# When the National Guard Comes to Town

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One month after sending the National Guard into Washington to fight crime there, president Trump is so pleased with the results that he's now discussing how to put federal troops under the streets of cities across the country from Chicago to New Orleans.

It's a potentially dramatic expansion of what has already become an unprecedented military deployment on domestic soil.

Today, my colleague, Jessica Chung, speaks with the residents of Washington about what it's really like when the National Guard comes to town.

It's Monday, September eighth.

I'm announcing a historic action to rescue our nation's capital from crime, bloodshed, bedlam, and squalor, and worse.

Our capital city has been overtaken by violent gangs and bloodthirsty criminals, roving mobs of wild youth, drugged out maniacs and homeless people, and we're not gonna let it happen anymore.

We're not gonna take it.

This is Liberation Day in DC, and we're gonna take our capital back.

We're taking it back.

A day after president Donald Trump announced he was deploying National Guard troops into Washington DC, the first Humvees started rolling in.

We lined up between the African American History Museum and the Holocaust Museum along the National Mall.

About eight hundred troops eventually came, and they weren't alone.

President Trump also called on the DEA, Homeland Security, and the FBI.

My message to residents is this.

We know that access to our democracy is tenuous.

DC mayor, Muriel Bowser, complied with all of this, saying there wasn't much you could do, which makes sense.

The city is a federal district where the president controls the National Guard.

And while this action today is unsettlingly and unprecedented, I can't say that given some of the rhetoric of the past, that we're totally surprised.

Violent crime in Washington is actually falling dramatically.

Some people found all of this strange.

Crime in DC has actually dropped to a thirty year low.

Let's look at some of this data.

In twenty twenty three, DC had its most murders in more than two decades, two hundred and seventy four, but it then plunged to a hundred and eighty seven murders last year, and it's been falling again so far this year.

So there is no crime emergency.

So it's hard to say exactly what the purpose is.

You think it's really about crime?

Easy. This is not about crime.

This is about control.

So people were resistant.

This is not about public safety.

This is about power.

A Washington Post poll found that eight out of ten residents were against the federal takeover of law enforcement.

Who city? Our city.

Who city? Our city.

Who city? Our city.

Who city? To Americans who don't live in DC, you think of the landmarks, the White House, the Monument, the Capitol.

But to locals, you think of their city in terms of four quadrants, northeast, northwest, southwest, and lastly, southeast, where crime is the highest.

So we wanted to talk to people living there to know what they thought about this, how life has changed since the feds came to town.

And they told me the streets are quieter, which is quite a change compared to what it's normally like, especially in one of the most dangerous neighborhoods in Southeast, Congress Heights.

When you walk into Congress Park, the tension is high.

Every day, all day, you can feel the tension.

Shootings all the time.

I hear gunshots all day long.

There are young guys killing each other.

Child got killed.

She got shot riding a scooter.

It's trouble. We talked to two residents who work in neighborhood safety.

I'll drive to the doctor's office, and it's a shame that when you get in your car, you can't sit there like you used to because somebody will car jack you.

So you just get in your car, lock the doors, and pull off.

It's a loving community.

It's just trauma filled.

So in split second, it could go from loving to silent, you know what I mean, in a heartbeat.

And just, taking our lives away from us.

It's almost like we're in prison.

Sondra Segars was one of the people we talked to.

She grew up in DC and lives in Congress Heights.

Grew up in zip code two zero zero two four, which is Ward six Southwest.

Sondra is seventy four years old.

She lives in a small brick house with manicured rose bushes and hydrangeas.

Okay. My block, we keep the grass cut.

She's a community activist.

Seven years ago, she founded a local group called Crave, concerned residents against violence.

They lobby the city to spend more money on safety and her ward.

When she hears that crime is at a low point in the city, even in her neighborhood, it doesn't feel that way to her.

How do you react to people who say, actually, crime is down and that people did try to stop the crime and it was successful?

I would say they're fools because they don't live where I live.

Almost every every other night, I can look down the street and see She says the crime problem in Congress Heights goes back decades.

Her own brother was shot and killed in the seventies.

But she says back then, crime was targeted toward people who were involved in it.

And for the most part, bystanders were left alone.

And as time went on, things changed.

