The normal peacetime mission of the NG in any state or territory is to be available to help with actual emergencies that affect that state, usually of the natural disaster variety. The California NG has often played a role in helping contain the wildfires that have plagued that state for years now. Those are totally appropriate missions for state NGs to perform.
When I was a young enlisted soldier in the Missouri NG in 1983, my transportation unit was called up to provide anti-looting and commercial business security in the wake of a tornado that had swept through part of my hometown of Springfield. Our unit leadership was so concerned that there not be a shooting incident involving any member of our unit that we deployed without bolts in our M‑16s (i.e., the rifles couldn’t fire). We could still have used the weapons as de facto clubs, I guess, but the main point of our deployment was providing physical security for an area of the city that had just been hit by a major tornado. We had no lawful arrest or detention authority; that was the job of the Springfield Police Department.
Contrast that with the regime’s flip-flop on whether NG troops deployed to DC would be armed—earlier this week, it was announced they would not be armed. Then the story changed to “some might be armed.” Putting young NG personnel on DC’s streets—none of whom likely know the first thing about civilian criminal law—in a politically volatile environment is inviting a Kent State-like tragedy.
On my way into DC today, I had a roughly 15-minute chat with two young NG members. To protect their identities, I’m not going to reveal the state or unit they’re with or their genders. After I introduced myself, I asked these NG members what kind of legal training (if any) they’d received prior to their deployment to the District. They spoke in extremely general terms, and it was clear they were uncomfortable going into details about the training. What they did say was that if they were in doubt about their actions, their orders were to “lean on their leadership” and the civilian police on hand and nearby. The NG personnel I spoke with were simply standing around, providing “a presence” (their words) to “help the American people.” The latter formulation is consistent with the Trump regime’s propaganda line about the massive, multi-state NG deployment to the nation’s capital.
ICE RECRUITING VIDEO (SOUTH PARK VERSION)
In June, Border Patrol agents—not ICE, exactly, but close—apprehended Narciso Barranco, a 48-year-old man in Santa Ana, California. They chased him down, pepper-sprayed him, threw him to the ground, and punched him repeatedly in the head as he cried out in pain. Was it for raping, murdering, pedophilia, or gang activity?
None of the above. The guy is a landscaper! He was doing some work outside of an IHOP. He’s been in the United States since the 1990s and three of his sons are Marines, two of them on active duty. Although Noem’s DHS claimed Barranco “swung a weed whacker” at one of the heavily armed masked men who accosted him, it’s apparent from the video that he was not a danger to anyone.
Neither was Yeonsoo Go, a 20-year-old South Korean student at Purdue University, whose mother is a well-known and respected Episcopal priest. In late July, ICE agents arrested Go when she showed up at an immigration hearing to get her R-2 visa for the dependents of religious workers converted into a student visa, a perfectly legal thing to do. The agents claimed she had overstayed her current visa, but in fact it does not expire until December. Nonetheless, Go was thrown into detention for five days, before public outrage forced her release.
Cases like these are the norm and not the exception. Through late June, according to the Cato Institute, 65 percent of the more than 200,000 people arrested by ICE since October 2024, the start of the current fiscal year, had no criminal history, and most of those who did were for minor offenses.
