They have stood outside Metro stations, walked past neighborhood businesses and appeared near the homes and schools of Washington residents for more than a year.
The summer events that brought thousands more National Guard troops into the capital have ended, but hundreds of troops sent from other states remain, and the ACLU says an extraordinary sight in an American city is being allowed to become ordinary.
The ACLU and its affiliates across the country are calling for the remaining out-of-state Guard members to be sent home and for the broader military deployment in Washington to end, arguing that the District has no emergency requiring troops on its streets and warning that their continued presence is erasing the line between civilian life and military power.
“Armed National Guard troops are neither needed nor wanted in the District,” ACLU-D.C. Executive Director Monica Hopkins said. “There is no emergency in D.C. that justifies this continued presence, and we cannot allow armed troops patrolling the streets of our nation’s capital to become normal. The troops need to go home.”
The demand came Thursday in a joint letter from ACLU-D.C., the national organization and affiliates around the country, extending the fight over a deployment that began when President Donald Trump sent the D.C. National Guard into Washington in August 2025.
More than 4,000 Guard troops from 15 states and the District have patrolled Washington neighborhoods during the deployment, according to the ACLU. Troops sent from six states to support Freedom 250 and other summer events were scheduled to leave by Aug. 31, but the organization said more than 300 from four states remained.
Those troops are part of a much larger continuing operation. The D.C. National Guard reported 3,780 personnel assigned to Joint Task Force-District of Columbia as of Sept. 1, including hundreds from the District and troops from numerous states.
The mission is not scheduled to disappear with the summer crowds.
The Pentagon has confirmed plans to continue the Guard operation through the remainder of Trump’s presidency. Defense Department estimates provided to Congress project another $1.4 billion in costs through January 2029. Nearly 9,700 Guard members had rotated through Washington during the mission’s first year.
The Trump administration has defended the deployment as a public safety operation. Military officials say Guard members have responded to medical emergencies, reversed suspected opioid overdoses with Narcan, reunited lost children with their families, broken up fights and assisted law enforcement.
Brig. Gen. Leland Blanchard, interim commanding general of the D.C. National Guard, said last month that those encounters should not be dismissed as statistics.
“Each of those represents fathers, mothers, children, people who have received emergency care, been returned to parents, and families, had their lives saved from opioid overdoses, or were involved in violent situations brought under control before further harm was done,” Blanchard said.
The ACLU sees something far different when armed troops appear in neighborhoods where people live, shop, attend school and travel to work.
“For over a year, the people of the District of Columbia have been living with troops on their streets without their consent and against their wishes,” said Mike Zamore, national director of policy and government affairs at the ACLU. “These military troops are patrolling the American capital as a flex, in an effort to menace and intimidate us. But we will not be bullied. We must keep speaking up against this blatant abuse of executive power.”
‘There’s No Emergency in D.C., and There’s No Need for Troops to Be There‘
Washington’s unusual political status gives the dispute another dimension.
Governors control National Guard forces in the states and can reject federal requests to make their troops available for certain missions. The District has no governor, and its locally elected government does not control the D.C. National Guard. The president does.
The deployment has been challenged in federal court. A district court ruled in November 2025 that the deployment of the D.C. National Guard was unlawful without a request from the District government and also rejected the legal basis used for deploying Guard forces from other states. The court temporarily stayed its ruling to permit an appeal, and an appeals court later stayed the injunction while the federal government’s appeal proceeds.
For some Washington residents, the debate has moved beyond constitutional authority and into their front yards.
ACLU-D.C. filed a legal claim this summer on behalf of Anna King, a combat veteran and Purple Heart recipient who says three National Guard members entered the property of her D.C. home in May, detained her, pinned her to the ground and handcuffed her. King alleges she suffered injuries during the encounter.
The ACLU is also trying to make the cost of the deployment an issue beyond Washington, arguing that Guard members dispatched to the capital leave behind civilian jobs, schools, families and states that may need them for natural disasters and other emergencies.
West Virginia has endured destructive natural disasters while some of its Guard personnel have been sent hundreds of miles away to Washington, ACLU of West Virginia Executive Director Eli Baumwell said.
“Rather than serving a core mission of disaster relief, many of our National Guard troops are away from home, family, and jobs to patrol our nation’s capital, which does not want, nor has asked for their presence,” Baumwell said.
Michigan has brought home troops it sent for the summer deployment, a decision welcomed by the ACLU of Michigan.
“The decision to bring home Michigan’s National Guard troops is both welcome and overdue,” Executive Director Loren Khogali said. “For more than a year, the people of Washington, D.C., have had to endure something that should be unthinkable in this country, the ongoing presence of military troops on their streets. There’s no emergency in D.C., and there’s no need for troops to be there.”
The argument that troops are needed to combat violent crime has also faced scrutiny.
Violent crime in Washington had been declining before Trump ordered the deployment. A study by the Niskanen Center found that the Guard presence coincided with reductions in some highly visible property crimes, including vehicle theft, but produced little measurable change in violent crime. The researchers concluded that Guard personnel were concentrated largely around tourist corridors, transit hubs, federal buildings, parks and other public spaces rather than areas where much of the city’s violence occurs.
A Reuters examination published last month raised similar questions, finding Guard members were involved in only a small fraction of criminal cases reaching D.C. Superior Court despite the enormous size and cost of the operation.
The ACLU argues that the consequences cannot be measured only through arrests, crime statistics or dollars.
Its letter asks Americans outside Washington to consider what happens when armed troops patrolling the streets of a civilian city cease to look unusual. For District residents, the organization said, that transformation has been underway for more than a year.
“Residents of our nation’s capital have always been proud to welcome visitors from all over with a smile, not an armed military force,” the letter states. “D.C. is a symbol of our country’s ideals of freedom and democracy, and this is marred by having National Guard troops marching in our streets. The National Guard must return to their home states.”
