By Todd Lassa
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth sent about 700 Marines from Camp Pendleton in June after protests broke out in downtown Los Angeles over Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids of undocumented immigrants. The Marines were there to accompany California National Guard troops that the Trump White House deployed over the objections of Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) as the protests crescendoed with the burning of empty Waymo driverless Jaguar EV taxis (with added potential harm to first responders and demonstrators alike, Time magazine notes, because of the toxic gases released by an electric vehicle’s lithium-ion batteries).
Last week Tuesday, Hegseth ordered the release of about 2,000 troops, approximately half of the California National Guard deployed. Roughly 700 Marines also remain, but according to the Los Angeles Times they are bored.
“There’s not much to do,” one Marine told the newspaper as he guarded the Wiltshire Federal Building in Westwood.
Across the nation, the Trump administration has cracked down on alleged undocumented aliens and foreign college students suspected of anti-American speech and activities often by masked federal agents arriving in unmarked cars. The most high-profile of the latter was the arrest in Somerville, Massachusetts last March of Rumeysa Ozturk, a Turkish PhD student at Tufts University for alleged “activities in support of Hamas.
She has since been released.
The Trump administration insists its ICE raids and crackdown on protesters, especially those who are foreign students attending US colleges and universities is necessary to keep law and order.
Shortly after Ozturk’s abduction/arrest, Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced that the US has revoked “at least” 300 foreign students’ visas, according to the BBC.
“If you apply for a student visa to come to the United States and you say you’re coming not just to study, but to participate in movements that vandalize universities, harass students, take over buildings, and cause chaos, we’re not giving you that visa,” Rubio said.
Apparently, that applies to foreign students who come to US schools to study democracy and the US Constitution.
In this debate, pro-MAGA contributing pundit Rich Corbett argues for order over protest that can quickly spiral into chaos.
Corbett’s column undoubtedly will be controversial. It expresses the mindset of the administration with the power to react to national protests, peaceful or otherwise.
[“We’ll call out the elephant in the room right here: No, Corbett does not connect the lessons of Brian VanDeMark’s book with the January 6th attack on the US Capitol in his column.]
In the left column, contributing pundit Jerry Lanson writes a defense of demonstrations against the Trump’s policies toward undocumented immigrants, college students and others who protest the administration’s slide toward authoritarianism.
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