Category News

The Pentagon will send a Marine battalion to Los Angeles in a major escalation of US President Donald Trump’s response to anti-immigration enforcement protests, the United States military has said.

The statement on Monday confirmed the “activation” of 700 Marines to help protect federal personnel and property in the California city, where Trump had deployed the US National Guard a day earlier.

The update came despite opposition from state officials, including California’s Governor Gavin Newsom, who had earlier mounted a legal challenge to the deployment of the National Guard troops.

In a statement, the military said the “activation of the Marines” was meant to help “provide continuous coverage of the area in support of the lead federal agency”.

Speaking to the Reuters news agency, an unnamed Trump administration official said the soldiers would be acting only in support of the National Guard and other law enforcement.

The official said that Trump was not yet invoking the Insurrection Act of 1807, which would suspend legal limitations that block the military from taking part in domestic law enforcement.

Speaking shortly before the reports emerged, Trump said he was open to deploying Marines to Los Angeles, but said protests in the city were “heading in the right direction”.

“We’ll see what happens,” he said.

Reporting from Los Angeles, Al Jazeera’s Rob Reynolds said protests on Monday organised in the city centre by union groups were peaceful.

He noted that the National Guard which Trump had deployed to the city on Sunday played a minimal role in responding to the protests, only guarding federal buildings. That raised questions over why the Trump administration would feel a Marine deployment was needed.

“[The National Guard] didn’t engage with the protesters. They didn’t do much of anything other than stand there in their military uniforms,” Reynolds said.

He added that there is an important distinction between the National Guard, a state-based military force usually composed of part-time reserves, and the more combat-forward Marines, which are the land force of the US Navy.

“Now the Marines, this is a whole different thing. The United States sends Marines overseas where US imperialist interests are at stake, but not to cities in the United States,” he said.

California Governor Newsom’s office, meanwhile, said that according to the information it had received, the Marines were only being transferred to a base closer to Los Angeles, and not technically being deployed onto the streets.

Still, it said the “level of escalation is completely unwarranted, uncalled for, and unprecedented – mobilising the best in class branch of the US military against its own citizens”.

California mounts challenge

The updates on Monday came shortly after Newsom and California Attorney General Rob Bonta announced the state had filed a lawsuit challenging Trump’s decision to deploy the National Guard to Los Angeles.

Newsom has maintained that local law enforcement had the capacity to respond to protests over US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids in Los Angeles and the nearby city of Paramount that first broke out on Friday.

The Democratic state leader accused Trump of escalating the situation, saying in a statement that the president was “creating fear and terror by failing to adhere to the US Constitution and overstepping his authority”.

“This is a manufactured crisis to allow him to take over a state militia, damaging the very foundation of our republic,” Newsom said.

The California lawsuit argues that the legal authority Trump invoked to deploy the National Guard requires the consent of the state’s governor, which Newsom did not provide.

For his part, Trump indicated he would support Newsom being arrested for impeding immigration enforcement, responding to an earlier threat from the president’s border czar, Tom Homan.

Trump’s response to the protests represented the first time since 1965 that a president deployed the National Guard against the will of a state governor. At the time, President Lyndon B Johnson did so to protect civil rights demonstrators in Alabama.

Protests continue

Protests against Trump’s crackdown – as well as his overall immigration policy – continued on Monday.

Standing in front of Ambiance Apparel in Los Angeles, one of the sites raided by ICE agents last week, Indigenous community leader Perla Rios spoke alongside family members of individuals detained by immigration agents.

Rios called for due process and legal representation for those taken into detention.

“What our families are experiencing is simply a nightmare,” Rios said.

Meanwhile, the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) called for protests in cities across the country over the Trump administration’s response to demonstrations, which included the arrest of the union’s California president David Huerta.

Huerta was detained on Friday during immigration raids and charged with conspiracy to impede an officer during immigration enforcement operations.

“From Massachusetts to California, we call for his immediate release and for an end to ICE raids that are tearing our communities apart,” the SEIU said in a statement.

Protesters also gathered in New York and Los Angeles in response to Trump’s latest ban on travellers from 12 countries, a policy critics have decried as racist.

Speaking at a protest in New York City on Monday, Murad Awawdeh, president of the New York Immigration Coalition, said the policy was “a continuation of the Muslim and travel ban under the first Trump administration, which separated families and harmed our communities”.

A Gaza-bound aid boat illegally seized in international waters by Israeli forces has been towed into Ashdod Port, with the dozen international activists who were on board now facing detention and deportation.

The Freedom Flotilla Coalition (FFC), which launched the ship to draw international attention to the looming famine in besieged Gaza, said it was captured at about 4:02am (01:02 GMT) on Monday, about 200km (120 miles) from Gaza, arriving at Ashdod as night fell.

