Boston Mayor Michelle Wu is preparing for the president to possibly deploy the National Guard to Boston, though she didn’t signal any immediate knowledge of a deployment during a public radio appearance Tuesday.
“We are following what’s happening in other cities around the country very closely. Unfortunately, we have seen a little bit of what it would look like if that should come to pass, and that this federal administration is willing to go beyond the bounds of constitutional authority,” Wu said on GBH’s “Boston Public Radio.”
In recent weeks, President Trump has threatened to broaden deployments of National Guard units and federal agents in major US cities. On Aug. 11, he declared a “crime emergency” to assume control over the Metropolitan Police Department in Washington, D.C., and dispatched roughly 800 National Guard troops — a figure that has since grown to about 2,200.
Some of these Guard units have begun carrying firearms, marking a significant escalation of the federal presence on Washington’s streets.
The Trump administration has signaled plans to expand this deployment strategy to other Democrat-led cities, including Chicago, New York, Baltimore, and potentially Boston, drawing pushback from state and local leaders. Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker denounced the plan as “unconstitutional” and “un-American,” while Governor Maura Healey dismissed it as “political theater.”
“It does nothing to improve public safety,” Healey said in a video published by WCVB. “If Donald Trump really cared about public safety, he wouldn’t be cutting funding for local law enforcement, which he’s done, he wouldn’t be cutting funding for community policing, which he’s done, he wouldn’t be cutting funding for victims services, which he’s done. Oh, and by the way, he’s cut funding for the National Guard, 40 percent.”
Asked if she’s preparing for a possible deployment to Boston, Wu indicated it was a possibility, but didn’t raise an alarm.
“Look, I mean, there’s a lot of rhetoric out there . . . Everything is chaos and up in the air. And I think in this moment, however we got here, every mayor of every major city is having to take preparations for the National Guard coming against their will,” Wu said.
Trump signed an executive order Monday tasking Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth with “ensuring that each State’s Army National Guard and Air National Guard are resourced, trained, organized, and available to assist Federal, State, and local law enforcement in quelling civil disturbances and ensuring the public safety and order whenever the circumstances necessitate, as appropriate under law.”
The order adds that a “standing National Guard quick reaction force” should be trained and “available for rapid nationwide deployment.”
Acting Immigration and Customs Enforcement Director Todd Lyons said last week on “The Howie Carr Show” that Boston will “100 percent” have an increased ICE presence.
“immediately you’re going to see more ICE agents come to Boston,” he said. “We’re definitely going to . . . flood the zone, especially in sanctuary jurisdictions.”
Boston’s Trust Act limits local police from working with ICE, though Wu has previously argued the city continues to work with federal law enforcement on criminal cases.
On the radio Tuesday, Wu said she believes National Guard deployment into cities is for two possible purposes: to test people’s tolerance for authoritarian action,” or to turn a “false narrative” around cities into a reality.
She explained, “The constant push that cities are dangerous, cities are, you know, unclean, cities are horrible places because people who look different from each other and might hail from different countries of origin at whatever point in their family tree . . . Because that’s not true in reality, because we don’t have real proof that we can point to that narrative that enables us to sort of lord it over them, we’re going to try to create that by causing some kind of confrontation.”
On her other theory, Wu said, “The other agenda seems to be a real testing of the boundaries of how much power can be grabbed, how much authoritarian action will be tolerated step-by-step in this country.”
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