In the last couple of months of the Donald Trump Presidency, he has threatened the use of the National Guard and deployed it in June for the protests that occurred in Los Angeles, but now it’s being used for law enforcement purposes.
The first city President Trump deployed a large amount of troops to was the nation’s capital, Washington D.C., to put the federal government in charge of law enforcement. As of now, there are 19 states where President Trump has or plans to deploy the National Guard to “restore public safety”.
One of the states that he plans to send the National Guard to is our very own state of Indiana. This comes as the Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department has slowly become more accepting of the presence of ICE, with the IndyStar reporting on September 18 that Marion County Sheriff Karry Forestal told them the Adult Detention Center houses, on average, about 100 detainees a day for ICE.
Another report from July showcased that the country jail had over 1000 ICE-related bookings, compared to 500 from just 2024.
Arkansas has already deployed two dozen troops to central Arkansas to help assist these ICE raids, according to the KTHV station in Arkansas. In the coming months, when these states deploy troops to help with raids, and processing migrants living in these states will be normalized.
You may ask the question of “Is this even legal?” Yes, but as the Brennan Center for Justice’s article on the deployments, it had the words in the title “Not a blank check” either.
The last weekend in September, Trump announced yet another city he’s deploying troops to: Portland, Oregon. In his tweet announcing the coming deployment of troops, he stated his primary reasoning it being “war-ravaged” and that ICE facilities were “under siege” by ANTIFA.
This comes as before that he called on Memphis for its crime to be cleaned up, like the other states and cities he has troops in. Many of these states and cities have had judges who have blocked these orders to deploy troops, with the most recent U.S. district judge, Kari Immergut, filing a restraining order to prevent sending the 300 National Guard members to Portland.
As the days of the Trump administration progress, the fear of these deployments entering people’s cities increases and also the demonstrations against it.
