bang grenades to disperse crowds near the Little Tokyo neighborhood, where at least a dozen people were detained. In nearby Paramount, where more arrests had occurred during earlier raids, family members of detainees held a press conference demanding information about their loved ones. Additional protests against immigration raids have continued in several other cities, including San Francisco and Dallas. Andrew Chow contributed reporting. Write to Nik Popli at
Yahoo
10 hours ago
- Politics
- Yahoo
Trump Deploys Marines to L.A.
700 Marines dispatched: President Donald Trump sent 700 Marines to California, where riots and protests against immigration raids are still going on, to protect federal property and personnel. This follows the deployment of the National Guard and several days of protests in San Francisco and Los Angeles that local and state police have struggled to get under control. Of course, the administration hasn't decided what the rules of engagement are just yet. Or where the deployed troops should sleep: "A statement by the U.S. Northern Command said that 2,100 National Guard soldiers and 700 Marines will protect federal personnel and property under the command of Task Force 51, the headquarters that has been assigned the mission," reports The Wall Street Journal. "The forces have been trained in de-escalation, crowd control, and standing rules for the use of force, the command said." But California's governor, Gavin Newsom, has objected to these deployments, saying this is escalatory and a violation of state sovereignty. And yesterday, the state sued the Trump administration over its deployment of state troops and U.S. Marines, calling it "illegal." Bloomberg notes: The law strictly limits the federal deployment of troops within US borders. The 1878 Posse Comitatus Act, along with amendments and supporting regulations, generally bars the use of the active-duty U.S. military—the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marines—from carrying out domestic law enforcement. Important exceptions to the 1878 law are contained in the 1807 Insurrection Act and its modern iterations, which allow the president, without congressional approval, to employ the military for domestic use in certain circumstances. The Insurrection Act has been used very rarely to deploy troops under federal control domestically without a request from a state government, with examples mostly dating from the Civil Rights era. So this might explain Trump's use of insurrectionist language: He's giving himself legal room, and he's already made clear he loves using statutes from the 18th and 19th centuries, meant for times of war, to expand his own power. "The people who are causing the problems are bad people, they are insurrectionists," the president told a group of reporters Monday. He added that Newsom, a vociferous critic of the administration's actions, is "a nice guy" but also "grossly incompetent." Border czar Tom Homan has been making the TV rounds, promising arrests for anyone who obstructs Immigration and Customs Enforcement's ability to do its job—hinting that even public officials might meet a sorry fate. "Come and get me, tough guy," Newsom had told Homan, antagonizing him a bit. "I'd do it if I were Tom," said the president. But like so much of partisan politics right now, all that appears to have been bluster. "There's no intention to arrest" California's governor, Homan backtracked yesterday. RFK Jr.'s big shakeup: Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. just fired the entire 17-member Advisory Committee for Immunization Practices (ACIP), which reports its findings to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, "to avoid conflicts of interest" and to "restore public trust in vaccines." "The U.S. faces a crisis of public trust," writes Kennedy in The Wall Street Journal. "Whether toward health agencies, pharmaceutical companies or vaccines themselves, public confidence is waning. Some would try to explain this away by blaming misinformation or antiscience attitudes. To do so, however, ignores a history of conflicts of interest, persecution of dissidents, a lack of curiosity, and skewed science that has plagued the vaccine regulatory apparatus for decades." Kennedy cites the Rotashield incident as an example: "Committee members regularly participated in deliberations and advocated products in which they had a financial stake," he argues in the Journal. "The CDC issued conflict-of-interest waivers to every committee member. Four out of eight ACIP members who voted in 1997 on guidelines for the Rotashield vaccine, subsequently withdrawn because of severe adverse events, had financial ties to pharmaceutical companies developing other rotavirus vaccines." This was further confirmed by the HHS Inspector General's report in 2009. Some of these now-dismissed ACIP appointees had been selected by former President Joe Biden in January. The last-minute series of appointments seems to have been intended to preserve a pro-vaccine majority on ACIP heading into a potential shift like the one we're seeing now. But Biden may not have taken into account the degree to which the Trump administration prefers to move fast and break things. Like with so much of what RFK Jr. peddles, there's a grain of truth within: The Rotashield incident was disturbing, and increased transparency into advisory committee actions would be good; but an incident from 30 years ago (that was subsequently investigated and rectified) doesn't necessarily mean the whole advisory board should be thrown out or that all of their decision making is invalidated. And Kennedy relies on strange reasoning at times, objecting to the "exploding" immunization schedule. But the sheer number of doses recommended does not tell us very much about whether those vaccines are safe and valuable, and what types of risks are present. It's hard to say how much this actually changes things or how worried you should be: ACIP reviews new vaccines but is also tasked with evaluating existing vaccines. Lots of families already make the choice to deviate from the standard vaccination schedule, mostly in minor ways that don't really cause significant issues with herd immunity (i.e. delaying a less-important vaccine—think rotavirus or PCV, not polio—by six months or 1 year, or spacing out the doses). The traditional childhood