June 6th, 2025. Los Angeles.
I watched it from a concrete room in Cambodia, the ceiling fan whining overhead, a quiet lunch going cold beside me. Protesters filled the screen. Screaming. Throwing. Bleeding. ICE had kicked off another wave of raids — this time sweeping through Westlake and the Fashion District like it was Baghdad. They called it enforcement. But it looked like occupation.
By nightfall, the 101 was blocked. Fires lit the edges of downtown. Someone took a baton to the face and didn’t get back up. This wasn’t the usual scattered outrage. This was a city snapping.
And then came the escalation.
By June 8th, the Trump regime had federalized California’s National Guard. Two thousand boots, flown in with barely a press release. The excuse was always the same: protect federal property. As if the real threat was windows, not the machine ripping families apart.
And then they sent the Marines.
Twentynine Palms, California — just a few hours from the chaos. A battalion from the 7th Marines, activated for domestic deployment. Seven hundred Marines. In uniform. In formation. In an American city. Not for disaster relief. Not for evacuation support. For crowd control. For suppressing protest. For intimidation.
Marines.
They sent Marines against the American people.
By June 9th, the total force in LA was nearing 5,000. Marines, Guard, federal agents, ICE, DHS tactical teams. All of them under orders. All of them following commands that never should’ve been given.
I don’t have the words for what that feels like as a veteran. Not clean ones anyway.
Shame doesn’t even touch it. I wore that uniform once. Twice deployed. Fifteen months in Iraq. I believed, or tried to. I kept believing long after the cracks showed. But this? This is the end of whatever belief I had left.
There is no constitutional mission that justifies this. No honorable chain of command that holds under this weight. Marines aren’t meant to be political tools. They aren’t meant to be turned inward. They are trained for war. For overwhelming force. For finality.
You do not aim that at your own people.
And yet. There they are.
June 10th. The protests have spread. San Francisco. Portland. Boston. Salt Lake City. Hartford. Americans standing in the streets, linking arms, holding the line. They’ve been tear-gassed, shot at, arrested. Journalists cuffed. Organizers disappeared. But they’re still there. Still rising.
If there’s any flicker of light in this — it’s them. Not the politicians. Not the pundits. The people.
They’re doing what the institutions wouldn’t. What the press won’t. What the military should have refused to enable.
They’re saying no.
And maybe that’s the only line left worth holding. Not for victory. Not for show. Just to remember that resistance existed. That someone said stop.
I don’t know where this goes. But I know what happened. And I won’t forget the date.
June 2025. The month they sent the Marines.
Slug: they-sent-the-marines Tags: collapse, witness, veterans, news Meta Title: They Sent the Marines | Subdued Chaos Meta Description: On June 6th, 2025, ICE raids in LA triggered national protests. By June 9th, U.S. Marines were deployed. A veteran’s reflection on the unthinkable now made real.