700 Marines have been mobilized to Los Angeles, following several days of protests against ICE raids in the city.
The mobilized battalion is based out of Twentynine Palms, which lies about 140 miles east of Los Angeles. It is unclear what roles they will be asked to perform. President Donald Trump has already deployed 2,000 California National Guard troops to the city, over the objections of Gov. Gavin Newsom.
The Marines are expected to arrive in the next 24 hours, ABC News reported.
Members of the military are typically restricted from engaging in law enforcement duties. The president could get around this prohibition by invoking the Insurrection Act, which also allows the president to bypass state and local leaders in deploying National Guard troops. Trump has already sidled around that particular norm, deploying the troops in an order that made no mention of the act. The act was last invoked by President George H.W. Bush in response to the 1992 Los Angeles riots.
Gov. Newsom has criticized Trump’s toe-stepping repeatedly, saying that bringing in the military would only inflame tensions in the country’s second-largest city.
Trump has hinted at an invocation of the act while speaking to reporters, calling protestors of the ongoing ICE raids “insurrectionists” on Monday.
“The people who are causing the problems are bad people, they are insurrectionists,” he told reporters on the White House lawn.
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