Another 2,000 California National Guard troops are being deployed to the Los Angeles area, the Defense Department announced Tuesday. It comes amid the Trump administration’s ongoing immigration crackdown in the region, which has sparked a series of at times contentious protests in downtown L.A. over the past few weeks.
U.S. Northern Command said in a statement that the troops were being activated under the Title 10 law, which President Trump previously invoked when he first announced on June 7 that he was deploying National Guard troops to L.A. in response to the demonstrations.
The soldiers will “support the protection of federal functions, personnel, and property in the greater Los Angeles area,” USNORTHCOM said in a statement.
USNORTHCOM later updated its statement to reflect that the 2,000 National Guard troops set to be activated had already been announced last week and were not in addition to those numbers. They will join about 2,100 National Guard soldiers and 700 Marines who are already deployed in L.A.
The decision to activate them was at the direction of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, officials said. USNORTHCOM did not elaborate on what prompted Hegseth to expand the troop count in L.A.
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Ahead of their arrival, the new batch of soldiers are “completing training on de-escalation, crowd control, and use of the standing rules for the use of force in advance of joining the federal protection mission,” USNORTHCOM said.
The office of California Gov. Gavin Newsom released a statement to CBS News Los Angeles shortly after the announcement, which read: “This is clean up from the Pentagon. This isn’t a new deployment — it’s the same group of soldiers who have been diverted from critical wildfire work and work at the border, now twiddling their thumbs for Donald Trump’s political theater. This is the deployment of the second set of 2000 federalized Guard soldiers, under the June 9 order. The description of what they are and aren’t going to be doing is meant to be consistent with their legal position, rather than the immigration enforcement support we’ve seen them doing in Los Angeles.”
Mr. Trump’s initial memo ordering the deployment says the troops are in L.A. to “temporarily protect” Immigration and Customs Enforcement, as well as other federal personnel and federal property.
Local and state officials have heavily criticized Mr. Trump’s move, arguing that local law enforcement were able to handle the protests, some of which turned violent, and saying the deployment of federal troops to city streets has only served to inflame the situation in L.A., a city with a large and diverse immigrant community.
The downtown protests were in response to a series of immigration raids throughout the L.A. area.
The president’s deployment of federal troops domestically using Title 10 is now facing a legal challenge from Newsom, who filed a lawsuit calling the move a “power grab” and arguing that California National Guard troops were placed under federal control without Newsom’s permission.
U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer of San Francisco briefly and temporarily blocked the National Guard deployment last week. However, hours later, an appeals court halted Breyer’s ruling.
On Tuesday, a three-judge panel for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit heard arguments in the case over whether Mr. Trump exceeded his authority when he invoked Title 10.
Melissa Quinn and
contributed to this report.
