Mayor Paul Young leaned into the microphone and announced in a deep, resonant voice that he was less than enthusiastic about the National Guard coming to Memphis.
“I want to be clear,’’ Young told reporters last month, “I did not ask for the National Guard. And I don’t think it’s the way to drive down crime.’’
But the mayor said he planned to make the most of President Trump’s decision to send troops to Memphis. Days later, Young reported that he and his team had consulted city leaders in National Guard-occupied Washington, D.C. — the model the president says he wants to replicate in Memphis.
“What we heard was encouraging,’’ Young wrote in his weekly newsletter. “The Guard there served as ‘eyes and ears on the streets,’ more like a large-scale neighborhood watch than frontline police officers. This extended police capacity brought a sense of calm.’’
But the calm the mayor cites seems more like chaos to advocates working on immigration, homelessness, and human rights in Washington.
They say the deployment of more than 2,000 National Guard personnel there has stirred widespread fear among immigrant populations, led to a surge in racial profiling, caused a downturn in economic activity, and reduced footfall in the city’s restaurants. As one advocate told the Institute for Public Service Reporting, the usual tourist congestion in the nation’s capital has been replaced by “empty sidewalks.”
Meantime, an amicus brief filed in court by organizations working on homelessness argues that the National Guard has not received adequate training for one of its key Washington assignments: clearing out dozens of homeless encampments.
As the first National Guard troops began patrolling in Memphis last Friday following the surge of federal agents who have made hundreds of arrests since arriving September 29th as part of Trump’s “Memphis Safe Task Force,” activists in Washington remain perplexed by the surge of troops and agents there.
The Guard’s deployment in Washington has been estimated to cost roughly a million dollars a day.
“That is a huge cost to our national government that is being footed by all taxpayers in this country,’’ said Alicia Yass, supervising policy counsel for the Washington branch of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). “This is an enormous waste of money because the government is paying them for duties that could be done by local people who could just be hired to get a job.”
In addition to patrolling tourist sites and the city’s main train station, the Guard has been involved in cleanup activities — raking, mulching, and landscaping.
Responding to questions from The Institute, a spokesperson for the National Guard’s Joint Task Force in Washington said in an email that troops are making a difference in the city.
“We have been activated by our Commander-In-Chief to ensure the safety and beautification of the Nation’s capital,’’ the Guard spokesperson wrote. “The activities you mentioned (raking, mulching, landscaping) are all a part of improving the look of Washington, D.C., and making the city a better place to live and visit.”
Adverse economic impact
In addition to the cost to taxpayers, the Guard’s presence in the capital is also leading to a downturn in some economic activity.
In the week following the Guard’s deployment in Washington, restaurant reservations in the city were down nearly 25 percent, on average, according to data collected by OpenTable.
There has been a decline in hotel bookings and international travel to Washington as well. Michael Lukens, the executive director of Amica Center for Immigrant Rights, said the difference in the number of tourists in the city, too, is undeniable.
The week federal forces took over the capital, foot traffic in Washington dropped 7 percent on average, according to an analysis by Pass_by, which creates estimates by compiling data from multiple sources.
“It’s definitely not the D.C. we’re used to,” Lukens said. “It used to be that you get out of the metro on a hot summer day in August and think, ‘I cannot stand how many tourists are here in my city because they’re in my way.’ And now, it’s empty sidewalks.”
Heightened immigration enforcement
Mayor Young emphasized in his September 19th weekly newsletter that President Trump’s focus on Memphis involves more than the National Guard.
“As we consider what is coming next, it is important to think about the resources in two buckets — the National Guard and the twenty-two federal agencies that will support our existing Memphis-focused initiatives,’’ Young wrote. Other federal agencies expected to participate in Trump’s Memphis initiative include the FBI, the Drug Enforcement Agency, and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
U.S. Attorney Pam Bondi posted on social media on October 9th that Trump’s Memphis Safe Task Force had made 562 arrests to date, seizing 144 illegal guns. Accompanying those arrests are a number of complaints from the city’s Hispanic neighborhoods, with claims of harassment and rights violations. The Latino rights group Vecindarios 901 alleges that state troopers accompanied by ICE officers are saturating Hispanic communities, pursuing work trucks, pulling over motorists for petty violations such as not activating headlights in the rain, and seizing vehicles.
“This is not crime prevention and does nothing to make us safer,’’ Vecindarios activist Hunter Demster said on social media while reporting that task force members were pulling over motorists for brake light infractions.
In Washington, ICE’s ramped-up presence is most concerning to human rights activists.
According to data released by the White House, there were more than 2,300 arrests between August 7th, when federal law enforcement began their deployment, and September 9th. More than 40 percent of those arrests were related to immigration, an analysis by the Associated Press found.
Lukens said the Guard soldiers are not necessarily a direct threat to targeted communities. Soldiers, Lukens said, are mostly “standing around” and not “going around trying to intimidate people and causing trouble.” Rather, it’s the surge of other types of federal agents, including ICE agents, and the federalization of the police that has upended the daily lives of both immigrants and U.S. citizens.
“One of the first things was a crackdown on moped drivers because we have a really big food delivery economy done on mopeds,” Lukens said. ICE agents, supported by local law enforcement, have been pulling over mopeds for minor, non-moving traffic violations like a flapping license plate or failure to use a turn signal. On-the-spot questioning often results in an arrest.
