Seven hundred Marines will be deployed to Los Angeles in the next 24 hours, Pentagon officials told reporters Monday afternoon. The city has been convulsed by rioting after protests over deportation raids by ICE and the U.S. Border Patrol turned violent on Friday. Over the weekend, protestors assaulted law enforcement officers, blocked traffic, destroyed and looted stores, and set a number of fires, including disabling and burning Waymo self-driving taxis.
The riots led President Donald Trump to federalize the California National Guard on Saturday over the head of Governor Gavin Newsom, a measure not taken since President Lyndon B. Johnson called out the Alabama National Guard to protect a civil rights movement protest in 1965.
About 1,000 guardsmen had arrived in LA by Monday, where they were deployed principally to guard federal property in the city. The Marines, arriving from Twentynine Palms, California, will likely join them in the same duties.