There's more crime.

The store shut down.

But now, especially since the pandemic, she says it feels like the violence is more random.

The the the criminals getting younger and younger.

And for Sondra, that means more innocent people and even businesses are caught up in it.

First, it was, chicken place.

She points to a nearby storefront that can't seem to stay open.

Subway, at one point, it was maybe a Mexican cuisine.

One of the businesses moved so quickly, the wires were still hanging out the walls.

It's like they didn't take time to push the wires in the wall.

They just got out.

She says after the murder of George Floyd, the police were too lenient on crime.

Carjackings picked up.

She was also frustrated with the DC law that prevented kids from being charged with adult crimes.

I can cause no She was so fed up that she actually wrote a letter to the mayor and city council, asking for the National Guard to be sent in.

Those straight bullets.

And she wasn't alone.

The ward's council member, Traeon White, did too.

But their response was no.

The city council can stop it.

The police can stop it.

The mayor can stop it.

So Sondra, too afraid to go outside, hasn't been to a grocery store in two years.

I'm announcing a historic action to rescue our nation's capital from crime, bloodshed, bedlam.

She was listening to the local radio station one late afternoon when she heard the president describe the city as one beset by crime and lawlessness.

But you wanna have safety in the street.

You wanna be able to leave your apartment or your house.

It resonated with her.

I did not vote for Donald Trump.

Mhmm. I did not.

And I don't agree with a lot of things he's doing.

But when he decided to bring in the National Guard and the and the federal agencies, I was happy.

The first day it was announced, that same night, I didn't hear gunshots, no shootings, and no stabbing.

Mhmm. I saw one car come by and one person walking, and that was it.

People calm down.

She has yet to see federal agents in her neighborhood, but she says that her neighbors have.

One of them sent her a video from his port surveillance camera.

It shows a trail of twelve unmarked cars going down an alleyway.

And she said that many of her neighbors feel the same as her.

They afford because we realize that no one else is trying to stop the criminals, and we all suffer.

So with him, he's serious about it, and he's not gonna play with them, which is good.

As for the people in DC who don't agree with her, who want them out, Sondra says they're protesting the wrong thing.

And where were all these protesters?

Where were they when these children, babies, and toddlers were getting murdered?

Where were they then?

They didn't protest anything.

But now they're protesting.

Here's somebody trying to make it safer for us.

They're protesting them.

Delusional. Sondra says she still doesn't venture too far from home, but she now feels like she doesn't have to worry as much.

I don't be watching my back like I used to.

I just go out.

I'll be pulling the weeds from my flowers.

I I feel safe.

I do. No.

It what they're doing is putting a temporary fix on a bigger issue.

Not everyone in Congress Heights feels this way.

I believe it's a show.

Three blocks over, Levon Williams, a DC native, works in a nearby neighborhood complex as a violence interrupter for a local nonprofit.

His target area is Congress Park.

Say two neighborhoods I'll be from getting into or shooting at each other.

I go to one neighborhood first, speak to who I'm you know, the lead is in that neighborhood, then I go to the other neighborhood, do the same thing.

Bring the two neighborhoods together, and I mediate the conflict.

I've been trained in CBT, cognitive behavior therapy.

I've been trained Levon is trained in this line of work.

Mental health and behavior training But he also says that he can do this because he has established credibility within the neighborhood.

I had my run ins with the system.

On the streets, he's known as big psychs, like psycho, a nickname he was given from his days as a troubled kid.

Psycho. He dealt drugs, ran with the wrong crowd, and ended up in juvie, and then again in prison for a homicide that was ultimately overturned.

Three main psycho.

And now he uses his reputation on the streets to try to prevent crime.

I was I was a lawyer He says that since the feds came to town, prevention seems to be taking a backseat to arrests, and it has left Levon feeling obsolete.

One of the things that I was tasked with doing was just trying to show them who we are and what we do in the community.

And, you know, to my surprise, we've been ignored or discredited, you know.

A few days after the feds arrived, Levon got a call from a mom in Congress Park saying that the DEA had her son in handcuffs.

So when I got around there, say, how you doing, sir?

My name is Levon Wynn.

You know, I'm a a violence instructor community.

You have one of my participants.

You know, I was just wondering what, you know, what is is he being hailed for?

