Protests live updates: Marines spotted guarding federal building in LA

About 200 Marines are taking over responsibility for protecting the Wilshire Federal Building in Los Angeles, Maj. Gen. Scott Sherman told reporters Friday.

The addition of those troops will allow more National Guardsmen to be trained to accompany federal personnel during Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids, according to Sherman.

“The soldiers that were performing those duties will then transition to providing protection to federal law enforcement officers as they conduct their law enforcement function,” Sherman said. “I would like to emphasize that the soldiers will not participate in law enforcement activities. Rather, they'll be focused on protecting federal law enforcement personnel."

Sherman serves as the commander of Joint Task Force 51, the command headquarters for the 4,000 federalized National Guardsmen and 700 Marines assigned to protect federal personnel and property in Los Angeles.

In an interview with ABC and the Associated Press earlier this week, Sherman said, as of then, about 500 of the 4,000 National Guardsmen assigned to the LA area had been specifically trained to work with ICE teams.

-ABC News' Luis Martinez

Marines are now on duty in Los Angeles for the first time. Some were spotted guarding the Wilshire Federal Building on Friday.

Sen. Alex Padilla, D-Calif., has continued to defend himself and refute the claims by the Trump administration that he crashed Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem's news conference before federal officers shoved him outside the room, pushed him onto the floor and handcuffed him.

Padilla, the ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee's Subcommittee on Immigration, Citizenship, and Border Safety, provided more details about the incident during a Thursday night interview on MSNBC -- where he said he was not a threat and merely raised his voice to ask a question.

The senator claimed he did not barge into the news conference, as alleged by Noem, but rather he was in the federal building for an approved scheduled briefing with representatives of the Northern Command. He said the meeting was delayed by Noem's news conference, where she discussed the use of the National Guard in the city.
Padilla said he decided to go listen to the news conference and asked the National Guard and FBI agents with him if he could go.

"We're, the whole time, being escorted in this federal building by somebody from the National Guard, somebody from the FBI. I've gone through screening. This is a federal building. And so, I tell them, 'Let's go listen to the press conference.' They escort me over to that room," Padilla told MSNBC.

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Forty-nine people were arrested in downtown LA on Thursday night: 33 for failure to disperse, 13 arrests for curfew violation, one for resisting a police officer and one for pointing a laser at an airship, the LAPD said.

One person was arrested on a robbery warrant following a detention for curfew, police said.

Over 500 people have been arrested in LA since the protests began one week ago.

-ABC News’ Alex Stone