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Los Angeles police chief says deployment of marines a surprise that could make policing protests harder – live | Los Angeles

June 10, 2025

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LAPD chief says deployment of marines comes as a surprise to him, and could make things harder

The Los Angeles police department still has not been formally notified that a marine infantry battalion will be arriving in the city, the force’s chief Jim McDonnell said in a statement on Monday afternoon.

McDonnell also suggested that 700 marines showing up on the streets of Los Angeles could actually make the job of policing the protests over federal immigration raids more difficult.

“The possible arrival of federal military forces in Los Angeles – absent clear coordination – presents a significant logistical and operational challenge for those of us charged with safeguarding this city” McDonnell said.

“The Los Angeles police department, alongside out mutual aid partners, have decades of experience managing large-scale public demonstrations, and we remain confident in our ability to do so professionally and effectively,” McDonnell added. “We are urging open and continuous lines of communication between all agencies to prevent confusion, avoid escalation and ensure a coordinated, lawful and orderly response during this critical time.”

Key events

Hegseth claims Marines are needed in LA because Newsom refuses to defend federal law enforcement officers

In what appears to be a deeply partisan statement from the US secretary of defense, Pete Hegseth, the former weekend host of Fox & Friends Donald Trump put in charge of the US military, posted on Monday that he dispatched a marine infantry battalion to Los Angeles, without informing the Los Angeles police department, because California’s Democratic governor was not defending immigration officers from protesters.

Writing on Elon Musk’s social media platform from his official Pentagon account, Hegseth said:

Due to increased threats to federal law enforcement officers and federal buildings, approximately 700 active-duty U.S. Marines from Camp Pendleton are being deployed to Los Angeles to restore order. We have an obligation to defend federal law enforcement officers – even if Gavin Newsom will not.

Hegseth’s claim that federal officers are under threat contrasts sharply with the reality on the ground, according to the Los Angeles police department.

“Today, demonstrations across the City of Los Angeles remained peaceful, and we commend all those who exercised their First Amendment rights responsibly” the city’s police force said in a statement on Monday. “The Los Angeles Police Department appreciates the cooperation of organizers, participants, and community partners who helped ensure public safety throughout the day.”

Newsom says Trump is deploying another 2,000 National Guard troops to LA, needlessly

In a social media post, California’s governor, Gavin Newsom, just said that he has been informed that another 2,000 Guard troops are being deployed by the president to Los Angeles, where protests have been entirely peaceful on Monday.

Newsom wrote:

I was just informed Trump is deploying another 2,000 Guard troops to L.A. The first 2,000? Given no food or water. Only approx. 300 are deployed — the rest are sitting, unused, in federal buildings without orders. This isn’t about public safety. It’s about stroking a dangerous President’s ego. This is Reckless. Pointless. And Disrespectful to our troops.

LAPD chief says deployment of marines comes as a surprise to him, and could make things harder

McDonnell also suggested that 700 marines showing up on the streets of Los Angeles could actually make the job of policing the protests over federal immigration raids more difficult.

Software used in surveillance of immigrants has deep ties to the LAPD

Johana Bhuiyan

The tools that the Trump administration has reportedly used to power its deportation and detention machine have deep ties to Los Angeles.

Back when controversial data analytics firm Palantir, which has been used by the Department of Homeland Security for many years to help compile data and information to identify and deport immigrants, was first making a name for itself, it made considerable effort to convince local police departments to adopt its products. One of the first law enforcement contracts Palantir nabbed was with the Los Angeles police department in 2009. Between 2009 and 2018, the LAPD spent more than $20m on its contract with Palantir.

Palantir’s software merges and centralizes data from various sources, including crime and arrest reports, license plate readers capturing images of vehicles all over the city, and data from police stops. It could include information the LAPD has access to in its own records as well as information from social media or other law enforcement agencies. For instance, the LAPD has previously obtained footage from Waymo self-driving vehicles.

The LAPD notably used Palantir as part of its predictive policing program, Operation Laser, for which the department tried to use historical data to predict future crime. Documents show the program reinforced existing policing decisions to patrol certain people and neighborhoods over others, which led to over-policing of Black and brown neighborhoods.

