About 700 Marines were in a staging area in the Seal Beach area about 50km south of Los Angeles, awaiting deployment to specific locations, a US official said.
California’s two senators, Adam Schiff and Alex Padilla, said in a joint statement that active-duty military personnel should only be mobilised domestically “during the most extreme circumstances, and these are not them”.
Trump, who has made the immigration crackdown his signature issue, used a speech honoring soldiers on Tuesday to defend his decision, telling soldiers at the Army base in Fort Bragg, North Carolina: “Generations of Army heroes did not shed their blood on distant shores only to watch our country be destroyed by invasion and third-world lawlessness.”
“What you’re witnessing in California is a full-blown assault on peace, on public order and on national sovereignty, carried out by rioters bearing foreign flags,” Trump said, adding his administration would “liberate Los Angeles”.
