The National Guard started ramping up its presence in Washington on Thursday as President Trump’s takeover of city crime-fighting begins to take shape.
While the Guard had a relatively small footprint in the city earlier this week, by Thursday, all of the roughly 800 Army and Air National Guard troops Trump ordered to the streets had mobilized for duty, the Pentagon confirmed.
“They will remain until law and order has been restored in the district as determined by the president, standing as the gatekeepers of our great nation’s capital,” Department of Defense press secretary Kingsley Wilson told reporters at the Pentagon.
She added that the guard members will assist the D.C. Metropolitan Police Department and federal law enforcement officers with “community safety patrols,” protecting monuments, federal facilities and traffic control posts, and “area beautification.”
The number of guard members has steadily increased since Monday evening, when they were first spotted along the National Mall. On Thursday, they were positioned around the National Mall and Metro stops such as Union Station, where tourists milled about and the occasional camera crew stopped to capture footage of the troops and their vehicles.
At 7th Avenue NW and Madison Drive NW, between the long stretches of grass that separate the Washington Monument from the Capitol Building, a lone military vehicle was spotted idling on the street with two service members inside. Tourists stopped to take pictures of the vehicle with the monuments in the background.
And at Union Station, four Humvees were parked outside the building on the grass, with guard members standing in the nearly 90-degree heat as numerous camera crews captured their largely quiet presence.
National Guard Bureau spokesperson Maj. Micah Maxwell said the guard members were part of two teams sent to the National Mall and nearby Metro stations for a continuous presence of 24 hours, with plans to increase locations in the days ahead.
“It will be a slow increase, so I wouldn’t expect to see a big increase of soldiers and airmen across the city,” he told The Hill.
Part of the National Guard’s mission is to support law enforcement — which has also been expanding its presence across the district — though they will not be armed and cannot make arrests.
The troops are allowed to detain people temporarily in certain circumstances until federal agents arrive, much like the guard members deployed in Los Angeles in June to help quell protests over immigration raids.
Welcome to The Hill’s Defense & National Security newsletter, I’m Ellen Mitchell — your guide to the latest developments at the Pentagon, on Capitol Hill and beyond.
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