And they ignored me.

You know? He said the agents had smelled marijuana in the air.

They searched the kid for drugs and any sign of narcotics, but didn't find any.

Eventually, they let him go.

Is your understanding that with MPD in charge, it wouldn't have happened like this?

Right. Because MPD understand DC policy and procedures.

The officer understands what he's trying to say.

He knows how to deal with community members.

Right? You know, whether it's his friends, older people, whoever.

Right? What happens now is federal officers, they only understand federal codes and federal laws.

So it's been a lot of misunderstandings in the communities.

My colleagues at The Times have found that a thousand arrests were made in the first two weeks since the federal takeover, many for low level offenses.

So far, they say that the deployment looks more like a sprawling dragnet than a precise crime fighting operation.

And crime has fallen.

The deterrence seems to be working.

But to leave on, this all feels excessive and the long term effect damaging when you have agents policing people they don't know.

See, these are things that the US Marshals and Police Officers don't do.

They don't hold groups with people that they feel are criminals.

Right? They don't take them to do community building.

They don't do outreach.

They don't do healing circles with young guys that are full of trauma that are now trying to kill each other.

They are more He says however the deterrence is working, it's not gonna work for long.

He thinks many of these guys are just waiting for the feds to leave.

And in the meantime, their presence is just driving crime underground.

These guys are still gonna find a way to make their money.

They're gonna find some building or somewhere to go into and still do everything that they planned on doing out on the streets.

Mhmm. It's just on the inside now.

Is this what you're hearing from people?

That they are actually just doing this inside away from the gaze of National Guard troops?

There are men in this city that have three, four children.

Right? They're the breadwinner of the home.

And, yeah, they're all here trying to find employment, but until they do, they have to figure out a way to feed their children.

So now because of the presence of these officers, these guys unable to sell the drugs to feed their children.

Now they're picking up the gun to find somebody to rob.

Do you see?

So you just went from a basic drug dealer that was standing on the corner selling drugs to someone that if the person makes the wrong moves, now you just created a murderer.

So did you fix the problem?

He also says that the feds aren't focused on the more serious crimes they say they are here to solve.

He points to something that happened on Martin Luther King Junior Avenue on the first day of school.

Four days ago, after the National Guard was deployed in DC, there was a shooting.

A fifteen year old little boy got shot in his stomach.

While we were there responding to that shooting, we we knew that they were on their way.

We just knew because this is a shooting of a child.

This is why they said they're here.

You know, this is the job that they're here to do.

Right? Later, we got another notification that two more young men were shot.

Right around the corner from this shoot, within an hour, these people are coming outside to see what's going on.

Mothers and fathers that's sitting out there hoping and praying that this is not one of their children laying on the ground.

Like, one of these agencies could've just been curious, right, with as to what's going on.

Right? Not one agency outside of NPD came to be curious, and the whole community was out to see it.

Here it is.

Right? Your opportunity to show the community why you're here, and you don't come.

I mean, could it be possible that because MPD showed up that the other agencies didn't feel like they had to?

Well, if that's the case, then why don't you let MPD police the rest of this street?

Mhmm. You're here being the big brother MPD.

If you feel as though that you don't need to come because MPD has it under control, why are you here?

But they are downtown catching Uber drivers at flights, asking them do they have their paperwork.

Like, you have the time to do this.

Right? You have the time to stereotype and harass people that are just trying to make an honest living.

But when it comes to actual violence, you're nowhere to be found.

We'll be right back.

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Days into the National Guard deployment, in some of the places where they were most visible, they were often kind of milling around.

They were walking the halls of Union Station in the northeast of DC, smiling with tourists and doing selfies.

We're out here supporting the National Park Service and trying to keep federal areas clean.

They were seen picking up trash, even doing some landscaping.

Put down mulch beds around the tidal basin, as well as flower placements in the city.

A kind of beautification project.

And yet Hundreds of National Guard troops are flowing into the nation's capital that's initial deployment, more troops had arrived.

Governors in six states.

West Virginia, Mississippi, Ohio Sent from seven states.

These Republican governors answered Trump's request for more support.

Scoop trucks were seen clearing the personal belongings of homeless people.

