Marines tasked with LA mission have not yet completed use of force and nonlethal training
The roughly 700 Marines recently ordered to deploy to Los Angeles have not yet completed training on less-than-lethal weapons and training on the Standing Rules for Use of Force, which governs the use of force for military personnel within the United States, said a spokesperson for U.S. Northern Command, or NORTHCOM.
It is not yet clear when the Marines will complete the training, or when they will join NORTHCOM's Task Force 51, which is overseeing U.S. troops responding to the ongoing immigration protests in Los Angeles, the spokesperson said.
When U.S. troops operate domestically, they are bound by the Standing Rules for the Use of Force — which are more restrictive than wartime rules of engagement — and they must follow the same law and rules under the 4th Amendment as police, said retired Air Force Lt. Col. Rachel VanLandingham, a former military attorney.
NORTHCOM announced on Sunday that the Marines with 2nd Battalion, 7th Marines based at Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center Twentynine Palms, California, had been told to be ready to deploy to Los Angeles to supplement National Guardsmen responding to immigration protests there.
The Marines began receiving Standing Rules for Use of Force training from an operational law attorney with I Marine Expeditionary Force before deploying to Los Angeles, a Marine Corps official told Task & Purpose.
Since the immigration protests began on June 7, President Donald Trump has federalized about 4,000 members of the National Guard to protect federal personnel and buildings. The Marines were ordered to deploy to Los Angeles on Monday.
Typically, states activate their National Guard troops to conduct disaster relief or law enforcement missions when their governors deem it necessary, VanLandingham told Task & Purpose for a previous story.
The Posse Comitatus Act of 1878 prohibits federal U.S. troops from enforcing U.S. laws on American soil unless the president invokes the Insurrection Act.
Trump has not invoked the Insurrection Act, and he has only directed the federalized National Guard troops to protect federal personnel and buildings, VanLandingham said.
Air Force Gen. Gregory Guillot, head of NORTHCOM, recently told the Los Angeles Times that the Marines do not have the authority to arrest people.
'They are not law enforcement officers, and they do not have the authority to make arrests,' Guillot told the newspaper. 'There are very unique situations where they could detain someone if detaining was necessary to defend, but they could only detain that person long enough to hand it off to a proper law enforcement official.'
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5 hours ago
ICE detains Marine Corps veteran's wife who was still breastfeeding their baby
BATON ROUGE, La. -- Marine Corps veteran Adrian Clouatre doesn't know how to tell his children where their mother went after U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers detained her last month. When his nearly 2-year-old son Noah asks for his mother before bed, Clouatre just tells him, 'Mama will be back soon.' When his 3-month-old, breastfeeding daughter Lyn is hungry, he gives her a bottle of baby formula instead. He's worried how his newborn will bond with her mother absent skin-to-skin contact. His wife, Paola, is one of tens of thousands of people in custody and facing deportation as the Trump administration pushes for immigration officers to arrest 3,000 people a day. Even as Marine Corps recruiters promote enlistment as protection for families lacking legal status, directives for strict immigrant enforcement have cast away practices of deference previously afforded to military families, immigration law experts say. The federal agency tasked with helping military family members gain legal status now refers them for deportation, government memos show. To visit his wife, Adrian Clouatre has to make an eight-hour round trip from their home in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, to a rural ICE detention center in Monroe. Clouatre, who qualifies as a service-disabled veteran, goes every chance he can get. Paola Clouatre, a 25-year-old Mexican national whose mother brought her into the country seeking asylum more than a decade ago, met Adrian Clouatre, 26, at a southern California nightclub during the final months of his five years of military service in 2022. Within a year, they had tattooed each other's names on their arms. After they married in 2024, Paola Clouatre sought a green card to legally live and work in the U.S. Adrian Clouatre said he is 'not a very political person' but believes his wife deserved to live legally in the U.S. 'I'm all for 'get the criminals out of the country,' right?" he said. "But the people that are here working hard, especially the ones married to Americans — I mean, that's always been a way to secure a green card.' The process to apply for Paola Clouatre's green card went smoothly at first, but eventually she learned ICE had issued an order for her deportation in 2018 after her mother failed to appear at an immigration hearing. Clouatre and her mother had been estranged for years — Clouatre cycled out of homeless shelters as a teenager — and up until a couple of months ago, Clouatre had 'no idea' about her mother's missed hearing or the deportation order, her husband said. Adrian Clouatre recalled that a U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services staffer asked about the deportation order during a May 27 appointment as part of her green card application. After Paola Clouatre explained that she was trying to reopen her case, the staffer asked her and her husband to wait in the lobby for paperwork regarding a follow-up appointment, which her husband said he believed was a 'ploy.' Soon, officers arrived and handcuffed Paola Clouatre, who handed her wedding ring to her husband for safekeeping. Adrian Clouatre, eyes welling with tears, said he and his wife had tried to 'do the right thing' and that he felt ICE officers should have more discretion over arrests, though he understood they were trying to do their jobs. 