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The 700 Marines deployed to Los Angeles by President Donald Trump have not yet hit the streets and are instead on standby and carrying out nonlethal training.
Dozens of Marines were captured on aerial footage Tuesday practicing hand-to-hand combat and crowd control on Seal Beach field, just south of L.A. County.
Trump activated the Marines and about 4,000 National Guards after violent mobs took to the streets over the weekend, burning and damaging property while some threw rocks and Molotov cocktails at law enforcement.
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A U.S. Northern Command spokesperson told Fox News the Marines have not completed their nonlethal weapons training.
They are expected to do at least another day of nonlethal weapons training, two U.S. defense officials told Fox News. It is expected they will finish the training on Friday.
“The Marine unit is an infantry unit and needs to learn protocols for [the] use of force in a domestic setting,” a defense official told Fox News.
The cost of sending the Marines and National Guard to Southern California is an estimated $134 million, Acting Pentagon Comptroller Bryn MacDonnell said. The funds will be pulled from the operations and maintenance budget, MacDonnell said.
USMC Commandant Gen. Eric Smith on Wednesday said the Marines are acting under NORTHCOM’s direction and are limited to protecting federal property and personnel, not engaging in broader law enforcement.
He said that they had already received four days’ worth of training.
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Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, meanwhile, said the Marines and National Guard troops were being deployed to keep the city safe.
“The mission in Los Angeles, as you know well, sir, is not about lethality. It’s about maintaining law and order on behalf of law enforcement agents who deserve to do their job without being attacked by mobs of people,” Hegseth said under grilling from Sen. Jack Reed, D-R.I., during a Senate Appropriations Committee hearing.
“We are very proud that the National Guard and the Marines are on the streets defending the ICE agents, and they will continue.”
Hegseth said “there is plenty of precedent for the U.S. supporting law enforcement officers.”
A federal judge on Tuesday night declined California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s request for an immediate temporary restraining order to restrict Trump’s deployment of Marines and National Guard troops to quell ongoing anti-Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) riots in Los Angeles.
Newsom has had a public war of words with Trump administration officials, accusing the president of having “commandeered” thousands of the state’s National Guard members “illegally, for no reason” without consulting California’s law enforcement leaders.
The Trump administration, meanwhile, said its ICE operations are aiming to get “criminal illegal immigrant killers, rapists, gangbangers, drug dealers, human traffickers and domestic abusers off the streets.”
Fox News’ Liz Friden contributed to this report.
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