vaccines—polio, MMR, DTaP—still have rather high uptake rates (over 90 percent; higher for polio), and newer vaccines not generally required by public schools like HPV and COVID have high opt-out rates. Though skepticism toward the MMR vaccine has increased at times since the '90s, uptake is still decently high. It will probably take a long time for school immunization schedules to drastically change, and parents' decisions will probably continue to roughly track those requirements; but it is also possible that a new ACIP could overhaul all of this, give parents worse recommendations for how to vaccinate their children that lead to cyclical outbreaks (like measles), or that a showdown could take place where school districts and the federal government are at odds as to what requirements ought to exist. "I support vaccines," RFK Jr. said in his confirmation hearings back in January. "I support the childhood [immunization] schedule." Maybe so, but in his new posting, he has an awful lot of power to alter both requirements and recommendations. Turns out Cabinet appointments have real consequences. Scenes from New York: The state Senate passed the Medical Aid in Dying assisted suicide bill yesterday. Now it heads to Gov. Kathy Hochul's desk. But a few components of this bill make it very different from others in states like Oregon and Vermont: There's no waiting period and physicians aren't required to fill out reports to state authorities (so it will be very hard to track data to learn how many people are availing themselves of this option). Furthermore, the text specifies that assisted suicide is only available to patients who will be dead within six months according to "reasonable medical judgment" but it does not specify whether this means with or without treatment. "There is no waiting period in the New York bill. That's the first time I've seen this," bioethicist Richard Doerflinger told The Free Press. A patient could say "in a moment of despair at first getting his or her diagnosis, 'Oh my God, I just want to die,' and sign off, and that's the end of the process." Waymo will be suspending service in San Francisco, where protests are also underway, after part of its taxi fleet was damaged by L.A. protesters and rioters. ("Waymos don't have human drivers, they're devoid of humanity," one San Francisco activist told The New York Times. Destroying the robot taxis is "symbolic of the attempts, throughout the history of this country, by the tech industry to strip us of community.") Inside Peru's gang-driven crime wave "Elon Musk's allies inside the Trump administration are newly vulnerable after the mogul's bitter public breakup with the president," reports Semafor. "MAGA loyalists are taking advantage of the Trump-Musk rift to threaten the standing of anyone in the administration who's perceived as too close to the Tesla CEO. Leading that charge is former Trump adviser Steve Bannon, whose long-running animosity toward Musk peaked last week with the former calling to deport Musk from the US and the latter deeming Bannon a 'Communist retard.'" Bannon has started criticizing David Sacks in particular, apparently. Interesting: Another Weisenthal tweet. I can't help it if they're good! Twitter-famous (and somewhat widely reviled) "menswear guy" admitted he's here illegally (in a pretty good post). Now J.D. Vance is responding with memes implying he's going to deport him: The post Trump Deploys Marines to L.A. appeared first on
American Military News
11 hours ago
- Politics
- American Military News
700 Marines deployed to Los Angeles amid major riots
President Donald Trump's administration deployed 700 Marines to Los Angeles and the surrounding area on Monday in response to the city's massive riots against U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) operations. In a Monday press release, U.S. Northern Command announced that it had activated the Marine infantry battalion that the Trump administration 'placed in an alert status over the weekend.' 'Approximately 700 Marines with 2nd Battalion, 7th Marines, 1st Marine Division will seamlessly integrate with the Title 10 forces under Task Force 51 who are protecting federal personnel and federal property in the greater Los Angeles area,' U.S. Northern Command stated. 'The activation of the Marines is intended to provide Task Force 51 with adequate numbers of forces to provide continuous coverage of the area in support of the lead federal agency.' According to the press release, Task Force 51 includes 700 active-duty Marines and roughly 2,100 National Guardsmen in Title 10 status. Northern Command noted that members of Task Force 51 have been trained in 'de-escalation, crowd control, and standing rules for the use of force.' 'Due to increased threats to federal law enforcement officers and federal buildings, approximately 700 active-duty U.S. Marines from Camp Pendleton are being deployed to Los Angeles to restore order,' Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth wrote in a statement on X, formerly Twitter. 'We have an obligation to defend federal law enforcement officers – even if Gavin Newsom will not.' READ MORE: Videos: 500 Marines ready to deploy to Los Angeles amid major riots Northern Command confirmed in the press release that there were roughly 1,700 soldiers from the 79th Infantry Brigade Combat Team in Los Angeles and the surrounding area as of Monday. On Monday evening, Assistant to the Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs Sean Parnell tweeted, 'At the order of the President, the Department of Defense is mobilizing an additional 2,000 California National Guard to be called into federal service to support ICE & to enable federal law-enforcement officers to safely conduct their duties.' According to The Associated Press, Trump's authorization for the Department of Defense to deploy an additional 2,000 National Guardsmen in response to the anti-ICE riots in Los Angeles brings the total number of National Guardsmen mobilized by the federal government in response to the riots to over 4,100. In a Tuesday morning statement on Truth Social, Trump said, 'If I didn't 'SEND IN THE TROOPS' to Los Angeles the last three nights, that once beautiful and great City would be burning to the ground right now, much like 25,000 houses burned to the ground in L.A. do to an incompetent Governor and Mayor.'
