Soldiers on the streets: The threats of militarizing immigration control
By Cora Haggarty
In recent months, National Guard troops have patrolled the streets of major American cities in a historic departure from their traditional role. Thousands have been deployed coast to coast: over 4,000 to Los Angeles; nearly 2,200 to Washington D.C.; and the list goes on, including Chicago, Portland, and Memphis with the potential for New Orleans, New York City, Baltimore, San Francisco, Oakland, and St. Louis, too. But no war has been declared, no natural disaster has struck, and there is no immediate crisis. The conditions that typically justify National Guard deployments are absent. Instead, the current administration under President Donald Trump has deployed the National Guard, over the objections of local and state leaders, as a tool for federal authority in their ongoing militarization of immigration control. Leveraging the National Guard under these conditions and for this purpose represents a dangerous and unlawful expansion of executive power that violates legal and constitutional limits and threatens civil liberties.
The National Guard was created as a specialized branch of the US military with joint state and federal responsibilities, designed to serve as a reserve force for domestic emergencies, civil unrest, disaster relief, and war. During the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, the Guard searched for survivors in the rubble and recovered the remains of those fallen. In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in 2005, the Guard evacuated nearly 2,000 residents, and delivered food, water, and medical supplies to those in need. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the Guard worked on the frontlines, staffing emergency call centers, working at food banks, and removing the dead from hospitals. Its traditional role is protective, not punitive, and is accountable to civilians and the Constitution rather than the whims of any administration. Typically, state governors activate and command the Guard under Title 32 of the U.S. Code during national disasters, civil unrest, or other emergencies, and in times of need, the President may mobilize the Guard under Title 10, bringing it under federal command. Rarely do presidents federalize a state or territory’s Guard without the consent of the governor, but the Trump administration’s decision to bypass California Governor Gavin Newsom and deploy four thousand troops marks the first time in sixty years that a president has done so, the last being in 1965 when President Lyndon B. Johnson sent troops to Alabama to protect civil rights activists.
Given its historical role and past uses, the deployment of the National Guard for immigration control, and specifically, to combat crime, quell protests, and safeguard Immigration Customs Enforcement (ICE) facilities in what President Trump describes as “war-ravaged” and “crime-infested” cities, is unfounded and inappropriate. These troops are trained for disaster responses, national emergencies, and civil unrest, not serving political whims or agendas. Their deployment relies on the assumption that the political leadership of the United States will use them responsibly and only when absolutely necessary. Preserving the purpose of the National Guard to serve in limited and apolitical circumstances is crucial for upholding the ideals of democracy and civilian governance, protecting legal precedent, and safeguarding civil liberties. The Trump administration’s recent deployment threatens each, a concern several judges across the nation have recently underscored in their rulings and public statements.
At the nation’s founding, James Madison, American founding father and former president, cautioned that “a standing military force, with an overgrown Executive will not be safe companions to liberty,” because of the challenge to resist turning soldiers into “instruments of tyranny at home”. A core component of democracy is the strong presumption against military enforcement of civil law, and that the military should not be policing citizens. This is because standing military forces, or soldiers on the street, can enable a president to militarize a political agenda by weaponizing the military as a direct enforcer of policy, setting a dangerous precedent for a de facto national police force with the President as its chief executive. President Trump’s deployment of the National Guard affects this, and worse, previews a future where he may be able to unilaterally deploy military forces for routine law enforcement. This worry is especially pressing, in light of his recent suggestion to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to “use some of these dangerous cities as training grounds for our military”and that the nation is currently experiencing a “war from within”. Moreover, the use of military forces in domestic law enforcement also threatens the separation of powers between state and federal governments, with the federal government’s authority limited by the US Constitution by the powers reserved for the states and the people. President Trump’s deployment of the Guard raises significant concerns under the Tenth Amendment, which reserves general police powers to the states and excludes them from the federal government's enumerated powers. The federalization of the Guard to enforce immigration control, and especially, the administration's act of bypassing state governors, represents a severe encroachment on the powers of state and local authorities, which undermines the constitutional balance between state sovereignty and federal power.
In addition to civilian governance, militarizing immigration control also breaks legal precedent and challenges established laws designed to prevent the military from encroaching on civil affairs and personal liberties. For example, Trump' s deployment of the National Guard violates the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878 which prohibits the use of federal military forces to perform domestic law enforcement unless explicitly authorized by Congress or the Constitution. Although there are certain exceptions and loopholes to this rule that have enabled the Trump administration to deploy the National Guard, recent federal court rulings have reaffirmed that deploying the military in law enforcement capacities, such as arrests or crowd control, violates this act. In Newsom v. Trump (2025), federal district court Judge Charles Breyer ruled that the deployment of National Guard troops to Los Angeles violated the act because the troops were used to perform police functions and that the government “systematically used armed soldiers and military vehicles to set up protective perimeters and traffic blockades, engage in crowd control, and otherwise demonstrate a military presence in and around Los Angeles”. Similarly in Oregon, U.S. District Judge Karin Immergut temporarily blocked the federalization and deployment of National Guard troops from California to Portland by granting Oregon’s initial request for a Temporary Restraining Order, citing that there was no evidence to recent protests in the city that made the presence of federalized National Guard troops necessary. Furthermore, Judge Immergut explains that the use of the military to quell unrest without Oregon’s consent risked the sovereignty of that state and others, and inflamed tensions in the city of Portland. In addition, there are Supreme Court precedents that Trump’s deployment of the National Guard breaks. Ex parte Militan (1866) ruled that it is unconstitutional to try civilians by military tribunals unless there is no civilian court available, establishing a legal limit on due process and that substituting military authority for civilian law enforcement and civil courts is unlawful. Military power cannot replace civil processes and roles. New York v. United States (1992) establishes that Congress cannot “commandeer” state legislatures to enact or implement federal regulatory programs, preventing federal action from coercing states to act in a way that violates the Tenth Amendment.
Aside from violating established law, militarizing immigration enforcement through the National Guard endangers core civil liberties protected by the First, Fourth, and Fifth Amendments. The First Amendment protects the right to free speech and peaceful assembly, but the presence of armed troops can intimidate demonstrators, silence dissent, and threaten censorship. The Fourth Amendment guards against unreasonable searches and seizures, but soldiers who patrol streets and conduct unwarranted operations under the guise of immigration enforcement can create environments where citizens are unlawfully surveilled or otherwise searched. Moreover, the National Guard is not necessarily trained to work in domestic law enforcement capacities. The Fifth Amendment ensures due process; however, cases such as that of Kilmar Abrego Garcia who was wrongfully deported by the Trump administration in March 2025, showed that militarized enforcement risks circumventing procedural safeguards and result in the detention and deportation of individuals without access to legal counsel or fair hearings. When the military, generally less trained in the critical minutiae of civil rights and due process, supplants civilian law enforcement, civil liberties become jeopardized.
Militarizing domestic immigration control is a threat to core practices and foundations of American civil governance, liberties, and legal precedent. If left unchecked, the Trump administration’s actions risk normalizing the presence of armed forces in civilian life and blurs the separation between military, civilian power and ultimately, our democracy.
