Thousands of federal troops have been deployed to Los Angeles since June 7 on the orders of President Donald Trump.

In the first 40 days of this military operation on U.S. soil, they have done vanishingly close to nothing.

The more than 5,000 National Guard soldiers and Marines who have operated in Southern California — under the command of the Army’s Task Force 51 — were sent to “protect the safety and security of federal functions, personnel, and property.” In practice, this has mostly meant guarding federal buildings across LA from protests against the ongoing Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids sweeping the city.

Since Trump called up the troops on June 7, they have carried out exactly one temporary detainment, a Task Force 51 spokesperson told The Intercept. On Tuesday, Trump administration officials announced that about 2,000 troops deployed to LA would be released.

Chief Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell described this action-packed deployment as Task Force 51 supporting “more than 170 missions in over 130 separate locations from nine federal agencies, including the Drug Enforcement Agency, the US Marshal Service, ICE and the Department of Homeland Security” in a briefing in early July. Task Force 51 failed to provide any other metrics regarding troops’ involvement in raids, arrests, or street patrols in response to questions by The Intercept.

The deployments are expected to cost the public hundreds of millions of dollars.

Troops were sent to LA over the objections of local officials and California Gov. Gavin Newsom. Officials and experts decried the show of military force to counter overwhelmingly peaceful and relatively limited protests as a dangerous abuse of power and a misuse of federal funds.

“We’ve said it time and again since day one, the militarization of Los Angeles and the deployment of nearly 5,000 soldiers is completely unnecessary and done out of pure theater,” Diana Crofts-Pelayo, Newsom’s deputy director of communications, told The Intercept, referencing the president and a top aide and the architect of his anti-immigrant agenda. “Trump and Stephen Miller are to blame here — they are creating their own chaos, military escalation, and tearing up hardworking families with their indiscriminate raids.”

The directive signed by Trump, calling up the California National Guard, cited “10 U.S.C.........

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