(KTLA) Hundreds of U.S. Marines sent to Los Angeles amid immigration raids and protests are going home.
The Pentagon confirmed Monday that the 700 Marines will be sent home after several weeks in Southern California.
Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass had criticized the presence of the Marines and about 4,000 members of the California National Guard as a waste of taxpayer money, again calling for their withdrawal in a press conference Monday morning.
Several hours later, it appears she got her wish, as the Marines are leaving and half of the National Guard members were said to be heading home in a previous announcement.
“This is a victory. We have many more victories to go, because we need all of these raids to end,” Bass said in a video posted to social media.
The troops had largely been idle since their arrival in June with a mission to protect federal buildings. One Marine told the Los Angeles Times there’s “not much to do.”
The New York Times spoke with National Guard officials, who “said that only about 400 of the 3,882 deployed Guard members had actually been sent on assignments away from the base.”
After these departures, “an 1,892-member brigade of military police remains,” the N.Y. Times added.
Bass said she hopes to see the remaining National Guard members be “defederalized.”
“There are natural disasters across the State and nation, where their skills and service are urgently needed,” she said. “That is where they belong.”
Gov. Gavin Newsom also called for all troops to be pulled out of L.A.
“The women and men of the California National Guard deserve more than to continue serving as puppets in Trump and Stephen Miller’s performative political theater,” he said in a statement. “There was never a need for the military to deploy against civilians in Los Angeles. The damage is done, however. We, again, call upon them to do the right thing and end the militarization once and for all.”
