Hundreds of US Marines arrived in the Los Angeles area on Tuesday under orders from US president Donald Trump, who defended the deployment as he sought to quell protests in the city despite objections from California governor Gavin Newsom and other local leaders.
The president has also activated 4,000 National Guard troops.
The city has seen days of public protests since the Trump administration launched a series of immigration raids on Friday. State officials said Mr Trump’s response was an overreaction to mostly peaceful demonstrations.
About 700 Marines were in a staging area awaiting deployment to specific locations, a US official said.
The Marines do not have arrest authority and will protect federal property and personnel, according to military officials. There were approximately 2,100 National Guard troops in greater Los Angeles on Tuesday, with more on the way, the official said.
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Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass said more than 100 people had been arrested on Monday but that the majority of protesters were non-violent.
Mr Trump has justified his decision to deploy active military troops to Los Angeles by describing the protests as a violent occupation, a characterisation that Mr Newsom and Ms Bass have said is grossly exaggerated.
Speaking to reporters in the Oval Office on Tuesday, the president said Los Angeles would be “burning right now” if not for the deployments, and that National Guard troops would remain until there is no danger.
Mr Trump also left open the possibility of invoking the centuries-old Insurrection Act, which would allow the military to take part directly in civilian law enforcement, saying one could argue that parts of the city were already seeing an insurrection.
Mr Newsom accused Trump of sending troops to deliberately inflame the situation for political reasons.
“It’s a blatant abuse of power,” the governor wrote on X.
The protests since Friday have been largely peaceful and mostly concentrated in downtown Los Angeles. But there have been clashes, with some demonstrators throwing rocks and other objects at officers, blocking an interstate highway and setting cars ablaze.
Mr Trump’s Marine deployment escalated his confrontation with Mr Newsom, who filed a lawsuit on Monday asserting that Mr Trump’s activation of National Guard troops without the governor’s consent was illegal. The deployment was the first time in decades that a president did so without a request from a sitting governor.
The use of active military to respond to civil disturbances is extremely rare.
The top Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee, senator Jack Reed, said he was “gravely troubled” by Mr Trump’s deployment of active-duty Marines.
“Since our nation’s founding, the American people have been perfectly clear: we do not want the military conducting law enforcement on US soil,” he said.
US Marines are trained for conflicts around the world – from the Middle East to Africa – and are also used for rapid deployments in case of emergencies, such as threats to US embassies.
The raids are part of Mr Trump’s sweeping immigration crackdown, which Democrats and immigrant advocates have said are indiscriminately breaking up families.
US homeland security secretary Kristi Noem pledged on Monday to carry out more operations to round up suspected immigration violators.
Hundreds of demonstrators gathered on Monday outside a federal detention centre in downtown Los Angeles where immigrants have been held, chanting “free them all” and waving Mexican and Central American flags.
National Guard forces formed a human barricade to keep people out of the building. Police dispersed the crowd using gas canisters and arrested some protesters.
At dusk, officers had running confrontations with protesters who had scattered into the Little Tokyo section of the city. Protests also sprang up in at least nine other US cities on Monday, including New York, Philadelphia and San Francisco, according to local news reports.
In Austin, Texas, police fired less-lethal munitions and detained several people as they clashed with a crowd of several hundred protesters. – Reuters
