Hundreds of active-duty US marines are to be deployed in Los Angeles, the US military confirmed 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.
In a statement, the US Northern Command announced that a battalion of 700 marines had been activated to work with the roughly 2,100 national guard troops mobilized by the Trump administration to Los Angeles, to help protect federal property and personnel, including federal immigration agents.
The marines are moving from their base at Twentynine Palms in southern California to the Los Angeles area. The move risked dramatically escalating tensions in a city on edge after four days of protests against the administration’s immigration crackdown. As of Monday afternoon, the day’s demonstrations had remained largely peaceful.
A US official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, told news agency Reuters, said there was no expectation that Trump was, for now at least, about to invoke the Insurrection Act, as some critics had suggested. But the person added that the situation was “fluid” and might change.
Governor Gavin Newsom’s press office called the mobilization of marines “completely unwarranted, uncalled for, and unprecedented”.
“Trump is escalating this situation even further – deploying active duty Marines, the ‘best of the best,’ against their own countrymen in an American city,” the office wrote in a follow-up post. “Completely unnecessary and only inflames the situation more.”
In a statement, LAPD chief Jim McDonnell said the department had not received “any formal notification” of the marines’ activation and said the “arrival of federal military forces in Los Angeles – absent clear coordination – presents a significant logistical and operational challenge for those of us charged with safeguarding this city”.
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 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.”
Newsom, 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.
