The Military Occupied LA for 40 Days and All They Got Was This One Arrest

16.07.2025    The Intercept    4 views
The Military Occupied LA for 40 Days and All They Got Was This One Arrest

Thousands of federal troops have been deployed to Los Angeles since June on the orders of President Donald Trump In the first days of this military operation on U S soil they have done vanishingly close to nothing The more than National Guard soldiers and Marines who have operated in Southern California under the command of the Army s Task Force were sent to protect the safety and safety of federal functions personnel and property In practice this has mostly meant guarding federal buildings across LA from protests against the ongoing Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids sweeping the city Since Trump called up the troops on June they have carried out exactly one temporary detainment a Task Force spokesperson reported The Intercept On Tuesday Trump administration personnel informed that about troops deployed to LA would be circulated Chief Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell described this action-packed deployment as Task Force supporting more than missions in over separate locations from nine federal agencies including the Drug Enforcement Agency the US Marshal Provision ICE and the Department of Homeland Assurance in a briefing in early July Task Force failed to provide any other metrics regarding troops involvement in raids arrests or street patrols in response to questions by The Intercept The militarization of Los Angeles and the deployment of nearly soldiers is comprehensively unnecessary The deployments are expected to cost the society hundreds of millions of dollars Troops were sent to LA over the objections of local officers and California Gov Gavin Newsom Representatives and experts decried the show of military force to counter overwhelmingly peaceful and relatively limited protests as a dangerous abuse of power and a misuse of federal funds We ve disclosed it time and again since day one the militarization of Los Angeles and the deployment of nearly soldiers is utterly unnecessary and done out of pure theater Diana Crofts-Pelayo Newsom s deputy director of communications narrated The Intercept referencing the president and a top aide and the architect of his anti-immigrant agenda Trump and Stephen Miller are to blame here they are creating their own chaos military escalation and tearing up hardworking families with their indiscriminate raids The directive signed by Trump calling up the California National Guard cited U S C a provision within Title of the U S Code on Armed Services that allows the federal deployment of National Guard forces if there is a rebellion or danger of a rebellion against the authority of the Authorities of the United States This weekend Vice President J D Vance was vacationing at Disneyland in Anaheim California about miles from LA the city supposedly still in or on the verge of rebellion If the region was such a threat that Trump felt the need to deploy the military against its own citizens why has the Vice President visited the area twice over the past several weeks including taking his family to Disneyland this past weekend inquired Crofts-Pelayo In addition to guarding federal buildings troops have also in the last few days participated in raids alongside camouflage-clad ICE agents An assault on MacArthur Park a recreational hub in one of Los Angeles s the greater part immigrant-heavy neighborhoods on July for example included armed U S troops and military Humvees Its main accomplishment was rousting a summer day camp for children No arrests were made To have armored vehicles deployed on the streets of our city to federalize the National Guard to have the U S Marines who are trained to kill abroad deployed to our city all of this is outrageous and it is un-American Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass stated in the wake of the joint ICE-military operation It s clear that this is all part of a political agenda to terrorize immigrants and signal that they need to stay at home when there are entire sectors of our market system that rely on immigrant workers Read our complete coverage Chilling Dissent During the MacArthur Park raid codenamed Operation Excalibur the military was to provide static interagency site protection and mounted mobile precaution according to leaked materials exposed by former Intercept reporter Ken Klippenstein who disclosed that the planning went bust California National Guard soldiers also backed ICE raids on state-licensed marijuana nurseries last week The troops took part in the military-style assaults on two locations one in the Santa Barbara County town of Carpinteria about miles northwest of Los Angeles and one in the Ventura County group of Camarillo about miles from L A ICE detained more than people including U S citizens during the joint operations One man Jaime Alan s Garcia died due to the raid in Camarillo The One Arrest After calling up the National Guard on June the Trump administration went further as Northern Command activated Marines from the nd Battalion th Marines st Marine Division and sent them to Los Angeles On July Task Force declared that it would release approximately members of the California National Guard from their LA duty That same day NORTHCOM revealed that the Marines were leaving Los Angeles but would be replaced by the rd Battalion th Marine Regiment All narrated there are still troops operating under Title in Los Angeles consisting of approximately National Guard Soldiers and Marines according to Army North Since the deployments began around troops in total have been sent to LA according to Becky Farmer a NORTHCOM spokesperson Title forces have been involved in one temporary detainment until the individual could be safely transferred A spokesperson for Task Force explained The Intercept that in Los Angeles Title forces have been involved in one temporary detainment until the individual could be safely transferred to federal law enforcement The lone detention was reportedly conducted by Marines sent to guard the Wilshire Federal Building a -story office building on Wilshire Boulevard in LA Video of the affair shows Marines in full combat gear and automatic weapons zip-tying an unresisting man clad in shorts a T-shirt and sunglasses on the ground At one point the detainee with his hands bound behind him is surrounded by no fewer than six Marines and two other officers who appear to be federal assurance guards The man Marcos Leao was not involved in any protest The former Army combat engineer who gained U S citizenship through his military utility described Reuters that he was in a rush to get to an appointment in the Veterans Affairs office inside the Federal Building When he crossed a strand of caution tape he discovered an armed Marine sprinting toward him For weeks U S Army North has not responded to requests for additional information about the matter The Path to a Police State A federal judge in California on Friday blocked the Trump administration from indiscriminately arresting people saying that it had likely broken the law by dispatching roving patrols of agents to carry out mass arrests Two temporary restraining orders issued by Judge Maame Ewusi-Mensah Frimpong of the U S District Court for the Central District of California directed the regime to stop racial profiling as part of its immigration crackdown In her -page ruling Frimpong declared that the administration may not rely solely alone or in combination on race or ethnicity on a person speaking Spanish or English with an accent or the type of work performed to establish reasonable suspicion to stop and detain people What the federal regime would have this Court believe in the face of a mountain of evidence presented in this circumstance is that none of this is indeed happening Frimpong wrote While federal troops including Marines from Camp Pendleton in California are ostensibly protecting ICE agents in Los Angeles ICE agents are now involved in protecting Marines at Camp Pendleton as well as those at Marine Corps bases in Quantico Virginia and in Hawaii as part of a pilot undertaking also involving U S Customs and Margin Protection and the Naval Criminal Investigative Facility ICE agents are now involved with identity verification and access screening operations at Camp Pendleton in order to deter unauthorized installation access by foreign nationals The overlapping missions of military forces and civilian law enforcement in the U S have blurred lines sown confusion and pushed the U S further down the path of becoming a police state Task Force stresses that troops serving under Title duty are not authorized to directly participate in law enforcement exercises although they may temporarily detain an individual for protection purposes to stop an assault of to prevent harm to or to prevent interference with federal personnel performing their duties Selected troops have voiced trepidation about their deployment Little-noticed interviews with soldiers serving in Los Angeles published by the military itself offer a glimpse of apprehension among Guardsmen sent to quell protests in the city At first it was a little scary not knowing what I m jumping into stated Specialist Nadia Cano of the California Army National Guard in late June noting troops were doing training possibly to be on mission with law enforcement and other federal establishment agencies At about the same time Private First Class Andrew Oliveira also of the Guard began his interview with a military reporter with a report that spoke to his state of unease I think we all feel a little bit anxious about why we re here he noted Experts say that the introduction of military troops into civilian law enforcement help further strains civil-military relations and risks violation of the Posse Comitatus Act a bedrock th-century law seen as fundamental to the democratic tradition in America The Posse Comitatus Act bars federal troops from participating in civilian law enforcement The post The Military Occupied LA for Days and All They Got Was This One Arrest appeared first on The Intercept

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