As President Trump dispatches National Guard troops to cities around the country — and drops hints about where might be next — political leaders in Massachusetts are girding for the prospect of soldiers on the streets of Boston.
Most local elected leaders are united against any National Guard presence in Boston. But the nation, and some in the city, are deeply split. What some see as a legitimate effort against crime, others say is the dawn of a police state.
Attorney General Andrea Campbell and staff have been “constantly meeting” with state and local leaders, her office said, and are ready to challenge any “unlawful deployment” in court.
The AG recently joined a chorus of states backing Washington D.C.’s challenge to the activation of soldiers there. She said in a statement that the president has made clear that D.C. is “only the beginning of the military occupation of American cities.”
Trump has pledged to continue sending troops into cities that he paints as overrun by crime. In the Oval Office last week, he signed an executive order to activate the Tennessee National Guard in Memphis — a city with one of the highest rates of violent crime in the country.
“I want to see crime stop, and I want to see the National Guard come in right away if that’s what’s necessary,” Trump said, adding that Chicago and St. Louis could be next. “We want to cut these places.”
Trump has floated Baltimore, New York and New Orleans as targets for troops. The president has not called out Boston as a city in need of a military presence, at least not publicly, but Boston has been doing battle with the Trump administration in other ways for months. A military deployment here would be an “unprecedented overreach past the Constitution,” Mayor Michelle Wu recently told WBUR.
“Cities around the country right today, everybody is making preparations, just in case,” Wu said. “We cannot predict what will happen. This is not an administration that deals in reason and logic and law.”
A White House spokesperson said questions about a deployment to Boston are speculation.
But for Jamaica Plain resident Roberto Chao, the prospect is all too real. Chao left Uruguay for the U.S. back in 1984, fleeing a military dictatorship there.
“It’s affected me my entire life,” Chao said in Spanish.
today 76, Chao is a muralist who spent his career teaching art in Boston-area public schools. He recounts growing up in Uruguay — a prosperous country with deep democratic traditions — and how quickly his home country, the so-called “Switzerland of the Americas,” dissolved into brute force military rule.
“After 8 o’clock at night, you couldn’t walk down the street. The military controlled everything,” he said. “Instead of police, there were soldiers with machine guns … Masked soldiers would appear and take people away, and you’d never find out where they went.”
Chao is today a U.S. citizen, and he fears his adopted country is on a similar path to the Uruguay he fled. He sees signs of Trump seizing more power every day — setting sweeping tariffs, dictating education policy and invoking emergency powers to send troops where he pleases.
“They’re already putting soldiers in Los Angeles and in Washington D.C. — and today there’s talk that they’re going to bring them to Boston,” Chao said.
White House spokesperson Taylor Rogers, while not confirming any plans for Boston, said in an email: “President Trump wants to make every city across the country safe, just like he successfully turned around [the] crime-ridden disaster in Washington D.C., which is why he is taking these efforts to Memphis, Tennessee next.”
Many Bostonians have rallied behind a mayor who’s become a prominent opponent of the Trump administration. But some in the city — even Wu supporters — say they would welcome the presence of troops. Dorchester resident Grace Richardson, 52, knows violence all too well, and said National Guard troops could make a difference on Boston’s streets.
In 2017, her 20-year-old son Christopher Austin Jr. was murdered in broad daylight in Dorchester.
“ He graduated, got a job at the airport, and he was on his way to work early in the morning — got shot in the face,” she said. “My baby, my son.”
A 24-year-old man received a life sentence in the killing. Richardson said she feels Boston is safer today than it was eight years ago when her son was killed. Still, she thinks the presence of soldiers would deter criminals.
“We need to roll out the National Guard,” she said.
She also remembers earlier Guard activations fondly, like during the Blizzard of ‘78.
“ The National Guard are our sons and daughters,” she said. “So why should we fear the National Guard?”
Other Mass. Guard activations
Massachusetts Guard members are often activated locally in response to fires and storms, as well as for high profile events like the Boston Marathon. In 2020, Gov. Charlie Baker also called up soldiers to help administer vaccines during the COVID-19 outbreak and to keep the peace during Black Lives Matter protests. Gov. Maura Healey activated 375 Guard members to assist with the recent migrant shelter surge.
In a statement, a Guard spokesperson said that over its nearly four centuries in existence, the Guard has responded to natural disasters, supported local authorities and served in every major U.S. conflict. Over the last five years, that’s involved some 61 missions, according to data provided by the Mass. Guard, in Massachusetts, overseas and in different parts of the country.
Under Trump this year, a military police company was sent from Massachusetts to the Mexico border, according to the data. Guard members also supported the presidential inauguration in January.
Massachusetts Guard officials said they have not been notified of any pending missions in the commonwealth. But for U.S. Rep. Seth Moulton, Boston is in Trump’s sights.
“He’s going to target blue cities, including Boston, even though it has one of the lowest crime rates in the country,” Moulton said.
For the Salem Democrat, military deployments aren’t an abstraction. Moulton did four tours of duty as a Marine in Iraq. He said Democrats shouldn’t claim that crime isn’t a problem, but it’s an issue that should be handled locally, not by federal troops.
“Crime has been a problem in Washington D.C.,” he said. “The issue is that you don’t use the military against our own citizens to solve that problem.”
As Moulton has watched Guard members patrolling tourist sites in the capital, where he lives while working in Congress, he’s cast doubt on Trump’s motives. He said soldiers have been spotted cleaning up litter around the National Mall: “And let me tell you, nobody signed up to serve in the National Guard to pick up trash.”
Congressman Jake Auchincloss also served in the Marines. He said Trump would be on “very tenuous legal ground” to send in troops against the wishes of the governor: “What he’s going to find is that Massachusetts did not quarter the king’s troops 250 years ago, and we’re not going to quarter the president’s troops today.”
It’s illegal to use the military for civil law enforcement purposes, unless certain standards are met. U.S. presidents can activate the Guard unilaterally, but it’s rare. The last time was in 1965, when President Lyndon Johnson federalized the Alabama Guard to defend civil rights marchers.
speedy forward 60 years, when Trump sent thousands of National Guard troops and Marines into Los Angeles and neighboring communities in June — citing protests against ICE raids. California’s governor said the move was illegal and a federal judge agreed. The administration is appealing the decision.
Amid such rulings, Auchincloss said Trump is putting Guard members in an “impossible scenario.” For officers facing the prospect of receiving unlawful orders, Auchincloss had advice: “If you can demonstrate that at the moment you had very high evidence to suggest that the order was not lawful, then you are actually required to not obey it.”
He said soldiers swear an oath to the Constitution, not to the president.
“National Guard officers need to obey lawful orders,” he said. “But the second a judge rules that an order is not lawful, they need to listen to the judge, not to the orders.”
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