Beds, tables, and appliances at encampments in the city's northwest quadrant.

Stand back. Do you have any idea?

Stand back. I will stand back back with you.

Checkpoints started popping up all over the city, including in the city's northwest quadrant, where there's a higher concentration of Latino residents.

Food delivery times were getting slower.

Moped drivers were getting stopped and detained.

Ice eventually joined the police patrols, and people started sharing images and videos of residents getting stopped on the streets.

Sometimes on foot, sometimes at traffic stops, while driving in their cars.

He was just driving.

We talked to several people living in these neighborhoods, along with producer Carlos Prieto.

Gathering small snapshots of a changed city.

Many of the people we spoke to wanted to remain anonymous, out of fear for their own safety, including a woman who was a cook at a restaurant.

She was preparing chicken when she looked out a window and saw officers set up a checkpoint right outside.

One of her coworkers had already been arrested in the week before.

Her boss locked the doors.

She and her colleagues continued working in the back kitchen in fear.

We heard from other people who were changing their routines, like going to the grocery store.

Families who would send one person out to the store instead of going together.

I won't. Parents and kids were navigating the new school year.

Carpooling, so their kids didn't have to take the bus or the metro, where a lot of troops had been stationed.

Undocumented moms and dads, who were handing off their kids to other parents, to take them the rest of the way to school.

Some families, who take different routes altogether.

We have taken a different route, not the main streets.

We talked to a ninth grader, an American citizen whose Salvadoran roots make him scared.

I've never felt this unsafe, ever.

So he's changing things about himself.

I haven't talked Spanish out loud whenever I'm in the street.

Like how he speaks and where he goes.

Me, I like to go play soccer.

He no longer goes to the soccer field where he plays goalkeeper.

Play with other people.

But he's not gonna lose his hair.

My curly hair, like, not cutting my hair too short.

At least if I have to let go one part of me, I guess I wanna keep one part true to myself.

I wanna just be me.

I wouldn't wanna be related to mice, but I feel like mice, how they're always hiding, they going around silently, quickly.

Yeah. My head has been on a swivel twenty four seven.

If you're in DC, don't come down New York Avenue to get on the Beltway because they have a big ass checkpoint.

Hey, man. I got a police checkpoint on eighth Street.

Fourteenth Street is crawling with ice.

Some people have developed warning systems.

Alerting people to what streets to avoid on neighborhood forums and social media.

So on New York Avenue, ice is there.

Please be careful.

Watch what you're doing out here, everybody.

But sometimes there is no warning.

It was six in the morning, and my brother, my mom, and I, we all wake up to screaming.

Christopher is eighteen years old.

He grew up in Mount Pleasant in Northwest DC.

On the morning of August twenty first, while it was still dark, he heard his dad yelling outside their apartment building.

And we look out the window, and then we see three SUVs and people that were, like, trying to grab my dad out of his work truck.

As soon as they see that, his mom rushes down five flights of stairs to the scene.

I see my mom crying and, like, what happened?

What happened? And she immediately, like, yells at me.

She was like, they took your dad.

They took your dad.

I'm like, what?

She said the men sprang out of unmarked SUVs dressed in plain clothes, no uniforms.

And they grabbed his dad just as he was about to get into his work truck.

And she heard, like, a big oomph.

What I'm guessing is that they knocked the wind out of him because, apparently, there was, like, four people on top of him and then just threw him in one of the SUVs, and they drove off.

And then I rushed to his truck because his truck is, like, in the middle of the street.

It's turned on.

His father works in construction just outside the city.

He's a scaffolder.

Christopher opens the truck door to try to look for clues as to what happened.

It was still running, and I look inside.

It's empty. His dad's uniform and some bottles of water were there along with his phone.

The keys were left dangling in the ignition.

What could have happened?

So Christopher parks the car.

I was kinda, like, panicking a little bit.

I could definitely hear my heart beating.

I start thinking like, okay.

Who could these people possibly be?

Because they had nothing.

They had no vest.

Their vehicles were unmarked.

Nothing. I thought he was being kidnapped.

About a half hour later, MPD arrives.

A neighbor who had heard the screams had called nine one one.

And then the police officer came up.

He was like, yeah.

I think I have an idea what happened because immigration enforcement is going around doing their patrols.

