AYESHA RASCOE, HOST:
Washington, D.C., is gearing up for the celebration of America's 250th anniversary this summer, including a massive fireworks display and a high-speed car race around the national monuments. And with that, federal officials have announced a, quote, "summer surge" of local and federal law enforcement. Part of that surge - doubling the number of National Guard troops deployed to the city. NPR's Kat Lonsdorf has been following President Trump's National Guard deployments and joins us now. Hi, Kat.
KAT LONSDORF, BYLINE: Hey, Ayesha.
RASCOE: There have been National Guard troops deployed here in D.C. consistently since August of last year. I mean, you see them all the time. They've really become a fixture, and now there are going to be more of them?
LONSDORF: Yeah, so, you know, just to remind everyone, we started with about 800 National Guard troops here as part of President Trump's Safe and Beautiful Task Force, which he said was an effort to reduce crime and beautify the city. You know, unlike states, Trump controls the National Guard here in D.C., so he can order a deployment, and then about a dozen other Republican governors have offered up members of their guard to come here. Over the last several months, the number of troops here has slowly ticked up. Now there are around 2,800 troops here. And this summer, with the surge that was announced, there will be 5,000 National Guard troops in the city.
RASCOE: That's a lot.
LONSDORF: Yeah.
RASCOE: You and I both live in D.C., and, you know, you're passing by National Guard members pretty much every day, even just now.
LONSDORF: Yeah, I mean, like you said, Ayesha, they've really become part of the landscape here. I saw them on my way into the newsroom today, for example. They're usually doing what they call, quote, "high-visibility patrols," basically just making sure their presence is known in residential areas, parks, metro stops, that kind of thing. And they say that's to essentially take that patrolling responsibility off the shoulders of law enforcement so they can focus on combating crime. It's really hard to measure how effective that is. Generally, crime has gone down in D.C. by about 25% since last year, but it was already trending down before Trump came into office. Again, it's hard to measure whether any of this is a direct result of the task force or not.
RASCOE: What's the cost of all this?
LONSDORF: Great question, Ayesha. Looking specifically at the guard here in D.C., the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office put out an estimate last year which found it costs about $1.5 million a day for this deployment. Obviously, if the number of guard here doubles, that cost will also double, so it will be around $3 million a day for the guard to be here. That's about $100 million a month.
RASCOE: Kat, last year, President Trump was talking almost every week about sending the National Guard to a different city.
LONSDORF: Yeah.
RASCOE: Where do things stand with those deployments?
LONSDORF: Yeah, right now, in addition to this deployment here, which is by far the largest, there are National Guard troops federalized and deployed to both Memphis and New Orleans. Those deployments have been done with the support of the state governors, which is different from the highly contested deployments we saw in Los Angeles, Portland, Chicago, last year. All of these deployments, including here, have been challenged in court.
And one thing that I think is important to keep in mind with these deployments, too, is that all of them happened in conjunction with big immigration sweeps in the cities. Those sweeps are usually carried out by federal law enforcement. The guards themselves have no arresting powers.
And another thing that I think is important to keep in mind is that there has been no end date announced for this surge. I reached out to the officials with the task force for comment - haven't heard back yet. So especially when it comes to the guard, we've seen the number of troops slowly increase here. It's unclear if that 5,000 number of troops will be here to stay past the summer.
RASCOE: That's NPR's Kat Lonsdorf. Thanks, Kat.
LONSDORF: Thank you.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC) Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.