'It's just a hell of a way to treat a veteran,' said Carey Holliday, a former immigration judge who is now representing the couple. 'You take their wives and send them back to Mexico?' The Clouatres filed a motion for a California-based immigration judge to reopen the case on Paola's deportation order and are waiting to hear back, Holliday said. Department of Homeland Security spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin said in an emailed statement that Paola Clouatre 'is in the country illegally" and that the administration is 'not going to ignore the rule of law.' 'Ignoring an Immigration Judge's order to leave the U.S. is a bad idea,' U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services said in a June 9 post on X which appeared to refer to Clouatre's case. The agency added that the government 'has a long memory and no tolerance for defiance when it comes to making America safe again.' Adrian Clouatre said the agency's X post does not accurately reflect his wife's situation because she entered the country as a minor with her mother, seeking asylum. 'She was not aware of the removal order, so she was not knowingly defying it,' he said. 'If she had been arrested, she would have been deported long ago, and we would never have met." Prior to the Trump administration's push to drive up deportations, USCIS provided much more discretion for veterans seeking legal status for a family member, said Holliday and Margaret Stock, a military immigration law expert. In a Feb. 28 memo, the agency said it 'will no longer exempt' from deportation people in groups that had received more grace in the past. This includes the families of military personnel or veterans, Stock said. As of June 12, the agency said it has referred upward of 26,000 cases to ICE for deportation. USCIS still offers a program allowing family members of military personnel who illegally entered the U.S. to remain in the country as they apply for a green card. But there no longer appears to be room for leeway, such as giving a veteran's spouse like Paola Clouatre the opportunity to halt her active deportation order without facing arrest, Stock said. But numerous Marine Corps recruiters have continued to post ads on social media, geared toward Latinos, promoting enlistment as a way to gain 'protection from deportation' for family members. 'I think it's bad for them to be advertising that people are going to get immigration benefits when it appears that the administration is no longer offering these immigration benefits,' Stock said. 'It sends the wrong message to the recruits.' Marine Corps spokesperson Master Sgt. Tyler Hlavac told The Associated Press that recruiters have now been informed they are 'not the proper authority' to 'imply that the Marine Corps can secure immigration relief for applicants or their families.' ___
Yahoo
7 hours ago
- Yahoo
Harris gives California governor's race a serious look
Kamala Harris is leaning toward entering the California gubernatorial race, sources familiar with the former vice president's thinking tell The Hill. While the sources caution that Harris hasn't made a final decision yet and is still considering all her options, they say she has made it clear that she is not done with public service and is giving the race strong consideration. Those who have spoken to Harris about the possibility of entering the race say it has given her a renewed sense of excitement and, as one source put it, 'a glimmer in her eyes.' 'She has a lot of people in her ear telling her that it makes the most sense and she can do the most good,' said one source who has spoken to Harris about a potential run. But another source close to Harris pushed back on the idea that she is inclined to enter the contest. The source said the topic of the gubernatorial race is dominating many of the conversations she is having simply because of the fast-approaching 2026 match-up. Either way, the sources say Harris is sticking to a self-imposed end-of-summer deadline in deciding whether to wade into the already-crowded governor's race, where the contest includes former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and former California Attorney General Xavier Becerra, who was also a member of the Biden administration as secretary of Health and Human Services. The former vice president is planning to take some time off in July, when sources say she hopes to further reflect on the next step in her political career. Harris's office did not comment for this story. In recent weeks, Harris has been participating in a string of conversations about the political climate in the state and the issues on the minds of Californians, the sources say. She has been particularly interested in the issues facing younger voters and has been holding lengthy discussions about the future of artificial intelligence (AI). Harris has kept a relatively low profile in recent months after a devastating loss in the 2024 presidential election — a race she thought she could win. While California has been in the headlines for a rash of news events, including the protests over Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids in Los Angeles earlier this month and the wildfires that ravaged major swaths of the state in January, the extent of Harris's public involvement has been posts on social platform X. 