LAPD’s use of Palantir may be particularly concerning as the city braces for hundreds of marines and additional national guard troops to descend. As my colleagues have reported, the mostly peaceful protests of immigration raids in the city over the weekend escalated when the president sent in the first wave of the National Guard. Already, far-right conspiracy theorist Laura Loomer has called for Palantir to be deployed on LA’s immigrant population.

It is unclear whether Palantir’s software is being used at the moment by the LAPD to help respond to these recent protests, but the LAPD has previously looked to use various tools in its arsenal to monitor political activity. In 2020, documents show the LAPD asked Amazon for Ring Footage specifically to monitor Black Lives Matter protests against police violence.

Palantir was co-founded by Peter Thiel, who has served as the chairperson of its board of directors since 2003. Thiel is a billionaire Trump donor who also bankrolled the US senate campaign of his former employee, JD Vance, in 2022.

Andrew Gumbel

The national guard, which played almost no role in policing protests in Los Angeles on Sunday, was once again nowhere to be seen on Monday. Federal authorities from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) or the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) were likewise noticeably absent.

With much of the Los Angeles police department recovering from a long day and night, the streets were largely given over to representatives from neighboring police forces drafted in to help – from Pasadena, South Pasadena, Burbank, Vernon and other cities. South Pasadena had the job of guarding concrete blocks set up overnight on either side of LA city hall on Spring Street. Its officers also stood guard on the building’s western steps.

Much of the city establishment – council members, local elected officials and union leaders – flocked, meanwhile, to a protest of their own in Grand Park, on a hill overlooking City Hall, to demand the release of David Huerta, a leader of the Service Employees’ union who was arrested on Friday while monitoring an immigration raid and was expected in court for his first appearance on Monday afternoon.

Demonstrators at Gloria Molina grand park in Los Angeles on Monday called for the release of union leader David Huerta, who was arrested on Friday during federal immigration operations. Photograph: Ronaldo Schemidt/AFP/Getty Images

“David Huerta is my brother,” the national president of his union, April Verrett, told the crowd to rapturous applause and chanting. “What he would say is, use this moment!”

The thousands in attendance blew horns and yelled in approval.

Union volunteers acted as marshals for the event and kept a close eye on the perimeter to watch for troublemakers – there appeared to be none. A sole Los Angeles police helicopter hovered overhead, but otherwise law enforcement was entirely absent.

Andrew Gumbel

A worker in Los Angeles cleaned a wall near the Edward Roybal Federal Building on Monday, following a night of protests in response to federal immigration raids. Photograph: Frederic J Brown/AFP/Getty Images

Outside the federal courthouse complex in downtown Los Angeles on Monday morning, two cleaners carrying bins on wheels looked uncertainly at the daunting task in front of them – long walls in several directions covered in spray-painted graffiti after a weekend of vigorous street protest.

They donned black plastic gloves and reached for spray bottles and rolls of paper towels, but these seemed hardly adequate even for the black marble plinth bearing the name “Edward R. Roybal Center and Federal Building” where they began. Indeed, the rest of the official writing on the plinth was illegible, defaced by three separate graffiti reading “Fuck ICE” and another saying “Dead Cops”.

The City of Angels was in recovery and clean-up mode after a fraught, boisterous day of protest on Sunday against Donald Trump’s immigration roundups and his inflaming decision to activate the California National Guard against the will of the state’s leaders.

A series of mostly peaceful demonstrations were marred, as night fell, by more serious acts of vandalism and violence. Some people, who the LAPD chief later said were not affiliated with the protesters, tossed rocks and paving stones off freeway overpasses on to police cruisers and officers below, and a line of Waymo driverless vehicles that had already been spray-painted were set on fire.

On Monday morning, street cleaning vehicles were out in force on Alameda Street, on the east side of the federal courthouse complex, where the National Guard was stationed on Sunday and where thousands of protesters converged, starting in the early afternoon. Both the sidewalk and the long block of Alameda flanked by the federal buildings were cordoned off to the public.

The 101 freeway, which had been occupied by protesters the night before, was open to traffic again, but most of the downtown exits were sealed off by California Highway Patrol vehicles. A cleaning crew with a pressure washer was hard at work on the outside of the federal building on Los Angeles Street, which houses a passport office, a social security office and other key federal bureaucratic services.

