Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass responded to a drawdown of U.S. Marines in Los Angeles by urging the federal government to remove all remaining troops still deployed in the city.

“This is another win for Los Angeles but this is also a win for those serving this country in uniform,” Bass said in a July 21 statement following a press conference she held alongside state Sen. Caroline Menjivar, a Democrat from Los Angeles, as well as veterans and the families of service members.

“Whether you are doing crowd control or dealing with conflicts on a domestic basis, that is not what our Marines do. They are not authorized to make arrests. They are not doing the work of our local and state law enforcement. They’re not trained to do that, and they were never needed to do that.”

The Pentagon is withdrawing 700 U.S. Marines deployed last month. Also deployed were 4,000 National Guard troops, about half of which remain in Los Angeles. Trump ordered the deployment in June to protect federal buildings and personnel amid protests against federal immigration enforcement operations in the city.

A Pentagon spokesman said the unrest had subsided enough that Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth could order the Marines to withdraw.

But the mayor wants to see more.

“I am glad that 2,000 of the National Guard were sent back home, but I think that we need to be sensitive to the fact that these men and women, especially in the National Guard, are part-time. They had to leave their families, leave their employment. They had to leave their education,” the mayor told reporters.

“That’s not what they signed up for. We need the National Guard to assist us and prepare for fire season, not for an inappropriate development where they are just guarding a building that is not under attack.”

The National Guard troops in Los Angeles are deployed under a federal law that allows the president to send guardsmen into service in a state without consulting the governor. The law—Title 10, Section 12406—applies to “a rebellion or danger of a rebellion against the authority of the government of the United States” or other situations, such as an invasion.

The troops can be deployed only to preserve federal interests in the region and cannot make arrests or engage in law enforcement activities unless the Insurrection Act is invoked.

The federal government’s deployment of federal troops to Los Angeles was due to “incidents of violence and disorder” that had undermined immigration enforcement actions in the city, according to a June 7 presidential memorandum.

“Violent protests threaten the security of and significant damage to Federal immigration detention facilities and other Federal property,” the White House said in the memorandum. “To the extent that protests or acts of violence directly inhibit the execution of the laws, they constitute a form of rebellion against the authority of the Government of the United States.”

Menjivar, a Marine veteran, criticized the deployment.

“We did not sign up to intimidate and potentially take military action against Americans on American soil who are exercising their constitutional right to protest,” she said at the press conference.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom also released a statement calling for the withdrawal of all troops.

“There was never a need for the military to deploy against civilians in Los Angeles,” he said.

The Epoch Times reached out to the Pentagon for comment but did not receive a response by publication time.

Aldgra Fredly contributed to this report.