'Los Angeles is my home,' Harris wrote in a statement earlier this month on the protests. 'And like so many Americans, I am appalled at what we are witnessing on the streets of our city. Deploying the National Guard is a dangerous escalation meant to provoke chaos.' 'In addition to the recent ICE raids in Southern California and across our nation, it is part of the Trump administration's cruel, calculated agenda to spread panic and division,' she added. Those close to the former vice president say she has been appalled by the Trump administration's bold moves, like deploying the National Guard. Harris has told confidants that she feels the president is governing by loyalty and retribution and that such actions will propel her to reenter public service. 'This moment almost requires her to do it,' one source close to Harris said. At the same time, if she chooses to enter the race, her confidants know she will have to contend with looming narratives about whether she helped conceal former President Biden's decline, something Republicans continue to press her on. Even one of her would-be opponents, Villaraigosa, has made it a talking point. 'Voters deserve to know the truth, what did Kamala Harris and Xavier Becerra know, when did they know it, and most importantly, why didn't either of them speak out? This cover up directly led to a second Donald Trump term,' Villaraigosa wrote in a post on X last month that took aim at two potential rivals. Against the backdrop of these questions, there's a thought among some Democrats that a run for governor would be 'a consolation prize' with Harris having been close to winning the presidency less than a year ago. Her confidants cringe at that sentiment, and they say Harris brushes off such commentary. A decision by Harris to run for governor would be significant, political observers say, because it could take a 2028 presidential run off the table. 'I don't think she could, with a straight face, run for governor in 2026 without making an absolute pledge that she would not run for president in 2028,' said Garry South, a California-based Democratic strategist. An Emerson College poll in April revealed that 50 percent of Democratic voters in California would support Harris in a gubernatorial run. A separate survey from Politico/UC Berkeley Citrin Center also released in April revealed that 33 percent of Democratic voters in California would be 'joyful' about a Harris bid and 41 percent would be 'mostly excited.' Though those polls show she would be the clear front-runner in the race, some Democrats say they don't think that's enough for her to maintain a clear field. 'She would start out, at least initially, as the front-runner. There's no doubt about it because she has 100 percent name ID in California,' South said. 'I think there are real mixed feelings about her among California Democrats, and I think those mixed feelings would grow if she actually got into the race.' 'She doesn't come into this as an 800-pound gorilla,' he added. Even as some close to her say she's leaning toward running, some former aides and longtime observers in the state say they doubt Harris will run for governor because she has been, as one former aide put it, 'absent' from the events that have dominated the state. In the face of this month's protests in Los Angeles, for example, Harris was in the Hamptons attending the wedding of Huma Abedin and Alex Soros — two big names within Democratic circles. In April, Harris spoke at a gala before hundreds of donors in San Francisco and made no mention of state issues or political affairs. 'She's the kind of person that if she's going to do something, she's very serious about it, focused on it,' said Elizabeth Ashford, a California-based communications adviser who served as Harris's chief of staff when she was the state's attorney general. 'It just seems to me that this would be a summer of reintroducing herself as a Californian to Californians if that were really front of mind.' In the months since she left office, Harris has made most of her public appearances outside of California. Last month, the former vice president spoke at a closed-room real estate conference in Australia following a surprise Met Gala appearance in New York. She was in Las Vegas for a conference on AI in March and engaged with students at a Maryland community college in December. Her loss of the presidency in November raises questions for some California Democrats about how she will address the issue they say Democratic voters in the state care most about. 'I think California Democrats right now want somebody who's going to get in Trump's face,' said South, the California-based Democratic strategist. 'But I'm not sure that someone who just lost pretty badly to Donald Trump can posit themselves as the best counter against Donald Trump if they were to be governor of California.' Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Hamilton Spectator
7 hours ago
- Hamilton Spectator
ICE detains Marine Corps veteran's wife who was still breastfeeding their child
BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) — Marine Corps veteran Adrian Clouatre doesn't know how to tell his children where their mother went after U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers detained her last month. When his nearly 2-year-old son Noah asks for his mother before bed, Clouatre just tells him, 'Mama will be back soon.' When his 3-month-old, breastfeeding daughter Lyn is hungry, he gives her a bottle of baby formula instead. He's worried how his newborn will bond with her mother absent skin-to-skin contact. His wife, Paola, is one of tens of thousands of people in custody and facing deportation as the Trump administration pushes for immigration officers to arrest 3,000 people a day. Even as Marine Corps recruiters promote enlistment as protection for families lacking legal status, directives for strict immigrant enforcement have cast away practices of deference previously afforded to military families, immigration law experts say. The federal agency tasked with helping military family members gain legal status now refers them for deportation, government memos show. To visit his wife, Adrian Clouatre has to make an eight-hour round trip from their home in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, to a rural ICE detention center in Monroe. Clouatre, who qualifies as a service-disabled veteran, goes every chance he can get. Paola Clouatre, a 25-year-old Mexican national whose mother brought her into the country illegally more than a decade ago, met Adrian Clouatre, 26, at a southern California nightclub during the final months of his five years of military service in 2022. Within a year, they had tattooed each other's names on their arms. After they married in 2024, Paola Clouatre sought a green card to legally live and work in the U.S. Adrian Clouatre said he is 'not a very political person' but believes his wife deserved to live legally in the U.S. 'I'm all for 'get the criminals out of the country,' right?' he said. 'But the people that are here working hard, especially the ones married to Americans — I mean, that's always been a way to secure a green card.' Detained at a green card meeting The process to apply for Paola Clouatre's green card went smoothly at first, but eventually she learned ICE had issued an order for her deportation in 2018 after her mother failed to appear at an immigration hearing. Clouatre and her mother had been estranged for years — Clouatre cycled out of homeless shelters as a teenager — and up until a couple of months ago, Clouatre had 'no idea' about her mother's missed hearing or the deportation order, her husband said. Adrian Clouatre recalled that a U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services staffer asked about the deportation order during a May 27 appointment as part of her green card application. After Paola Clouatre explained that she was trying to reopen her case, the staffer asked her and her husband to wait in the lobby for paperwork regarding a follow-up appointment, which her husband said he believed was a 'ploy.' Soon, officers arrived and handcuffed Paola Clouatre, who handed her wedding ring to her husband for safekeeping. Adrian Clouatre, eyes welling with tears, said he and his wife had tried to 'do the right thing' and that he felt ICE officers should have more discretion over arrests, though he understood they were trying to do their jobs. 'It's just a hell of a way to treat a veteran,' said Carey Holliday, a former immigration judge who is now representing the couple. 'You take their wives and send them back to Mexico?' The Clouatres filed a motion for a California-based immigration judge to reopen the case on Paola's deportation order and are waiting to hear back, Holliday said. Less discretion for military families Department of Homeland Security spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin said in an emailed statement that Paola Clouatre 'is in the country illegally' and that the administration is 'not going to ignore the rule of law.' 'Ignoring an Immigration Judge's order to leave the U.S. is a bad idea,' U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services said in a June 9 post on X which appeared to refer to Clouatre's case. The agency added that the government 'has a long memory and no tolerance for defiance when it comes to making America safe again.' Prior to the Trump administration's push to drive up deportations, USCIS provided much more discretion for veterans seeking legal status for a family member, said Holliday and Margaret Stock, a military immigration law expert. In a Feb. 28 memo , the agency said it 'will no longer exempt' from deportation people in groups that had received more grace in the past. This includes the families of military personnel or veterans, Stock said. As of June 12 , the agency said it has referred upward of 26,000 cases to ICE for deportation. USCIS still offers a program allowing family members of military personnel who illegally entered the U.S. to remain in the country as they apply for a green card. But there no longer appears to be room for leeway, such as giving a veteran's spouse like Paola Clouatre the opportunity to halt her active deportation order without facing arrest, Stock said. But numerous Marine Corps recruiters have continued to post ads on social media, geared toward Latinos, promoting enlistment as a way to gain 'protection from deportation' for family members. 'I think it's bad for them to be advertising that people are going to get immigration benefits when it appears that the administration is no longer offering these immigration benefits,' Stock said. 'It sends the wrong message to the recruits.' Marine Corps spokesperson Master Sgt. Tyler Hlavac told The Associated Press that recruiters have now been informed they are 'not the proper authority' to 'imply that the Marine Corps can secure immigration relief for applicants or their families.' ___ Brook is a corps member for The Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues. Error! Sorry, there was an error processing your request. There was a problem with the recaptcha. Please try again. You may unsubscribe at any time. By signing up, you agree to our terms of use and privacy policy . This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google privacy policy and terms of service apply. Want more of the latest from us? Sign up for more at our newsletter page .
