AILSA CHANG, HOST:
President Trump's National Guard deployments have been blurring the lines between crime patrols and illegal immigration enforcement. Guard troops have been sent to help with immigration enforcement, including securing federal ICE facilities and in some cases protecting ICE agents during raids. The White House frequently characterizes undocumented immigrants as drivers of urban lawlessness, even though the data shows that is not true. Here to talk about all of this is NPR's Sergio Martínez-Beltrán in Chicago and NPR's Kat Lonsdorf in D.C. Hey to both of you.
KAT LONSDORF, BYLINE: Hey there.
SERGIO MARTÍNEZ-BELTRÁN, BYLINE: Hey, Ailsa.
CHANG: Sergio, let's start with you. Just catch us up on what's been happening on the ground in Chicago the last few days.
MARTÍNEZ-BELTRÁN: Well, Ailsa, the National Guard is in Illinois. More specifically, the Texas National Guard is in Illinois, along with some federalized Illinois guard. But you won't see them out in the streets of Chicago, though. That's because a federal court temporarily blocked its deployment yesterday. Now, the only place that troops were sent in Illinois so far is an ICE processing facility outside of Chicago. I went there and not much was happening.
CHANG: OK.
MARTÍNEZ-BELTRÁN: Now, last month, ICE launched a new operation here in Chicago, claiming it was needed to fight off crime - something state and local leaders strongly refute. Chicago has its ongoing challenges with crime - right? - but the city's homicide rate this summer was the lowest since 1965. But this is what Trump has been doing since he first emerged on the political scene - deliberately conflating these ideas of crime and illegal immigration, which has proved popular with his base and helped to garner support for his unprecedented crackdown on immigrants - those in the country illegally and, in some cases, people who are U.S. residents or have visas.
CHANG: OK. Well, Kat, you've been following these various National Guard deployments or threats of deployments the past few weeks.
LONSDORF: Yeah.
CHANG: Can you just talk about the larger pattern you're seeing here?
LONSDORF: Yeah. I mean, Trump's conflation of crime and illegal immigration has been at the center of many of these deployments. We first saw it back in June, when Trump federalized California's National Guard against Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom's wishes. Trump did that to quell protests in Los Angeles in response to immigration and deportation raids in the city. The Guard was sent in to protect federal ICE facilities and personnel in that case too. And that's the same reasoning Trump has given for federalizing the Guard in Oregon as well, even though that is currently halted by the federal courts, too.
Experts we've talked to say these National Guard deployments and the administration's immigration tactics are pretty intertwined right now. Here's Benjamin Farley with the National Immigration Law Center, which advocates for immigrant rights.
BENJAMIN FARLEY: Using the aggressive and sort of brutal approach to immigration enforcement, generating a very expected reaction and then letting that reaction serve as a pretext for the deployment of armed forces.
LONSDORF: And, you know, legally speaking, when the National Guard is federalized, which is the case in all these Democratic states where the governors have pushed back, they can't enforce state laws unless the governors say they can.
CHANG: That's right. And let's be very clear here. Even if the president says that these troops are going to help fight crime in these various places, let's remember that the National Guard cannot make arrests. They cannot, like, join up with local law enforcement officers to fight crime, right?
LONSDORF: Right. But they can help immigration enforcement even if they still can't make arrests because that's federal. Here's how Scott R. Anderson at the nonpartisan Brookings Institution explained it.
SCOTT R ANDERSON: He's trying to get them to consent to doing a broader mission set. But until they do, he's doing this narrow one to focus on immigration law 'cause that's what he has the legal authority to do.
MARTÍNEZ-BELTRÁN: And Ailsa, there's something else that's significant here. It was Texas Governor Greg Abbott who sent his National Guard troops to Illinois at Trump's request. And the Texas guard, contrary to other state guards, has been involved in immigration operations. Abbott sent troops to the Texas-Mexico border to repel migrants as part of 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 the Texas guard has done immigration-related work before, and that could impact how they'd operate if allowed to patrol on the streets here in Illinois.
CHANG: But what about in places like Memphis, where the governor has approved the use of the National Guard, or in the case of D.C., where the guard is technically under the president's control? Like, how does all of that fit here?
LONSDORF: Yeah, in both D.C. and Memphis, Trump has sent in various federal agencies and National Guard troops to fight crime. And federal law enforcement officials have made a lot of arrests in both those places, but a significant portion of them have been immigration-related. I talked with Maria Oceja. She's in Memphis. She's a community organizer and immigration advocate there. She says while other people in the city might have focused on Trump's message about fighting crime, immigrant communities were skeptical.
MARIA OCEJA: We have been tracking the messaging that has been coming out of the White House, and so we are not fooled by this language of, oh, we're only going to Memphis to fight crime.
LONSDORF: She says there's been a lot of confusion and fear in the community there. The guard's actual role in immigration enforcement in these deployments remains unclear. Again, they cannot legally make arrests. In D.C., they've mainly been cleaning up streets and guarding federal buildings.
CHANG: OK. Well, Sergio, I know that you've been talking to people in Chicago all week. What have you been hearing from them?
MARTÍNEZ-BELTRÁN: Yeah. I mean, a lot of U.S.-born residents tell us that they are angry. They don't want the National Guard or federal immigration agents in their communities, especially because their tactics have become more aggressive, leading to the arrest of some U.S. citizens. And for undocumented immigrants, the terror is real. I talked to Jackson (ph), a Venezuelan immigrant who did not want us to use his last name because of his legal status.
JACKSON: (Speaking Spanish).
MARTÍNEZ-BELTRÁN: He says that it's already been scary and challenging to live in the city where you don't know if the masked person arresting you is ICE or someone pretending to be. And with the National Guard in town, Jackson says it will be even worse.
CHANG: That is NPR's Sergio Martínez-Beltrán in Chicago and Kat Lonsdorf in D.C. Thank you to both of you.
LONSDORF: Thanks, Ailsa.
MARTÍNEZ-BELTRÁN: You're welcome. 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.
