Why Trump’s Use Of Military In US Is So Controversial

In his two terms, President Donald Trump has repeatedly deployed the US military for domestic assignments. In 2018 and again in early 2025, Trump stationed National Guard troops and active-duty military personnel along the southern border to crack down on illegal immigration. In June, he summoned the Guard and the Marines to Los Angeles — over the objections of local leaders — to subdue protests against his administration’s mass arrests of migrants. And in August, Trump called up the Guard to combat violent street crime in Washington, DC, and suggested he may do the same in other cities, including New York and Chicago.

Trump’s actions mark a sharp departure from his predecessors. Historically, US presidents have made sparing use of the armed forces for missions within the nation’s borders, a legacy of resistance to the presence of British soldiers in the colonies in the 1700s. Trump’s mobilization of the military domestically has drawn sharp criticism from Democrats as an authoritarian abuse of power.

In 2018, Trump’s defense secretary, James Mattis, authorized the deployment of up to 4,000 National Guard troops to the US-Mexico border to support federal agents with surveillance and logistics for immigration enforcement.

In 2020, more than 30 state governors used National Guard troops to curb protests that erupted after the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis. Two years later, former Defense Secretary Mark Esper testified to a House committee that he and others had needed to persuade Trump not to deploy active-duty troops — those serving in the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marines — in US cities as well. At the time, Trump felt the widespread unrest made the US look weak, Esper told the committee.

As Trump campaigned for a second term, he made clear he wanted to be more aggressive in using the military. At an event in Iowa in 2023 he labeled several big cities “crime dens” and said he had previously been held back from sending in the military.

Following up on his vow to target an estimated 11 million immigrants who are in the country illegally, Trump in January ordered a new deployment of Army soldiers and Marines to the border to help block migrants from crossing without authorization. The Defense Department said at least four military planes would be used to help carry out deportations of about 5,000 detained migrants from El Paso and San Diego. As of early July, about 8,500 military personnel were stationed at the border.

In June, the president sent 4,000 National Guard troops and about 700 US Marines to Los Angeles for 60 days amid protests against immigration raids in the nation’s second-largest metropolitan area. In July, after protest activity faded, most of the troops were recalled.

In early August, Trump announced he would take federal control of Washington, DC’s police department and deploy 800 National Guard troops there, escalating his push to exert power over the nation’s capital. On August 12, troops began arriving in the city.

The law strictly limits the federal deployment of troops within US borders.

The US Constitution provides that neither the president nor Congress can use the armed forces to carry out their policy agenda without consent from the other branch. Domestic deployment of active-duty military personnel has historically been viewed as an option of last resort.

The 1878 Posse Comitatus Act, along with amendments and supporting regulations, generally bars the use of the active-duty US military from carrying out domestic law enforcement. Important exceptions to the 1878 law are contained in the 1807 Insurrection Act and its modern iterations, which allow the president, without congressional approval, to employ the military for domestic use in certain extreme circumstances. The Insurrection Act has been used very rarely to deploy troops under federal control domestically without a request from a state government, and modern examples mostly date from the Civil Rights era.

Occasionally, a president has deployed National Guard troops to respond to civil unrest and rioting, but almost always at the request of a state’s governor. President Lyndon Johnson, for example, sent National Guard soldiers under federal control to Detroit, Chicago and Baltimore to help quell race riots in the late 1960s after governors asked for help. Likewise, President George H.W. Bush activated the California National Guard in 1992 at the request of Governor Pete Wilson and Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley when rioting broke out in the city following a jury’s acquittal of police officers charged with severely beating a Black man, Rodney King, after a high-speed car chase.

The last time a president activated a state’s National Guard without a request from the governor was in 1965, when Johnson used the guard to protect civil rights demonstrators in Alabama after the governor refused to do so.

In recent decades, both Republican and Democratic presidents, including George W. Bush and Barack Obama, have relied on the National Guard and active-duty military members to reinforce US Customs and Border Protection with tasks including engineering, aviation and logistical support. But Trump has gone further by creating military zones along the US-Mexico border where troops can detain migrants without running afoul of restrictions on their involvement in domestic law enforcement.

Trump has repeatedly signaled he might invoke the Insurrection Act, though he has not done so. Instead, the Trump administration has justified deployments by arguing that local and state officials have failed to restore order in their jurisdictions. In his takeover of policing in the District of Columbia, Trump declared a public safety emergency under a provision of DC’s Home Rule Act that allows him to temporarily assume control of the city’s Metropolitan Police Department.

In Trump’s announcement of the DC deployment, he painted a nightmarish picture of a Washington that’s been “overtaken” by “bloodthirsty criminals” and “roving mobs of wild youth.” That was at odds with a finding from the Justice Department in January that violent crime in the capital reached a 30-year low in 2024.

To unilaterally dispatch the California National Guard to Los Angeles, Trump cited a provision of Title 10 of the US Code that permits the president to deploy the guard in cases of invasion by a foreign nation, a rebellion, or danger of a rebellion. Under this statute, troops are still not permitted to do civilian law enforcement.

On June 7, the president issued a proclamation giving Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth the authority to direct troops to take “reasonably necessary” actions to protect immigration agents and other federal workers and federal property. It also permits him to use members of the regular armed forces “as necessary to augment and support the protection of federal functions and property in any number determined appropriate in his discretion.”

In Los Angeles, the president’s move to stop what he called “migrant riots” was condemned as inflammatory and unnecessary by local officials, including Mayor Karen Bass and California Governor Gavin Newsom, who would normally be responsible for requesting such a mobilization.

Newsom argued that the president abused his authority, saying there was no rebellion or invasion that justifies Trump sending troops into Los Angeles. The governor has also said the troops were diverted from more important duties, including wildfire suppression and helping battle drug smuggling at the Mexican border.

In June, Newsom filed a lawsuit challenging the LA deployment. A federal appeals court declined to block the deployment, finding that the president likely acted lawfully. In August, US District Judge Charles Breyer held a three-day trial to evaluate whether the deployment violated the Posse Comitatus Act. As of August 15, he had not issued a decision.

DC Attorney General Brian Schwalb sued Trump on Aug. 15, alleging the president exceeded his authority in taking control of the Metropolitan Police Department and deploying hundreds of National Guard troops to the nation’s capital.

Source: Bloomberg Europe