LOS ANGELES (KABC) — The military presence in the Los Angeles area is being reduced by almost half. The Pentagon Tuesday confirmed that 2,000 National Guard members are being withdrawn from their mission in the city.
Roughly 4,000 National Guard soldiers and 700 Marines have been in the city since early June. They were deployed with the mission to protect federal buildings and personnel following protests of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement operations in L.A.
“Thanks to our troops who stepped up to answer the call, the lawlessness in Los Angeles is subsiding. As such, the Secretary has ordered the release of 2,000 California National Guardsmen (79th IBCT) from the federal protection mission,” Chief Pentagon Spokesman Sean Parnell said in a statement provided to ABC News.
Some of the Guard members deployed to L.A. received specific training to provide perimeter security during ICE operations and were not carrying out law enforcement duties. They were, however, authorized to temporarily detain individuals if needed and then quickly turn them over to law enforcement personnel.
L.A. Mayor Karen Bass called the troops’ withdrawal an important victory.
“This happened because the people of Los Angeles stood united and stood strong. We organized peaceful protests, we came together at rallies, we took the Trump administration to court – all of this led to today’s retreat,” she said in a statement, adding that “We will not stop making our voices heard until this ends, not just here in LA, but throughout our country.”
Both city and state leaders pushed back against the deployments, accusing the Trump administration of overstepping its authority.
That led to a legal showdown between California and the federal government, which is still playing out in the courts.
Last month, an appeals court temporarily sided with Trump by deciding troops can remain in L.A. while the case is under review.
“For more than a month, the National Guard has been pulled away from their families, communities and civilian work to serve as political pawns for the President in Los Angeles,” Gov. Gavin Newsom’s office said in a statement to Eyewitness News. “While nearly 2,000 of them are starting to demobilize, the remaining guardsmembers continue without a mission, without direction and without any hopes of returning to help their communities.
“We call on Trump and the Department of Defense to end this theater and send everyone home now.”
The federal troops’ domestic deployment raised multiple legal questions, including whether the administration would seek to employ emergency powers under the Insurrection Act to empower those forces to conduct law enforcement on U.S. soil, which they are not permitted to do except in rare circumstances. The Marines, however, are primarily assigned to protecting federal buildings.
Previously, the top military commander in charge of the troops deployed to L.A. asked Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth if 200 of those forces could be returned to wildfire fighting duty.
Some politicians sounded the alarm, saying National Guard troops who would normally be working on state fire prevention and drug enforcement were deployed to L.A.
California has just entered peak wildfire season, and Newsom warned that the Guard was understaffed due to the L.A. protest deployment.
The top military commander of those troops, U.S. Northern Command head Gen. Gregory Guillot, submitted a request to Hegseth to return 200 of the National Guard troops back to Joint Task Force Rattlesnake, which is the California National Guard’s wildfire unit, the officials said.
