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US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth has defended the deployment of US Marines to deal with protests in Los Angeles, saying they were needed to help “enforce immigration law in this country”.

Speaking before the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense, Hegseth said the Marines would support agents of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), whose actions in detaining alleged undocumented immigrants over the past few weeks have triggered widespread protests.

“In Los Angeles we believe that ICE, which is a federal law enforcement agency, has the right to safely conduct operations in any state and any jurisdiction in the country, especially after 21mn illegals have crossed our border under the previous administration,” he said, using a term for undocumented immigrants.

The Trump administration announced on Monday that it would send 700 Marines to Los Angeles, despite vigorous opposition from the governor of California, Gavin Newsom.

The Marines would be sent to protect “federal personnel and federal property”, the US Northern Command said.

The move came just hours after Newsom sued Trump for an earlier decision to deploy National Guard troops to stamp out the anti-ICE protests without the governor’s support.

The lawsuit, filed on Monday in federal court, called the president’s decision an “unprecedented usurpation of state authority”.

The last time a president sent National Guard troops to deal with civil unrest without the consent and co-operation of a governor was in 1965.

“We have deployed National Guard and the Marines to protect them [ICE] in the execution of their duties,” Hegseth said, “because we ought to be able to enforce immigration law in this country.”

Military forces frequently help in the US during natural disasters and other incidents, but it is rare that they are deployed to assist in enforcing domestic law, particularly without the support of the state’s governor.

The decision to send in the Marines was sharply criticised by Betty McCollum, a Democratic committee member, who told Hegseth she saw “no need for the Marines to be deployed”.

“History had proven that law enforcement and the National Guard are more than capable of handling situations more volatile than what happened this weekend” in Los Angeles, she said.

McCollum said the unrest “looks nothing like the George Floyd protests or the Rodney King riots in Los Angeles in 1992”.

“This is a deeply unfair position to put our Marines in,” she said. “Their service should be honoured. It should not be exploited.”

But Hegseth said it was important to prevent a repetition of the unrest seen during the protests prompted by Floyd’s death in 2020. He said Tim Walz, governor of Minnesota, had at the time “abandoned a police precinct and allowed it to be burned to the ground”, and “allowed five days of chaos to occur inside the streets of Minneapolis”.

“Mr Trump recognises a situation like that, improperly handled by a governor like it was by Governor Walz, if it gets out of control it’s a bad situation for the citizens of any location,” Hegseth said.

McCollum, who is also from Minnesota, challenged his description of the situation in Minneapolis in 2020.