US military confirms 700 Marines are being deployed to Los Angeles amid protests

The US military’s US Northern Command confirmed on Monday that a Marine infantry battalion is being deployed to Los Angeles.

In a press release from its headquarters at the Peterson Space Force Base in Colorado, US Northern Command said:

Approximately 700 Marines with 2nd Battalion, 7th Marines, 1st Marine Division will seamlessly integrate with the Title 10 forces under Task Force 51 who are protecting federal personnel and federal property in the greater Los Angeles area.

The activation of the Marines is intended to provide Task Force 51 with adequate numbers of forces to provide continuous coverage of the area in support of the lead federal agency.

Task Force 51 is U.S. Army North’s Contingency Command Post, which provides a rapidly deployable capability to partner with civil authorities and DoD entities in response to a Homeland Defense and Homeland Security Operations. It is commanded by Maj. Gen. Scott M. Sherman.

Task Force 51 is comprised of approximately 2,100 National Guard soldiers in a Title 10 status and 700 active-duty Marines. Task Force 51 forces have been trained in de-escalation, crowd control, and standing rules for the use of force.

Lauren Gambino

Democratic officials in California are trying a new line of attack on Donald Trump: that his deployment of national guard troops to LA is deeply disrespectful to law enforcement.

“You sent your troops here without fuel, food, water or a place to sleep,” California Governor Gavin Newsom posted, sharing a photo of national guard troops sleeping on the floor. “If anyone is treating our troops disrespectfully, it is you.”

Newsom was responding to Trump’s accusation that the “Newscum inspired” demonstrators spit on troop members during clashes over the weekend. “If they spit, we will hit,” Trump wrote, endorsing a violent response.

Earlier on Monday, the attorney general, Rob Bonta, said California “didn’t take lightly” to the president calling up state national guard troops – “service members who work hard day and night to protect our state”.

He said national guard troops were still working to help the state recover from the devastating wildfires that burned across the LA area earlier this year, and preparing for future disasters.

“They train and they prepare so they’re ready if they’re called to war,” Bonta said. “Activating these troops for protests that local law enforcement had confirmed at the time were under control is deeply unfair and disrespectful of their service and sacrifice.”

Union leader David Huerta released on bond after being charged with allegedly interfering with Ice raid

David Huerta, the 58-year-old president of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) California, has just been released from federal custody on a $50,000 bond, after being charged in federal court on Monday with “conspiracy to impede an officer”.

The leader of a union that represents thousands of janitors, security officers and other workers in the state was violently arrested on Friday while serving as a community observer during an Ice raid in Los Angeles.

In an affidavit supporting the criminal complaint against Huerta, an officer alleged that the union leader was arrested after another officer tried to push him out of the way of a law enforcement vehicle being blocked by protesters on a sidewalk. The officer who witnessed the incident claimed that he saw Huerta “push back, and in response, the officer pushed HUERTA to the ground. The officer and I then handcuffed HUERTA
and arrested him.”

However, video of the arrest shared on social media by US attorney Bill Essayli seems to show that the officer shoved Huerta to the ground without being pushed by the labor leader. Huerta’s head was knocked into a concrete curb by the officers and he was hospitalized on Friday.

Witness video posted online by Isaac Bryan, a California state assemblymember, also showed Huerta being shoved to the ground and injured by the officers.

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Huerta had been held at the Metropolitan detention center in downtown LA since Friday. The felony charge he faces carries up to six years in federal prison, according to the US attorney’s office .

The SEIU held a large rally in downtown Los Angeles on Monday in support of Huerta and to stand up for his right to observe and document law enforcement activity. Union leaders from across the state led the crowd in chants of “Free Huerta now!”

Demonstrations also took place in other cities from Chicago to Boston.

California’s two Democratic senators, Alex Padill and Adam Schiff, wrote a letter to federal officials demanding answers regarding Huerta’s arrest.

“It is deeply troubling that a U.S. citizen, union leader, and upstanding member of the Los Angeles community continues to be detained by the federal government for exercising his rights to observe immigration enforcement,” the senators wrote.

Huerta’s union shared video of him speaking about his work on social media.

Huerta’s arraignment is scheduled for 7 July at the Edward R. Roybal federal building.

