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The Pentagon is scrambling to decide clear rules for how the 700 U.S. Marines being deployed to Los Angeles by the Trump administration may use force against protesters.
The Marines will be armed with service weapons and be authorized to act in self-defense, according to internal documents and interviews with nine anonymous U.S. officials by The Associated Press.
But troops will be forbidden to use warning shots and instructed to deescalate conflicts whenever possible, The AP said. They will be equipped with gas masks and shields, but no tear gas.
The rules illustrate the potential dangers of Donald Trump's rare, controversial decision to send troops trained for military operations in active warzones to one of the country’s biggest cities.
L.A. Mayor Karen Bass has accused the White House of trying to use the city as a "test case" for expanding its powers over local governments. "I don’t think our city should be used for an experiment," she told reporters on Monday night.
California Governor Gavin Newsom described the Marines' involvement as "the deranged fantasy of a dictatorial president", and has filed a lawsuit against the federal government for deploying 4,000 National Guard members to the city against his wishes.
The head of the Los Angeles Police Department has also voiced concerns, saying he did not receive any formal notice of the troop arrival and that its presence would, “absent clear coordination, present a significant logistical and operational challenge” for local cops.
Thousands of demonstrators took to the streets on Friday night and Saturday morning in largely peaceful protests against federal immigration raids on hardware stores, clothes stores, and other workplaces.
Authorities reportedly responded with violence, causing the protests to escalate into a four-day running battle that Donald Trump described in feverish terms as an "invasion and occupation" by "illegal aliens and criminals".
“This was a chaos that started in Washington D.C.," Mayor Bass said. "On Thursday it was peaceful, on Friday it was not because of the intervention of the federal government."
The Marines being sent to L.A. — members of the 2nd Battalion, 7th Marine Regiment — are highly trained in combat and crisis response, with time spent in conflict zones such as Syria and Afghanistan.
But that is starkly different from the role they will face now: They could potentially be hit by protesters carrying gas canisters and have to quickly decide how to respond or face decisions about protecting an immigration enforcement agent from crowds.
Local officials were blindsided by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth's declaration on Sunday night via his personal X account that he may send in the Marines, according to The AP.
Officials said the Pentagon is working on a memo with clarifying language that will lay out the steps Marines can take to protect federal personnel and property, including specifics on the possibility that they could temporarily detain civilians if troops are under assault or to prevent harm.
Presidents generally must invoke the Insurrection Act in order to use federal troops as domestic law enforcers, but one official claimed that stationing the Marines at federal buildings allowed them to be used without this legal step.
If the violence escalates and their role expands, it is not clear under what legal authority they would be able to engage, said Elizabeth Goitein, a senior director of the Liberty and National Security Program at the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU Law.
“If in fact those Marines are laying hands on civilians, doing searches, then you have pretty powerful legal concerns,” Goitein said. “No statutory authority Trump has invoked so far permits this.”
The senior brass is said to be pondering whether they should specifically dispatch more senior and experienced personnel rather than put greener recruits in the position of potentially having to decide whether to use force against civilians.
With reporting from The Associated Press.
