Marines begin LA deployment, protecting federal buildings

LOS ANGELES (KESQ) - With a court decision pending on the fate of National Guard troops deployed in the city, roughly 200 U.S. Marines moved into downtown Los Angeles today to protect federal buildings amid continuing protests over ongoing immigration raids in the Southland.

Maj. Gen. Scott Sherman, commander of Task Force 51 -- the contingent of 4,000 National Guard troops and 700 Marines from Twentynine Palms ordered to deploy to the city by President Donald Trump -- said 200 Marines will take their positions starting at noon Friday protecting the federal building downtown. The move will free up National Guard troops -- who have been primarily protecting federal property over the past week of unrest -- to serving a more protective role for federal agents conduction enforcement operations in the field.   

"I would like to emphasize that the soldiers will not participate in law enforcement activities,'' Sherman told reporters during a morning briefing. "Rather, they'll be focused on protecting federal law enforcement personnel."  

Sherman said some National Guard troops have already been doing protective work for federal agents conducting immigration enforcement activities, but they have not engaged in any police-type work or made any arrests or detentions.

The arrival of the Marines comes one day after a federal judge in Northern California ordered Trump to return control of the California National Guard to Gov. Gavin Newsom. Trump federalized 2,000 National Guard troops last weekend as nightly protests were held in downtown Los Angeles in response to raids being carried out by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Trump later added another 2,000 troops to the order.   

Newsom and other local leaders vehemently objected to the troop deployment, arguing it was unnecessary and would heighten tensions and potentially lead to more violent protests.  

In Thursday's ruling, U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer in San Francisco wrote that Trump's actions federalizing National Guard troops -- who are normally under the control of the governor -- did not follow congressionally mandated procedure.

"His actions were illegal -- both exceeding the scope of his statutory authority and violating the Tenth Amendment to the United States Constitution,'' the judge wrote. "He must therefore return control of the
California National Guard to the Governor of the State of California forthwith."  

Hours later, Breyer's ruling was stayed by a three-judge appellate panel of the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in response to a Trump administration notice of appeal, temporarily keeping the National Guard troops under federal control pending another hearing on Tuesday.

Earlier Thursday, U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem held an eventful news conference in Los Angeles to discuss ongoing ICE operations in the Southland. She declared, "We are not going away,'' moments before Sen. Alex Padilla, D-California, was forcibly removed from the news conference, forced onto a hallway floor and placed in handcuffs.   

The rough treatment of Padilla was widely condemned, including by Newsom, who called it ``outrageous, dictatorial and shameful,'' and by Mayor Karen Bass, who labeled it ``absolutely abhorrent and outrageous.''   

Thursday's dramatic events came as tensions sparked by immigration enforcement and the resulting protests in the L.A. area remained heightened -- with a dusk-to-dawn downtown curfew still in effect, leading to a reduction in confrontations with police -- though arrests continued to mount.

The curfew affects a roughly one-square-mile area of downtown from 8 p.m. to 6 a.m. nightly. The curfew applies to an area between the Golden State (5) and Harbor (110) freeways, and from the Santa Monica (10) Freeway to where the Arroyo Seco (110) Parkway and Golden State Freeway merge. That area includes Skid Row, Chinatown, and the Arts and Fashion districts.

According to the Los Angeles Police Department, 13 people were arrested Thursday night into Friday morning for curfew violations. Another 33 people were arrested overnight for failure to disperse, while one was arrested for allegedly resisting a police officer and one for aiming a laser pointer at a police helicopter. One person detained for a curfew violation was arrested for an outstanding robbery warrant, police said.   

While most of the protests have been concentrated near the federal Metropolitan Detention Center downtown and the nearby federal building and City Hall, smaller, scattered protests were held this week at the DoubleTree Hotel in Whittier, the Westin Hotel in Pasadena and the Embassy Suites Hotel in Downey, where demonstrators believed federal ICE agents were staying.

Protests have been occurring daily in the area since Friday, when ICE agents carried out a series of immigration enforcement raids, detaining dozens of people.

Prior to the curfew, the nightly protests often devolved into violence, with some demonstrators hurling objects or fireworks at police, who often responded by firing non-lethal weapons or tear gas.

Bass and community leaders took issue Thursday with suggestions by Trump and others that the entire city was under a siege of violence necessitating deployment of the military, including the 4,000 federalized National Guard troops and 700 active-duty U.S. Marines.'

"To characterize what is going on in our city as a city of mayhem is just an outright lie,'' Bass said at an afternoon news conference attended by dozens of local faith and community leaders.

The mayor pointed to comments made by Noem Thursday morning that described the city as a ``war zone.''   

"There's no one up here that sees Los Angeles like that,'' Bass said. ``This is not all of Los Angeles. This is isolated to a few blocks in a city that is 500 square miles. And out of those 500 square miles, the protests -- and especially the protests that devolved into violence -- represent half a square mile.''   

Bass said the raids were spreading fear in the community, preventing some people from going to work or school. She said some raids that occurred Thursday took place at ``emergency rooms and homeless shelters.''   

And she again repeated her assertion that protests in the city would stop immediately if federal immigration authorities discontinued enforcement raids.

"We want peace to come to our city,'' Bass said, adding that such an action ``needs to begin in Washington, and we need to stop the raids.''  

Noem said the enforcement operations were targeting violent criminals. During her news conference, photos of criminals detained during the Southland operations were shown on video screens.

"We are not going away. We are staying here to liberate this city from the socialist and the burdensome leadership that this governor (Newsom) and that this mayor (Bass) placed on this country and what they have tried to insert into this city,'' Noem said, referring to the state and city's so-called "sanctuary'' policies, which prohibit the use of state and local resources and personnel for federal immigration enforcement.   

Los Angeles and other cities across the Southland and the country are expected to see large-scale ``No Kings'' protests on Saturday held in conjunction with a U.S. military parade scheduled in Washington, D.C. The parade ostensibly will celebrate the U.S. Army's 250th anniversary, but it also falls on Trump's 79th birthday.   

Law enforcement agencies across the region are likely to be on heightened alert due to the planned protests, including a large-scale gathering expected outside Los Angeles City Hall. National Guard troops and Marines will also likely be in place, continuing their mission of protecting federal facilities, thanks to the federal appeals court ruling Thursday night.   

The court action stemmed from a lawsuit brought late Monday by Newsom and state Attorney General Rob Bonta following Trump's escalation of military forces in the Los Angeles area.

In his initial ruling Thursday evening, Breyer said the issue is ``the president exercising his authority, and the president is, of course, limited. That's the difference between a constitutional government and King George.''   

The judge indicated Trump's deployment of 4,000 members of California's National Guard to the streets of Los Angeles -- over Newsom's strenuous objections -- was legally deficient. The judge also was dubious about Trump's insistence that the unrest in Los Angeles posed a ``danger of rebellion.''  

The judge said Trump did not appear to have met a legal requirement that such orders must pass through the governor of the state involved.   

Breyer declined to rule on Newsom's request to block the call-up of 700 active-duty Marines to Los Angeles, saying any action from the bench seemed premature because the troops haven't arrived in the city.