Pentagon Holds Press Briefing On Troop Deployments To Los Angeles Due To Anti-ICE Protests

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The Pentagon holds a virtual press briefing.

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00:00doing those protection duties. And secondly, can you also tell us whether or not at this point

00:06any of the dog members or any of the Marines have actually participated in any of the temporary

00:12detainment? Thank you. Sure. Thanks. Good morning, Lita. So actually two companies of two seven

00:19Marines actually moved to the Wilshire Federal Building in L.A. last night. They started what

00:27we call left seat, right seat leader familiarization training with the 79th IBCT soldiers that are

00:36there. They spent the night at that location. They will take over full operations today at noon at

00:43that location. And on the second question, please.

00:50My apologies, sir. We had a technical glitch there. I need you to unmute. My apologies.

01:03Oh, sorry, Tecto. Did you, Lita, did you hear my question, my response?

01:08I heard your response to the first part. I didn't hear your response.

01:11Oh, okay. On the second spot. I'm sorry about that. On the second part, we still, right now,

01:16as of today, we have had no soldier or Marine detain anyone. They have watched federal law

01:24enforcement arrest personnel as they were protecting. They have not had to detain anyone at this point.

01:37Thank you. Reuters?

01:39Just a clarification. How many Marines make up two companies? And then just to follow on,

01:44on the training you mentioned that they were receiving, has everyone gone through that training?

01:49And did that include any courses with JAGs about what they could and could not do legally?

01:54Absolutely. So there are approximately 200 Marines that are at that location, two companies.

02:04Yes, they all, as part of the standard, are standing rules on the use of force with our JAGs,

02:11and certainly our JAGs with the Marine Judge Advocate General officers, did a complete comprehensive

02:18review of the standing rules of force for all soldiers and Marines that are doing this.

02:26Service members, you know, they receive that training before they ever go on the mission.

02:31It includes de-escalation techniques and the proper use of crowd control.

02:42Thank you, sir. KTLA.

02:48Moving on to KTTV.

03:08KCAL.

03:15KABC.

03:18Can you hear me?

03:22Yes, we've got you.

03:23Okay. Any idea? Are these briefings going to go on every day? And also, secondly,

03:29with all the legal back and forth, has your mission changed in any way? Because the one

03:33judge ruled one way in appeals court changed it. Does that affect your deployment in any way?

03:40Well, we don't make comments on pending litigation or anything on that. It's not my area. What I can

03:48say is we're continuing on with the mission until we receive orders from higher on how to continue.

03:55And the second part, are you going to do these briefings daily for the foreseeable future?

04:00Do we know?

04:03Yeah, as required. I'll take my guidance from OSD as they and then Northcom as these, you know,

04:09as it's a turn to do these news conferences. Thanks.

04:15Thank you. CNN.

04:19Hi there. I was just wondering, you said that the Marines are going to take over full operations

04:24there today at noon. Does that mean they're going to be taking over for the guard troops there? Are

04:30they basically going to be rotating in and the guard troops will rotate out? Or can you just talk a bit

04:34about how the Marines are going to be integrating or not with the guard?

04:38They're actually, right now they're doing, they're continuing left seat, right seat

04:43familiarization training to make sure they understand how the guard did the, and really now that they're

04:49federalized, they're soldiers, active soldiers, how they do, how they're doing the defense of that

04:55installation. They are there. They take over at about approximately noon today. That's a commander's

05:01decision on the ground and they will be there protecting that facility.

05:05And you said they haven't detained anyone yet. Have they had to deescalate any situations? Have

05:12they basically had to use their training yet in any way? And I'm talking about the guard troops now.

05:16Yeah, they've strictly used their civil disturbance equipment to really hold people away as the

05:24federal agents are doing their job. That's been it. Thank you. Sure. Thank you. Stars and Stripes?

