Trump's National Guard deployments aren't random. They were planned years ago

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President Trump's deployments of National Guard troops to U.S. cities have outraged his political rivals, tested legal precedents and led to nationwide protests.

The courts are weighing in on their legality. But — if successful — they could also fulfill a long-running administration goal of employing America's military to aid in the mass deportation of immigrants without legal status, according to an NPR review of past comments from Trump and his allies. It's a move that would stray significantly from past federal use of the Guard, challenging laws that dictate how the U.S. military can be used domestically. And with the 2026 midterms looming, some experts worry Guard troops could even be used as a tool of systemic voter suppression and intimidation.

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Trump has sent troops into four Democratic-led cities , and threatened to send them to several more, claiming they are needed to crack down on crime and protect federal immigration facilities and officers. Those deployments, and the White House's rhetoric around them, have regularly conflated violent crime and illegal immigration into a single crisis, blurring the lines around the role of the Guard and federal agents.

Taken one at a time, the deployments can seem random or fickle — Trump will often muse about s