The complement of federal agents, backed by the Guard, was unleashed in neighborhoods with high immigrant populations, leading to numbers of heavy-handed arrests, advocates say.
“Knowing your rights and being able to, in a chaotic situation, press for your rights are two very different things,” Lukens said. The need for services from organizations such as Amica, which provides legal representation and programming like “Know Your Rights” workshops, has increased dramatically, he said.
The threat to individual rights is compounded by a recent U.S. Supreme Court decision that paves way for law enforcement to question someone based on their appearance. The ruling has enabled federal agents to utilize racial profiling when stopping residents, according to human rights advocates.
“We have people who were pulled out of Ubers. A cop would pull someone over, and ICE would be questioning someone in the backseat,” said Lukens. “That person would end up getting arrested because they admitted they didn’t have documentation.”
Meantime, the infrastructure to support the sharp uptick in arrests of undocumented residents is insufficient. Lacking adequate bed space, ICE field offices have turned into crowded temporary holding facilities before arrestees are transferred to official detention centers — often hundreds of miles away from home.
Reports from those detained in field offices not meant to host humans are grim, said Amy Fischer, director of Refugee and Immigrant Rights at Amnesty International.
“There’s no bed, so people are sort of sleeping, sitting up. They’re being fed one single burrito a day,’’ Fischer said. “They don’t have access to drinking water. … It’s been very, very dire. They do not care about the safety or wellbeing of the people they are arresting.”
Department of Homeland Security Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin sharply denied Fischer’s assertions.
“Any allegations of ‘inhumane conditions’ at ICE facilities are FALSE,” McLaughlin said in an emailed statement. “Make no mistake, these types of lies are contributing to the over 1000% increase in assaults on the men and women of ICE who put their lives on the line every day to arrest violent criminal illegal aliens to protect and defend the lives of American citizens.”
All detainees receive “proper meals, quality water, blankets, [and] medical treatment,” McLaughlin said.
But Fischer, who doubles as an organizer for the grassroots organization Migrant Solidarity Mutual Aid Network, said the aggressive immigration crackdown is keeping aid workers busy in neighborhoods throughout Washington.
“We have on video multiple occasions in which federal officers are legitimately telling the people that they are arresting that their instructions are just to [arbitrarily] take them off the streets, bring them in, and have them processed,” Fischer said.
The actions have stirred fear throughout the city.
“People just aren’t leaving their homes as much just because they’re fearful of what might happen,’’ said the ACLU’s Yass.
Community trust is tested
There has been a considerable reduction in overall violent crime since the crackdown started, according to an analysis of Washington police data by The Institute. The Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) recorded 178 violent crimes between August 11th and September 11th, a drop of 40 percent compared to the same period last year. Property crime went down by 15 percent compared to the same period in 2024.
Yet, as in Memphis, data shows crime already was declining in Washington before the deployment.
In January, Washington’s MPD and the U.S. Attorney’s Office released a report indicating that total violent crime in Washington in 2024 was down 35 percent from the previous year, marking the lowest rate in over 30 years.
More concerning, Yass said, Trump’s deployment of the National Guard has led to questionable policing in Black and brown neighborhoods and mixed communities where community trust already is fragile.
According to a Reuters analysis of records from Washington’s superior court from the first few weeks of Washington’s takeover by federal forces, federal agents had been “converging in large numbers on low-level crimes such as marijuana use and public alcohol consumption.”
A spokesperson for the National Guard told The Institute that troops were assisting the Washington MPD and federal law enforcement but not conducting searches or arrests themselves. The spokesperson said, “Guard members will provide a visible crime deterrent, not arrest, search, or direct law enforcement.”
Lukens and Fischer described Guard activity as mostly “standing around,” picking up trash, and assisting in the occasional arrest. Officers from multiple agencies like the Department of Homeland Security and the DEA have shown more aggression, Fischer said.
Federal agents working with police have clamped down on commuter movement throughout the city, pulling over scores of non-white residents. A Washington Post analysis of more than 1,200 arrest records — not including the arrests made by ICE — showed that while arrests are occurring in every pocket of Washington, the majority are occurring in neighborhoods with the least amount of White residents. The Post analysis found young Black men comprise the majority of these arrests.
“It’s going to make people distrustful of our own police force, even once all these federal forces leave,’’ Yass said. “So any gains that our local MPD has made in community policing are going to have to be rebuilt, and that takes time — that’s not done overnight.”
Breaking up homeless encampments
In the first few weeks of the Guard’s deployment in the capital, around 50 homeless encampments had been broken up, a White House official told The Guardian.
The encampments were cleared “with very little notice given to them,” Yass told The Institute. “It’s really been a very haphazard approach without setting up all of these people with any sort of stable housing to transition into. So it’s very disruptive for them.”
Local organizations have had to step in to help many of these unhoused people, Yass said, putting their belongings in storage facilities so that they don’t lose important documents and possessions.
Last month, the ACLU was part of a coalition of Washington-based civil rights and legal service organizations that filed an amicus brief in support of the District of Columbia’s lawsuit challenging Trump’s decision to deploy the National Guard in the city.
Among its contentions, the brief states the Washington Legal Clinic for the Homeless has provided training on homelessness for more than two decades to nearly every Metropolitan Police Department recruit class. That includes connecting unhoused people to resources. National Guardsmen have had no such training, the brief says.
“That’s not helping to make anyone more safe,’’ Yass said, “particularly when it’s done by people who are not trained to do it and are not providing any sort of adequate support.”