They were usually going around in the mornings, like, like, early mornings.

Mhmm. That's a bunch of people from at least from my community, they wake up early to go to their jobs.

So I think that that's who took their dad.

Christopher explained to the police that his dad had temporary protected status.

He'd been living here for the past twenty years after arriving from El Salvador.

So if it had been ICE, there had to be some kind of mistake.

They told me that they couldn't do anything because they're a separate agency that the police department couldn't really do much about it.

They just said that if you have any, like, questions, like, visit the immigration enforcement website to put in his a number in case he's a case already on his file.

An a number is an alien number.

Anyone who's a noncitizen is assigned one by DHS.

Then he said, sorry.

I couldn't help.

And then he just left.

In all likelihood, it seemed to Christopher his dad was taken by ICE.

But even the police couldn't say for sure.

So you still didn't know where he was?

No. Then I get a call from a random number from my dad's phone.

And I hear my dad's voice.

He's like he's like, son.

I'm like I'm like, dad, where are you?

What what happened?

And I ask her, I don't know the guy.

I don't know if it's the police, ICE.

As he's riding in the back of the car, Christopher's dad was also trying to figure out who had taken him.

And I cry and I say, you know, help me, help me because I don't have no badge number or they say it's police.

Maybe these people gonna kill me or something like that because I don't know that day.

They just tell me, you know, you you're illegal.

You're being arrested because you're illegal.

And I say, not illegal.

I got paper.

They don't listen.

They don't listen to me.

It's only then that he starts to understand, and that's what he tells Christopher.

He was like, everything's okay.

They're just detaining me.

And as soon as I heard the word came in, I just thought to myself, oh my goodness.

I just detained him.

I'll be quiet because you never think they're gonna happen you.

Maybe later, my family be the same way, like, a bit that day in that moment.

Whatever was happening to you, you're worried they were gonna come back for your family.

Yeah. Because, you know, there's they look Spanish too like me.

You know? When Christopher's dad, Jose, arrives at the Icefield office in Chantilly, Virginia, they take his wallet where his papers are.

I say, I'm good.

I got paper.

They say no.

But he says they don't listen.

He's processed into a holding room with what he described as sixty five other people just like him.

All say they've been swept up from DC.

Some with papers, some without.

He told me there were so many people on the floor, no one could lie down fully to sleep.

So people just stood.

Like an animal, you know, because you can't sleep.

We've talked to a lawyer and other families whose loved ones have been detained.

They paint a similar picture to the one Christopher's dad did.

Crowded, some were given a foil blanket and a single burrito for the day.

Do you talk to anyone inside?

Yes. Like, normal people, you know.

They go to work like me.

They were on their way to work?

Yes. Like me.

Christopher's dad was there for hours.

He began to worry that this was a start of a wrongful deportation.

They made it to At the first chance he could, he called his son.

My dad's phone, it rings.

It's from a detention center.

When I pick up, I hear my dad.

What I do is call my son, you know, and say where where I am.

And he's like, mijo, son.

I'm like, hey, dad.

Where you at?

I've been right now in Chantiles.

I tell my son looking for, lawyer.

And he was just telling me, please find a lawyer quick because they might move him.

Wanna make sure they're not referring me to, Salvador.

And then once he hung up, we were like, okay.

We gotta go find people.

My cousin and I, we were driving throughout the entire DC area trying to find lawyers.

So the first stop The second stop, I think it was around northeast, northwest, southwest, like, between the border of southwest and northwest.

We asked for the lawyer.

They're like, I don't know if we can because we're booked up.

Hey. Yeah. We're booked up.

We're doing it as fast as we can.

We're looking everywhere.

We can't really help you.

The schedule's filled up.

We're opening doors left and right to see who's available because everyone showed us that he was in surgery at the time.

They gave us, like, a list of recommended lawyers, and we called them.

All the lawyers around the area are, like, same problem.

Like, hey. They're full.

We're booked up.

We can It's a bunch of people who are being detained by ISE.

Until we find this one lawyer.

And this is after how many lawyers you've hit up?

She's the apron.

And then she was like, yeah.

We could set up a meeting, like, around next week.

The next morning, the lawyer called to say that there was a cancellation, so he immediately took the open spot.