Earlier, the coalition released a video from the vessel, which left Sicily on June 1, showing the activists – among whom are climate campaigner Greta Thunberg and French member of the European Parliament Rima Hassan – with their hands up as Israeli forces boarded the vessel and “kidnapped” them.

Adalah, a Palestinian legal centre representing the activists, said they were expected to be held at a detention facility before being deported.

It said that Israel had “no legal authority” to take over the ship, which was in international waters, heading not to Israel but to the “territorial waters of the State of Palestine”.

The arrests of the 12 “unarmed activists” amounted to “a serious breach of international law”, it said in a statement.

Huwaida Arraf, an FFC organiser, told Al Jazeera there had been no contact with the activists since they had been detained in the early hours of Monday.

“We have lawyers on standby who are going to demand they have access to them tonight – as soon as possible,” she said.

The Madleen, she noted, was sailing under a United Kingdom flag when it was forcibly seized by Israeli commandos.

“So Israel went into international waters and attacked sovereign UK territory, which is blatantly unlawful. And we expect strong condemnation, which we have not yet heard from the United Kingdom,” she said.

The UK government urged Israel to handle its detention of the activists “safely with restraint, in line with international humanitarian law”.

“We have made clear our position in relation to the humanitarian situation in Gaza. The PM has called it appalling and intolerable,” said a spokesperson for Prime Minister Keir Starmer.

Francesca Albanese, the United Nations special rapporteur for the occupied Palestinian territory, said: “Israel has absolutely no authority to intercept and stop a boat like this, which carries humanitarian aid, and more than everything else, humanity, to the people of Gaza.”

Al Jazeera’s Nour Odeh, reporting from Jordan’s capital Amman, said the activists would be accused of entering Israel illegally.

“These activists had no intention to enter Israel. They wanted to reach the shores of Gaza, which are not part of Israel,” she said.

“But that is how they will be processed, and they will be deported because of that.”

‘A form of piracy’

Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs portrayed the voyage as a public relations stunt, saying in a post on X that “the ‘selfie yacht’ of the ‘celebrities’ is safely making its way to the shores of Israel”.

It said the passengers were “undergoing medical examinations to ensure they are in good health”, adding that all passengers were expected to return to their home countries.

Government spokesperson David Mencer reserved special scorn for 22-year-old Thunberg. “Greta was not bringing aid, she was bringing herself. And she’s not here for Gaza, let’s be blunt about it. She’s here for Greta,” he said.

In a prerecorded video message that was shared by the FFC, Thunberg said: “I urge all my friends, family and comrades to put pressure on the Swedish government to release me and the others as soon as possible.”

The Swedish Ministry for Foreign Affairs said it was in contact with Israeli authorities.

“Should the need for consular support arise, the Embassy and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs will assess how we can best help the Swedish citizen/Greta Thunberg resolve her situation,” said a spokesperson in a written statement to the Reuters news agency.

United States President Donald Trump, who targeted Thunberg in 2019, dismissed her statement. “I think Israel has enough problems without kidnapping Greta Thunberg,” he said.

French President Emmanuel Macron’s office said the president had asked Israeli authorities to release the six French nationals on board as soon as possible, calling the humanitarian blockade of Gaza “a scandal” and a “disgrace”.

Turkey condemned the interception as a “heinous attack”, while Iran denounced it as “a form of piracy” in international waters.

Israeli Minister of Defence Israel Katz said the activists would be shown videos of atrocities committed during the October 7, 2023, Hamas-led attack on southern Israel.

Hamas condemned the seizure of the boat as “state terrorism” and said it saluted its activists.

More killings at aid distribution point

On the ground in Gaza, Israeli forces continued their onslaught, killing 60 Palestinians since dawn, according to medical sources who spoke to Al Jazeera.

Among them were three medics, killed in Gaza City, as well as 13 hungry aid seekers, killed near an Israeli- and US-backed aid distribution site in southern Gaza.

More than 130 people have been killed near distribution points run by the shadowy Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) since late May.

Israel engaged the group to distribute aid amid its total blockade on all imports, including food, fuel and medicine, as Israel ramped up its offensive after breaking its ceasefire agreement with Hamas in March.

The United Nations and other aid groups have refused to cooperate with the GHF, accusing it of lacking neutrality and suggesting the group has been formed to enable Israel to achieve its stated military objective of taking over all of Gaza.

“Israeli authorities have blocked the delivery of safe and dignified aid at scale to the people of Gaza for over three months now,” said the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, on Monday.

“We are not asking for the impossible. Allow us to do our work: assist people in need and preserve their dignity,” it said.

On Monday, Israeli aircraft also bombed tents sheltering displaced families in al-Katiba square in Gaza City, causing additional deaths and injuries.

They also targeted the Shaarawi and Haddad buildings in the Tuffah neighbourhood, east of Gaza City, resulting in multiple casualties.

At least one person was killed and others injured in an artillery attack on Old Gaza Street in Jabalia, in the north.