Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth sparred with Democratic lawmakers Tuesday over the Trump administration’s deployment of thousands of National Guardsmen and hundreds of Marines to Los Angeles against state and local officials’ wishes to respond to anti-immigration enforcement protests.
Amid the back-and-forth between Hegseth and Democrats at a House Appropriations Committee defense subpanel hearing, the Pentagon’s acting comptroller also told lawmakers that the LA deployments are expected to cost at least $134 million.
At the hearing, Hegseth fiercely defended the unprecedented deployments as necessary to allow immigration officials to do their jobs, while Democrats maintained that there was no reason to circumvent state and local officials.
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“This looks nothing like the George Floyd protests or the Rodney King riots in Los Angeles in 1992,” Rep. Betty McCollum, D-Minn., the ranking member of the House Appropriations Committee’s defense subcommittee, said, referencing two instances in which the National Guard helped quell violent protests. “Mr. Secretary, this is a deeply unfair position to put our Marines in. Their service should be honored. It should not be exploited.”
Hegseth shot back that Immigration and Customs Enforcement “has the right to safely conduct operations in any state and any jurisdiction in the country” and that the troops were deployed to protect those officers.
The troops will be deployed for at least 60 days, Hegseth added later, because “we want to ensure that those rioters, looters and thugs on the other side assaulting our police officers know that we’re not going anywhere.”
President Donald Trump announced Saturday he was deploying 2,000 Guardsmen to the Los Angeles area and putting Marines on standby after protests against immigration raids on Friday and Saturday despite California Gov. Gavin Newsom, Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass, Los Angeles Police Department Chief Jim McDonnell and others saying the troops were unnecessary.
On Monday, Trump doubled the number of Guardsmen deployed and ordered the deployment of about 700 Marines from Twentynine Palms in southeast California. As of Tuesday, the Marines had moved to a base closer to Los Angeles but had not yet deployed.
Contrary to the Trump administration’s depictions of the city under siege, the protests have been isolated to a few blocks in downtown LA, and incidents of violence, including protesters throwing rocks and burning Waymo driverless cars, have been intense but scattered, according to the Los Angeles Times. On Tuesday, the areas where protests had been concentrated were largely quiet, according to The Associated Press.
There have also been some protests in other cities within LA County, including Saturday’s protest in the suburb of Paramount, where violence picked up after law enforcement officials threw flash grenades and tear gas to disperse protesters so immigration agents could drive through, according to the Times.
Trump’s moves marked the first time troops have been deployed over the objections of a governor since the Civil Rights era in the 1960s and the first time it’s been done in the modern era for something other than enforcing civil rights law.
At Tuesday’s hearing, McCollum specifically asked Hegseth how much the deployments were expected to cost and what training the deployed troops would have.
Hegseth briefly asserted that “all of the units on the ground have been fully trained,” but repeatedly refused to answer McCollum’s question about the costs, instead defending the Trump administration’s decision to deploy troops.
Toward the end of the hearing, Rep. Pete Aguilar, D-Calif., who represents part of San Bernardino County east of Los Angeles, reiterated McCollum’s question about costs.
In response to Aguilar, Hegseth deferred to acting Pentagon comptroller Bryn MacDonnell, who was testifying alongside Hegseth and Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Dan Caine.
The $134 million figure cited by MacDonnell covers travel, food and lodging for the troops, she said. The funding will come from the operations and maintenance accounts for the National Guard and Marines, she added. Operations and maintenance funds typically cover a broad range of activities, from training to equipment repairs to barracks renovations.
While Aguilar got an answer about the costs, Hegseth grew angry with him over a question about the troops not having adequate living conditions in Los Angeles. The San Francisco Chronicle reported Monday that the Guardsmen were sleeping on the floors of basements and loading docks in federal buildings and did not have enough food, water, bathrooms and trash dumps.
“We are ensuring they’re housed, fed, water, capabilities in real time from my office because I care that much about the California Guard and the Marines and the men and women who are supporting our ICE agents on the ground,” Hegseth said.
“That wasn’t true as of yesterday,” Aguilar replied.
“It’s true every day,” Hegseth shot back. “I’m not going to take the fact that we don’t care about the troops. Nobody cares more about the troops at the top than this secretary and the chairman in our department.”
Hegseth also took exception to Aguilar asking whether the funding for the deployments would come from barracks maintenance, despite the fact that the Defense Department has already raided barracks funding to pay for deployments on the U.S.-Mexico border.
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