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President Trump's National Guard deployments are not random. The president's inner circle and, at times, Trump himself have talked explicitly and publicly about them for years. Experts worry that these deployments could fundamentally change the way the military is used on U.S soil. NPR's Kat Lonsdorf has more.
KAT LONSDORF, BYLINE: Back in 2023, Stephen Miller went on the late Charlie Kirk's popular conservative podcast.
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CHARLIE KIRK: Joining us now is Stephen Miller. Stephen, we have a lot of questions, not a lot of time. I know you're...
LONSDORF: Talk about his plan for tackling illegal immigration if Trump won another term as president. Miller was a senior adviser for Trump in his first term. On the podcast, Miller described sweeping immigration raids and mass deportations.
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STEPHEN MILLER: And in terms of personnel, you go to the red state governors and you say, give us your National Guard. We will deputize them as immigration enforcement officers.
LONSDORF: Miller doesn't specify how that would be legal. Under U.S. law, the military can't broadly be used for policing domestically. But he continues.
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MILLER: The Alabama National Guard is going to arrest illegal aliens in Alabama and the Virginia National Guard in Virginia.
LONSDORF: For blue states who don't comply, he says, you simply send in the Guard from a nearby red state. In recent months, the Trump administration has deployed National Guard troops to states against the wishes of their Democratic governors to protect federal immigration facilities and officers. Those deployments are tied up in court challenges. On the 2024 campaign trail, Trump talked repeatedly about his intent to carry out the largest deportation operation in American history. In an interview with Time magazine, Trump affirmed his commitment to Miller's plan to use the National Guard to help. When Trump was elected to another term, he made Miller his right-hand man on immigration.
MILES TAYLOR: Trump was deeply deferential to Stephen, and I think you've seen that with a vastly more empowered Stephen Miller in a second term.
LONSDORF: Miles Taylor was chief of staff in the Department of Homeland Security during Trump's first term. He has since become a vocal critic of the president.
TAYLOR: At the time, Trump wasn't talking about those things publicly.
LONSDORF: But Taylor says plans for using the National Guard for immigration were talked about behind closed doors during the first administration.
TAYLOR: I can remember in meetings with him in the Oval Office or on Air Force One or at the border, him starting to bring up this idea of using the United States military to solve the problem.
LONSDORF: It wasn't something Trump just talked about. In 2017, the Associated Press reported on a DHS memo it obtained outlining a draft proposal to use the National Guard to round up unauthorized immigrants throughout the U.S. At the time, the White House denied it, saying there was no such plan. Taylor says there very much was.
TAYLOR: But it was much more specific than that. It was the invocation of the Insurrection Act to deputize the military to enforce domestic law - to basically become a domestic police force.
LONSDORF: Trump invoking the Insurrection Act would legally allow for the military to act as police on U.S. soil to carry out immigration enforcement, but possibly other enforcement, too, according to legal experts. NPR contacted the White House for this story. Spokesperson Abigail Jackson said the administration is committed to restoring law and order. She also called Taylor a hack, but did not directly address NPR's question about deputizing the Guard for law enforcement.
These ideas are also embedded in Project 2025, a conservative action plan written by the Heritage Foundation. Trump has incorporated many of its policies into his second administration. The report's architect is the head of the White House's Office of Management and Budget.
MATT DALLEK: I mean, the subtext of Project 2025 is to take any and all steps at the executive level to go into cities and states to enact the priority, which is to root out illegal immigration.
LONSDORF: Matt Dallek is a professor at the George Washington University who studies the American conservative movement.
DALLEK: So Project 2025 opens the door to the deployment of the National Guard in a place like Chicago without explicitly calling for it to be deployed.
LONSDORF: Project 2025 only mentions the National Guard a handful of times. Dallek says that while the Trump administration has implemented many parts of the project, it's also gone farther.
DALLEK: Beyond what is explicitly recommended there, and has used its power very creatively and also, I think, quite lawlessly in ways that the project does not explicitly call for.
LONSDORF: In recent weeks, Trump has been talking about the Insurrection Act a lot. Not just about immigration enforcement, though. Trump has talked about invoking it to send the National Guard and possibly other troops to quell violent crime and protests in places like Portland, Chicago, San Francisco. That has people like Miles Taylor particularly concerned.
TAYLOR: And all of a sudden, we're not talking about immigration anymore. We're talking about sending in the United States military to go against American citizens.
LONSDORF: Legal experts worry about what that could look like, especially with the 2026 midterm elections and the possibility that U.S. troops could be present as voters cast ballots.
Kat Lonsdorf, NPR News, Washington.
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