05:36Yes. Hello. Can you hear me? Yes, we can. Yes. I wanted to know sort of a process question. Do the troops

05:45go up to the Armed Forces Reserve Center in Los Alamitos where the 40th Division has its headquarters?

05:51Is that kind of the staging point before they go up to L.A.? Or are the units coming directly to some

05:58other spot before being given their actual assignments?

06:03Well, I'll say this. They have, you know, for the guard soldiers, they have mustered at their home

06:10armories. That's when they came on to Title 10 to get people in. Just due to OPSEC, I'm not going to

06:17comment on the locations where they are. But we're using numerous installations throughout the Los Angeles

06:26area. I'm just trying to get at that these troops are, for the most part, 40th Division

06:34authority. For the guard soldiers. Yes. And that in the past, that's meant going to Los Alamitos before

06:41going to L.A. But you're saying they've come directly from their armories to their current positions?

06:50No, we've actually brought them into Los Angeles at certain areas that we have where we're staging

06:58soldiers and housing soldiers and move them from there. We've got to bring them here to make sure

07:04they've done all the correct training and they're fully trained before we get them out to guarding

07:09locations or to protecting the federal law enforcement as they do their job.

07:13Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you. Long Beach Post.

07:25Task and Purpose.

07:34NPR.

07:37Hi there. This is Ravenna Koenig with NPR. I'm wondering if you can share anything

07:41about the specific missions that troops have been supporting DHS on. I think you mentioned there

07:45were 26. Right. I'm not going to get in specifics just for operational security. I will give you

07:53generalities. I would say a handful are protecting installations, federal installations, federal

08:02property, federal assets, which is one mission. And then the rest have been missions that we've

08:09actually received missions from federal law enforcement where we've linked up with them,

08:14done rehearsals, make sure we understand everything that goes on, and that really they're to protect

08:21them and hold off crowds as they perform their federal law enforcement duties.

08:35Thank you, sir. We'll go to NBC National.

08:42Hey, it's Courtney Kuby. General, thank you so much for doing this and being willing to

08:46to the media and give us some information about this. It's something that we don't get a lot of lately.

08:50Two very quick questions. Are the Marines going to be, and forgive me if you said this,

08:53I missed the very top. Are the Marines going to be armed with firearms and will they have live rounds

08:58in them? And then are there any, have any uniformed service members been injured at all through since

09:03the task force stood up? You know, so all military members are mobilized with their signed weapon.

09:12They have standard crowd control gear, which includes a helmet, their face shield,

09:16shield baton, and gas mask. That's what they have for that. That's what they do. It's strictly,

09:25that's for crowd control to make sure they're guarding the facility. What was the second question

09:30again? I'm sorry. Just if there have been any injuries of National Guard, I guess probably not Marines.

09:36There have, there have, there have not been any injuries as of, as of today, right now.

09:41Thank you. Sure. Thank you. Task and purpose, Nicholas, I see your question in the chat.

09:49So, sir, I'll read that and this will be our last question for, for today. Where else in Los Angeles

09:56County will Marines be deployed going forward? So we're going to actually have, well, I'm not

10:05going to speculate on first, on future operations. What I will say is the United States Marine Corps,

10:12as you know, is, is they're the ones who guard our embassies worldwide and they are certainly trained

10:17on how to defend a federal building. And that's the missions that we've really focused on them to do.

10:25And that's what they will be doing here. They've already started with the Wilshire

10:29building today and we will, we will progress from there. Thank you, sir. Thank you, everyone,

10:38for joining us. That is all the time we have for today. We understand, can we do that question?

10:43We understand that additional outlets may have questions that we didn't get to today. We encourage

10:50you to reach out to US Army North, US Northcom or OSDPA. I've put the OSDPA duty officer email in the chat

11:00and we can get to your questions accordingly. Thank you so much, General Sherman, for your time and

11:04expertise and to all of you reporters for taking the time out of your day today to talk about Task Force

11:0951 Operations and the DOD Federal Protection Mission. Have a great rest of your day. Thank you.

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