President Trump ordered hundreds of Marines to Los Angeles on Tuesday to help quell a fifth day of street protests against his crackdown on undocumented immigrants.
The Marine battalion of 700 active duty military troops was poised to support 4,000 National Guard soldiers for up to two months if needed, overriding the opposition of California officials and local Los Angeles police and authorities.
The protests flared up over the weekend but have mostly been much less intense overnight Monday and into Tuesday.
“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,” Trump wrote on his social media site.
DEMOCRATS accused Trump of using law enforcement to score political points with his right-wing base of supporters.
“This is a solution in search of a problem,” said Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass.
Gen. Eric Smith, the commandant of the Marine Corps, said the Marines had already arrived in Los Angeles and were ready to follow the orders from the U.S. Northern Command, but said they have not yet been called to take any action.
Smith told a congressional hearing that the Marines are trained for crowd control, and they would have shields and batons as their equipment. He said they have no arrest authority, and are only there to protect federal property and personnel.
“I am not concerned,” Smith said. “I have great faith in my Marines and their junior leaders and their more senior leaders to execute the lawful tasks that they are given.”
But the use of the active duty military forces still raises difficult questions.
THE MARINES are highly trained to operate in foreign conflict zones like Syria and Afghanistan. But that is starkly different from the role they could play in strife-torn Los Angeles where they will be facing U.S. citizens and residents who have constitutional rights to protest.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth backed the decision to deploy the Marines but refused to answer basic questions about the cost of the action at a Senate hearing.
A Pentagon spokesperson put the estimated cost of the deployment at $134 million.
Having the Marines deploy to protect federal buildings and personnel allows them to be used without invoking the Insurrection Act, which allows the president to direct federal troops to conduct law enforcement functions in national emergencies. But the use of that act is extremely rare and officials said that has not yet been done in Los Angeles.
