Marines and National Guard troops communicate as they deal with protesters on the front steps of the Edward Roybal Federal Building in Los Angeles, Calif., June 14, 2025.
Los Angeles, California – In a significant de-escalation of its controversial military response to protests in California, the Trump administration announced Tuesday it will withdraw approximately 2,000 National Guard troops from the Los Angeles area. The move comes more than a month after the federal government sent thousands of troops to the city over the objections of local and state leaders.
The announcement from Chief Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell framed the withdrawal as a response to stabilizing conditions. “Thanks to our troops who stepped up to answer the call, the lawlessness in Los Angeles is subsiding,” Parnell said, noting that the Secretary of Defense had ordered the release of members of the California National Guard’s 79th Infantry Brigade Combat Team.
But local officials say the situation on the ground had already calmed weeks earlier — and that the federal military presence never should have happened in the first place.
The deployment began on June 7, when President Trump federalized thousands of California National Guard members to suppress protests that erupted in the wake of aggressive immigration raids across the state. California Gov. Gavin Newsom, who typically commands the state’s Guard, publicly objected to the mobilization, calling it a violation of state sovereignty. Mayor Karen Bass lifted a downtown curfew just ten days later, on June 17, signaling a return to normalcy — but the Guard stayed.
At its peak, the deployment included more than 4,000 National Guard troops and hundreds of active-duty Marines. Troops patrolled downtown streets, stood guard outside federal buildings, and rode in armored vehicles alongside ICE and Border Patrol agents. Many had only recently finished responding to Southern California’s winter wildfires.
Critics, including state officials and immigrant rights advocates, described the deployment as theater — a display of federal authority masquerading as public safety. “This has never been about order,” Newsom said Tuesday. “It has been about optics.”
The state filed a lawsuit in federal court to challenge the legality of the deployment, arguing it violated the Posse Comitatus Act, which limits the use of the military in domestic law enforcement. That legal battle continues.
Meanwhile, the Guard’s presence has become a daily reminder of federal overreach in immigrant communities. In MacArthur Park, a working-class neighborhood in central Los Angeles, about 80 Guard members recently marched across a soccer field with federal agents — a display that Mayor Bass likened to an “armed occupation.”
Tuesday’s partial withdrawal will remove nearly half of the deployed California Guard troops. Yet nearly 1,900 members of the 49th Military Police Brigade remain, with no clear timeline for demobilization. “The remaining Guard members continue without a mission, without direction, and without any hopes of returning to help their communities,” Newsom said.
For many in Los Angeles, the question isn’t whether the National Guard should leave — it’s why they were sent here at all.
