DENVER — President Donald Trump suggested Wednesday that he could deploy National Guard troops to New Orleans to fight crime.
The president already said he plans to send the National Guard to Chicago and Baltimore following the deployment of troops and federal agents to patrol Washington, D.C., last month.
This summer, the president sent 4,000 National Guard troops to Los Angeles to confront U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) protestors. A judge this week ruled that deployment was illegal.
Los Angeles, Chicago, Washington, D.C., and New Orleans are all cities controlled by Democrats. Could Denver, another city with a Democratic mayor, be next?
Denver7 anchor Shannon Ogden called Jonathon Booth, associate professor of law at the University of Colorado Law School, and asked.
"I think we should be concerned," Booth said. "Obviously, it happened in Los Angeles and is happening in D.C. I think what we're really going to see in the next week or two is in Chicago, and I think that will really tell us a lot about just how far the president is willing to go, even when the governor of Illinois, Gov. Pritzker, has spoken out quite impressively against the National Guard to Illinois. If they do deploy the guard to Chicago against the governor's wishes, we really will be in uncharted territory. And if they do it in Chicago, they could certainly do it in Denver."
Denver Mayor Mike Johnston addressed this question last week in a Q&A on Reddit.
"The militarization of our cities by President Trump is unprecedented, dangerous," Johnston wrote. "Any first-year law student in America could tell you that deploying the US military on the streets of American cities in times of peace to enforce domestic law is clearly illegal. Denver does not need any help from the national guard, as we are seeing the largest decrease of violent crime of any top 50 city in the country. We will be prepared to take them to court on day 1 if they threaten to do so. Bringing in the National Guard to occupy our neighborhoods is never the right way to address challenges — it only escalates tensions instead of solving problems."
Booth emphasized that National Guard troops, when federalized, are prohibited from doing police work. Soldiers do not enforce the law in the U.S.
