The Trump administration is deploying an additional 2,000 California Army National Guard troops to the Los Angeles area, while local officials are saying that demonstrations against Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids have largely died down.
The Pentagon announced Tuesday the deployment of the additional service members, reports CNBC, which confirmed with the Los Angeles Police Department Wednesday that there have been no protest-related arrests since Saturday night.
Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass lifted the city’s night hours curfew Thursday, while the latest deployment brings the number of federal troops to 4,800, with 700 being U.S. Marines and the other 4,100 as California National Guard members.
In a statement, U.S. Northern Command said the additional soldiers were activated “in a Title 10 status to support the protection of federal functions, personnel and property in the greater Los Angeles area.”
The additional troops were ordered hours after the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals heard arguments on whether the administration is able to deploy troops to U.S. cities, or if the command, in the case in Los Angeles, should be turned over to state officials, reports NBC News.
Last week, the appeals court paused a ruling from District Judge Charles Breyer that said President Donald Trump’s deployment of the initial troops was unlawful.
The appeals court is expected to decide in the case before a Friday hearing is held before Breyer in federal court in San Francisco.
Meanwhile, California Gov. Gavin Newsom slammed the decision to send in more troops and said they would be “twiddling their thumbs.”
“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,” Diana Crofts-Pelayo, a spokesperson from Newsom’s office, commented.
The latest deployments are of the 49th Military Police Brigade, which is to serve along with the 79th Infantry Brigade Combat Team and the 2nd Battalion, 7th Marine Regiment, under the direction of Task Force 51, which is commanded by Maj. Gen. Scott M. Sherman.
The latest brigade is not to directly participate in civil law enforcement actions but to provide Task Force 51 with “adequate numbers of forces.”
The soldiers, while on duty in Los Angeles, 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.”
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, meanwhile, defended the federal troops’ actions in Los Angeles while testifying at a Senate hearing Wednesday.
The troops, he said, “have conducted themselves with the utmost of professionalism, defending our federal agents.”
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