Abené Clayton

Along the six-mile stretch between central Los Angeles and downtown, signs of the weekend’s demonstrations were scarce on Monday morning, save for spray-painted messages of “Say no to unlawful orders” on a building in Koreatown, a mostly Asian and Latino neighborhood.

Along Wilshire Boulevard, which spans 15 miles from Santa Monica to downtown, it appeared to be business as usual with vendors outside of train stations and office workers taking their lunches and smoke breaks.

Once downtown, the quietness continued with the area’s Grand Central Market buzzing with tourists. The usual signs of protest, like boarded-up business and fenced-off parks, were largely absent. But closer to City Hall, some buildings were freshly graffitied with the slogans “Fuck Ice” and “Fuck Trump”, and there was a low hum of chants and drums from a demonstration organized by the local Service Employees International Union (SEIU) filled the air.

Across the street from City Hall – the steps of which were guarded by four police officers with riot helmets on – hundreds of people had gathered to protest the violent arrest of the president of SEIU California, David Huerta, on Friday.

Huerta, who was serving as a community observer during an Ice raid in Los Angeles, and was arrested by federal agents and charged on Monday with “conspiracy to impede an officer”.

Trump is ‘intentionally trying to inflame’ LA protests, says Jeffries

The House Democratic leader, Hakeem Jeffries, said at a news conference in Washington DC that California’s governor, Gavin Newsom, and the mayor of Los Angeles, Karen Bass, deserve credit for “managing a fragile situation that Donald Trump and the extreme Maga Republicans are intentionally trying to inflame”.

Asked by a reporter if images of civil unrest would be a political problem for Democrats running in the 2026 midterms, “if they might be asked to defend some of these things”, Jeffries said: “No one is actually defending any unlawful behavior; I am defending the right for the American people to peacefully assemble”.

“We will not be lectured by Donald Trump and anyone in the Republican party about issues of law and order,” the New York Democrat added. “You know what he did … on day one? He pardoned hundreds of violent felons, criminals who brutally assaulted police officers and attacked the Capitol on January 6.”

ABC News has the number at 700 Marines from Twentynine Palms ordered to “assist” in Los Angeles, citing a US official. Per ABC: “The Marines are expected to arrive over the next 24 hours according to the official. They will be tasked with a support role, helping law enforcement only.”

CNN is also reporting this but puts the number at 500 Marines based out of Twentynine Palms in California who have been mobilized to respond to protests in LA.

Like National Guard troops, Marines are prohibited from conducting law enforcement activity, such as arrests, unless the Insurrection Act is invoked.

Pentagon to temporarily deploy about 700 Marines to Los Angeles – reports

Despite comments made by Donald Trump just now (“we’ll see”), the US military is set to temporarily deploy about 700 Marines to Los Angeles while additional National Guard troops arrive in the city, a US official has told Reuters.

The official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said a battalion would be sent, but for now, the Insurrection Act is not expected to be invoked.

The official added that the situation was fluid and could change.

Trump says ‘we’ll see what happens’ on deploying marines to California

Asked at the roundtable if he will deploy marines in California, Trump said: “We’ll see what happens.”

I think we have it very well under control. I think it would’ve been a very bad situation, it was heading in the wrong direction – it’s now heading in the right direction.

Nick Robins-Early

Waymo suspends service in downtown Los Angeles after self-driving cars set aflame

The self-driving taxi service Waymo suspended its operations in Downtown Los Angeles on Monday after demonstrators set several of the company’s vehicles on fire during the city’s immigration protests over the weekend. Ridesharing via the autonomous vehicles is still available in other neighborhoods, but, according to a spokesperson, Waymo has removed its cars from the downtown area in coordination with the Los Angeles Police Department.

Waymo, which is owned by Google’s parent company Alphabet, made its driverless cars publicly available in Los Angeles last year and has been seeking to expand its services. It also operates in multiple other cities, most prominently San Francisco. Images from the weekend’s demonstrations showed several of the company’s taxis aflame and covered in graffiti.

Trump says events in LA weren’t an insurrection ‘but it could have led to one’

At the roundtable, Trump stopped short of calling the LA protests an insurrection, but said “it could have led to one”. (This is at odds with his labelling of protestors as “insurrectionists” on social media less than an hour ago, he did yesterday too).

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