https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2025-06-24/veteran-advocates-low-morale-l-a-deployment

«“They don’t want to deport their uncle or their wife or their brother-in-law,” Woolford said. “… Some of the language people have used is: ‘I joined to defend my country, and that’s really important to me — but No. 1 is family, and this is actually a threat to my family.’ ”

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Janessa Goldbeck, a U.S. Marine Corps veteran and chief executive of the nonprofit Vet Voice Foundation, said that, among the former Marine Corps colleagues she has spoken to in recent weeks, “There’s been a universal expression of, ‘This is an unnecessary deployment given the operational situation.’”

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She added that the “young men and women who raised their right hand to serve their country” did “not sign up to police their own neighbors.”

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“Guardsmen across the country are on high alert, [thinking] that they could be pulled into this,” said Goldbeck, with the Vet Voice Foundation.

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Jones said her own husband, an active-duty Marine, deployed to Iraq in 2004 with the 2nd Battalion, 7th Marine Regiment based at Twentynine Palms — the same infantry unit now mustered in Los Angeles.

The unit was hard hit in Afghanistan in 2008, with at least 20 Marines killed and its high rate of suicide after that year’s deployment highly publicized.

Jones said she was stunned to learn the battalion — nicknamed the War Dogs — was being deployed to Los Angeles.

“I said, ‘Wait, it’s 2/7 they’re sending in? The War Dogs? Releasing them on Los Angeles?’ It was nuts for me,” Jones said. “To hear that unit affiliated with this — for my family that’s been serving for two decades, it brings up a lot.”

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On June 18, Capt. Rasheedah Bilal was activated by the California National Guard and assigned to Sacramento, where she is backfilling in an operational role for Joint Task Force Rattlesnake, a National Guard firefighting unit that is now understaffed because roughly half its members are deployed to Los Angeles.»