As President Trump insists that National Guard troops patrol American cities, his administration is essentially blurring the lines between traditional law enforcement and immigration enforcement.
AILSA CHANG, HOST:
President Trump's National Guard deployment blurs the lines between crime patrols and illegal immigration enforcement. Security troops were sent to assist with immigration enforcement, including securing federal ICE facilities and in some cases protecting ICE agents during raids. The White House often characterizes undocumented immigrants as the driving force behind urban lawlessness, even though data shows that's not true. We'll talk about all this with NPR's Sergio Martinez-Beltran in Chicago and NPR's Kat Lonsdorf in DC. Hello to you both.
KATH LONSDORF, BYLINE: Hi.
SERGIO MARTINEZ-BELTRAN, BYLINE: Hi, Ailsa.
CHANG: Sergio, let's start with you. Just keep up to date with what's been happening in Chicago over the past few days.
MARTINEZ-BELTRAN: Well, Ailsa, the National Guard is in Illinois. More specifically, the Texas National Guard is stationed in Illinois along with some Illinois Federal Guardsmen. But you won't see them on the streets of Chicago. That's because a federal court yesterday temporarily blocked its rollout. So far, the only place troops have been sent to in Illinois is the ICE processing facility outside Chicago. I went there and nothing much happened.
CHANG: Okay.
MARTINEZ-BELTRAN: Now, last month, ICE launched a new operation here in Chicago, claiming it was necessary to fight crime – something state and local leaders vehemently deny. Chicago has a constant crime problem, right? — but the city's homicide rate this summer was the lowest since 1965. But that's exactly what Trump has done since he first appeared on the political scene – deliberately mixing these ideas of crime and illegal immigration, which has proven popular among his base and helped drum up support for his unprecedented crackdown on immigrants – those in the country illegally and, in some cases, people who are U.S. residents or visa holders.
CHANG: Okay. Well, Kat, you've been following various National Guard deployments or threatened deployments over the past few weeks.
LONSDORF: Yes.
CHANG: Can you talk about the broader pattern you're seeing here?
LONSDORF: Yes. I mean, Trump's combination of crime and illegal immigration has been at the center of many of these deployments. We first saw this back in June when Trump federalized the California National Guard against the wishes of Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom. Trump did this to quell protests in Los Angeles in response to immigration and deportation raids in the city. In this case, the Guard was sent to protect federal facilities and ICE personnel. And this is the same reason Trump has given for federalizing the Guard in Oregon, although that has also now been put on hold by the federal courts.
Experts we spoke with say the National Guard deployment and the administration's immigration tactics are quite intertwined right now. Here's Benjamin Farley of the National Immigration Law Center, which advocates for immigrant rights.
BENJAMIN FARLEY: Take an aggressive and sort of brutal approach to immigration enforcement, provoke a very expected reaction, and then allow that reaction to serve as a pretext for deploying military forces.
LONSDORF: And you know, from a legal standpoint, when the National Guard is federalized, which is the case in all these Democratic states where governors are reluctant, they can't enforce state laws unless the governors say they can.
CHANG: Right. And let's be very clear here. Even if the President says that these troops will help fight crime in various places, let's remember that the National Guard cannot make arrests. They can't, like, team up with local law enforcement to fight crime, right?
LONSDORF: Right. But they can help immigration enforcement even if they still can't make arrests because it's a federal requirement. Here's how Scott R. Anderson of the nonpartisan Brookings Institution explained it.
SCOTT R. ANDERSON: He's trying to get them to agree to a broader set of missions. But until they do, he's doing this narrowly to focus on immigration law because that's what he has the legal authority to do.
MARTINEZ-BELTRAN: And, Ailsa, there's something else important here. It was Texas Governor Greg Abbott who sent his National Guard troops to Illinois at Trump's request. And the Texas Guard, unlike other state guards, is engaged in immigration operations. Abbott sent troops to the Texas-Mexico border to repel migrants in a multibillion-dollar effort called Operation Lone Star. I mean, there's footage of troops using tear gas on a group of Venezuelan migrants at the border in 2024. So Texas troopers have done immigration-related work before, and that could influence how they act if they are allowed to patrol the streets here in Illinois.
CHANG: What about places like Memphis, where the governor has approved the use of the National Guard, or, in the case of the District of Columbia, where the guard is technically under the control of the president? Like, how does all this fit together here?
LONSDORF: Yes, in both Washington and Memphis, Trump has deployed various federal agencies and National Guard troops to fight crime. And federal law enforcement officials made a lot of arrests in both of those places, but a significant portion of them were immigration-related. I spoke with Maria Otsekha. She's in Memphis. She's a community organizer and immigration advocate there. She says that while others in the city might focus on Trump's anti-crime message, immigrant communities were skeptical.
MARIA OKEHA: We monitor the messages coming out of the White House, so we don't get fooled by, “Oh, we're only going to Memphis to fight crime.”
LONSDORF: She says there is confusion and fear in the community. The actual role of the guard in enforcing immigration control in these cases remains unclear. Again, they cannot legally make arrests. In Washington, they are primarily involved in street cleaning and security of federal buildings.
CHANG: Okay. Well, Sergio, I know you've been talking to people in Chicago all week. What did you hear from them?
MARTINEZ-BELTRAN: Yes. I mean, a lot of people born in the US tell us they're angry. They don't want the National Guard or federal immigration agents in their communities, especially since their tactics have become more aggressive, leading to the arrests of some U.S. citizens. And for illegal immigrants, terror is real. I spoke with Jackson (ph), a Venezuelan immigrant who didn't want us to use his last name because of his legal status.
JACKSON: (Speaking Spanish).
MARTINEZ-BELTRAN: He says it was already scary and difficult living in a city where you don't know if you're being arrested by a masked man from ICE or someone pretending to be him. And with the arrival of the National Guard in the city, Jackson says, it will be even worse.
CHANG: That's NPR's Sergio Martinez-Beltran in Chicago and Kat Lonsdorf in Washington. Thank you both.
LONSDORF: Thank you, Eilsa.
MARTINEZ-BELTRAN: You're welcome.
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