Pentagon: Deploying Marines, National Guard to LA will cost $134 million

After persistent questioning from members of Congress on Tuesday, acting Pentagon comptroller Bryn Woollacott MacDonnell said on Tuesday that President Donald Trump's deployment of the National Guard and the Marines to Los Angeles over immigration enforcement protests will cost about $134 million.

MacDonnell said the estimate is largely based on costs of housing, travel and food for the troops deployed, which as of now comprises 4,000 members of the California National Guard and about 700 Marines.

She spoke at a House subcommittee hearing, where Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth was testifying. Hegseth argued that the deployment of troops was necessary and said it would last 60 days.

"We stated very publicly that it's 60 days because we want to ensure that those rioters, looters and thugs on the other side assaulting our police officers know that we're not going anywhere," Hegseth told members of the House appropriations defense subcommittee.

California's request to halt troops deployment rejected

Since protests erupted after an immigration raid on June 6 in the garment district of Los Angeles, the Trump administration has deployed 700 active-duty Marines and doubled the 2,000 National Guard troops to quell protests in the Los Angeles area over his government's efforts to deport more migrants. The action bypassed the authority of Governor Gavin Newsom of California and triggered more protests that spread to other U.S. cities.

Top legal officials in the U.S. state of California filed an emergency court motion on Tuesday to challenge the federal government's authority to use troops for local law enforcement. They argued that the military deployment violated the federal law, threatened state sovereignty and escalated rather than reducing civil tensions.

The emergency motion follows a lawsuit filed Monday by the same officials challenging Trump's order to federalize the California National Guard for 60 days.

On Tuesday afternoon, a federal judge rejected California's request to stop the Trump administration from deploying military forces in Los Angeles immediately. Instead, the judge granted the Trump administration until 2 p.m. Wednesday to file its response to California's emergency motion.

Immigration raids could disrupt California's economy

California is highly dependent on trade and immigrant labor. However, Trump's tariff hike and immigrant raids severely disrupted the city's economy, the Los Angeles Times reported on Tuesday.

The report argued that the president's tariffs cut deeply into traffic at the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, and his push to arrest undocumented immigrants at work sites threatens a one-two punch to a region just starting its recovery from January's firestorms.

"The reality is that the U.S. economy is largely today dependent upon foreign born labor, and in California more so," Nicholas Eberstadt, a political economist at the American Enterprise Institute, was quoted as saying. "For the country as a whole, we're getting towards 1 out of 5 jobs being filled currently by somebody who was born abroad. In California, it's more like 1 in 3."

Economists say that the surge in international migration in the last two decades – both by legal and undocumented workers – has been key to the growth of California's economy, and that the crackdown, depending on its scope and scale, could come at a price for industries across Los Angeles and California, such as construction, leisure and hospitality, healthcare and agriculture.

(With input from Xinhua)