We were going through my dad's papers.

Twenty minutes after the meeting started, I get a call from DHS.

It like, the name was called DHS ICE.

He got news that his dad had been moved elsewhere in Virginia to Richmond.

When they taken me to, Rismo, the first thing I see, the one the big guy supervisor.

And the supervisor asked, it was Christopher daddy.

And I said, I am he said, I don't understand why you be arrest.

They don't supposed to take you because you got paper.

You're good. Then he say, I'm sorry, very sorry for that.

When they tell me that, that's it.

I cry because you be never gonna see people like him talking nice and say, you're good.

You're in legal here.

He said, sorry.

I'm sorry. You know, I feel good at that moment.

The guy, the supervisor said, hey, man.

No problem, man.

You everything's gonna be okay.

He say, you ask somebody to pick up you?

I say, yeah.

My son. And then we started rushing out to go into the car to go pick him up.

I just hear my mom crying.

She's like, thank the Lord.

Thank God that it happened.

And my son cried too.

You know? My wife, everybody cried that moment, and I cried too.

When we asked the Department of Homeland Security about what Christopher and his dad told us, they refuted their account.

They said ICE agents clearly identify themselves as law enforcement, including by wearing the proper identifying clothing.

They also said that their agents are trained to ask a series of questions to determine a person's status, and if arrests needed, to use the minimum possible force.

And lastly, they denied the conditions in Chantilly, saying that detainees have access to phones, legal representation, and three meals a day.

Their goal, they said, is to support, quote, the reestablishment of law and order and public safety, so Americans can feel safe in our nation's capital.

Even though Christopher got his dad back, things feel different now.

His mom stopped going to work.

His dad sends Christopher out for errands.

And he tells his son to have his passport on him at all times because they're not ruling out that this could all happen again.

I mean, I'm not sure if it's even in the system that he was even detained because he looked again, and there were still zero cases with his a number.

Very worried that it could happen again.

When I go to work, I go to a house, I look around like, you're scared by everybody.

You know what I mean?

I'm scared for everything.

Yeah. You're scared every day.

People looking for you.

Sometime when I when I go to work, I feel the guy is behind me.

But not nobody, but I feel something like that sometime.

When I go to work, I feel I feel the same, and I feel that day.

All the time, that deal is in my head.

Mhmm. They're still right there in my head.

The future of federal troops and agents in DC remain uncertain.

Over the past week, the city's leaders sent conflicting signals.

Mayor Bowser issued an order requiring local police to continue working with most federal agencies, excluding ICE, indefinitely.

But a few days later, the city's attorney general sued the Trump administration over the deployment of the National Guard, calling it an illegal military occupation.

Over the weekend, Trump signaled that the next target for a strategy would be Chicago.

In a social media post on Saturday, he published a photoshopped image of the Chicago skyline filled with military helicopters and billowing flames, invoking the new name he's given to the Department of Defense.

Trump wrote, quote, Chicago about to find out why it's called the Department of War.

Hey, Chicago, stand your ground.

Hey, Chicago, stand your ground.

They will never break us down.

They will never break us down.

That prompted thousands of residents in Chicago to take to the city's streets a few hours later.

To protest Trump's threat to do to Chicago what they've already seen him do to Washington, DC.

We'll be right back.

Here's what else you need to Notre Dame.

On Sunday, the US and South Korea reached a deal to release hundreds of Korean citizens who were detained in one of the largest immigration raids of Trump's second term on a Hyundai Motor plant in Georgia.

The surprise raid resulted in the detention of around three hundred South Korean citizens who US officials allege had overstayed their visas or had entered the country through a visa program that had barred them from working.

The raid has shocked South Korea, a close US ally and trading partner, as well as Hyundai, which has promised to expand its manufacturing in the US, and it demonstrated just how wide ranging Trump's immigration crackdown has now become.

Today's episode was reported and produced by Jessica Chung, with help from Carlos Prieto and Mary Wilson.

It was edited by Lindsay Garrison, Lexi Diao, and Michael Benoit.

Fact checked by Sharmila Venkatesuban, with help from Susan Lee.

And was engineered by Alissa Moxley.

That's it for the daily.

I am Michael Barbaro.

See you tomorrow.