LEILA FADEL, HOST:
President Trump deployed the National Guard to Los Angeles four months ago in June. He mobilized the Guard here in D.C. in August. Then he sent the Guard to Oregon, Illinois and Tennessee. And just this week, President Trump said, quote, "if we need more than the National Guard, we'll send more than the National Guard because we're going to have safe cities." And using Guard this way is something the president's inner circle, and at times Trump himself, have talked explicitly about for years, most notably, to help with planned immigration raids and mass deportations. NPR's Kat Lonsdorf has been looking into this, and she joins me now. Good morning, Kat.
KAT LONSDORF, BYLINE: Good morning.
FADEL: So what has the president said about this?
LONSDORF: Well, one of the big ideas Trump ran on leading up to his reelection was his plan to carry out the largest deportation operation in American history.
FADEL: Yeah.
LONSDORF: And he would need personnel for that. In a Time magazine interview before the election last year, Trump specifically said he would use the National Guard to help. That's an idea that Stephen Miller, now Trump's right-hand man on immigration, has been talking about for a while. Back in 2023, he appeared on the late Charlie Kirk's right-wing podcast to talk about how mass deportations in Trump's second term would work.
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STEPHEN MILLER: And in terms of personnel, you go to the red state governors, and you say, give us your National Guard. We will deputize them as immigration enforcement officers.
LONSDORF: He went on to describe that for democratic states that don't comply, they would send the Guard in from red states. That's something that we've seen start to play out in places like Illinois.
FADEL: Yeah. So we're - we've been seeing that. But National Guard troops - I mean, broadly, we're not seeing them make arrests or carry out warrants.
LONSDORF: Right.
FADEL: What do we know about how troops are actually being used?
LONSDORF: Yeah. Those plans that Trump and Miller outlined before Trump took office aren't legal under normal U.S. law. The Posse Comitatus Act bars federal troops from participating in civilian law enforcement. Here in D.C., you know, we've mainly seen Guard members picking up trash or strolling around neighborhoods.
FADEL: Yeah.
LONSDORF: In cases like Chicago, though, the Trump administration says that they are being deployed to protect federal immigration facilities and officers. But, you know, where's the line there? Can troops protect an ICE agent while that agent carries out an arrest, for example? These are some of the questions that courts are trying to answer amid the legal challenges over these deployments.
FADEL: You know, Trump has talked about the Insurrection Act. What has he said about invoking it in order to be able to deputize the military as law enforcement?
LONSDORF: Yeah. He's been talking about it a lot. Earlier this month, he said that he was, quote, "allowed" to invoke the Insurrection Act if the courts deny his deployments. We're waiting to see how courts rule for both Portland and Chicago, where prosecutors and federal judges have questioned the need for troops on the ground. Trump invoking the Insurrection Act to allow troops to help with immigration enforcement is also something that Stephen Miller has talked about. He told the New York Times back in 2023 that, quote, President Trump will do "whatever it takes."
FADEL: What are immigration advocates and legal experts saying about this?
LONSDORF: I mean, many experts I've talked to are worried as they're watching this and thinking through how it could play out. I talked to Kica Matos. She's the president of the National Immigration Law Center. It's an immigrant advocacy organization. She told me that they've been tracking all of this since before the election, trying to prepare. She says they see it as not only a threat to immigrants, but to democracy, as well.
KICA MATOS: What I have said repeatedly is that the path to authoritarianism in this country is being built on the paths of immigrants. They will begin with immigrants. They will not end with immigrants.
LONSDORF: Matos says it has her worried about the upcoming 2026 midterm elections and what the presence of troops might mean for those. That's a very common concern from pretty much every legal expert I've talked to - what armed troops on the streets could mean as voters cast ballots next year.
FADEL: That's NPR's Kat Lonsdorf. Thank you, Kat.
LONSDORF: Thank you. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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