With the marshals under attack, Kennedy deployed first the Mississippi National Guard, then thousands of federal troops. (This military operation, codenamed RAPID ROAD, was actually the first and only time during the Cold War that the military activated and used plans it had developed to quell civil unrest following a nuclear attack.)
Then, in 1963, Kennedy again relied on the National Guard to help integrate the University of Alabama, and his successor, Lyndon Johnson, used marshals and the National Guard to protect civil rights protesters in Selma after Alabama state troopers infamously attacked them at the Edmund Pettus Bridge in an incident known as “Bloody Sunday.”
Presidents began using military troops, notably the National Guard, more regularly in American cities in the 1960s. During the summer riots that followed police brutality in Detroit in 1967, President Johnson ordered elements of the 82sd and 101st Airborne divisions in the city and Michigan Governor George Romney called in the Michigan National Guard; more than 40 people were killed, more than half of them by Detroit police. National Guard troops killed 11 people, including a four-year-old girl, Tanya Blanding, who died when a Michigan guard opened fire with a tank-mounted .50-caliber machine gun on her apartment after mistakenly believing a sniper was inside.
While the troops were used again during the 1968 riots that followed the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., the disadvantages and risks of such deployments were made clear two years later at Kent State University when National Guard troops opened fire on students protesting the Vietnam War, killing four people and wounding nine.
Over the years, domestic use of federal troops has been incredibly limited — the 1992 Los Angeles riots being an exception — and from presidents and attorneys general until the Trump administration has generally gone out of its way to coordinate federal law enforcement reinforcements in cities or states.
Even at the height of marshal and troop deployments in the South, in the midst of the civil rights movement, presidents acted only after state officials refused to quell violence aimed at Americans exercising their constitutional rights or, in the case of Alabama state troopers, were the cause of violence against peaceful citizens themselves. Often, a president acted only after showing defiance based on a lawful court order – ensuring that there was a second branch of government acting as a check and balance and trigger for such federal action.
While Trump said immigration enforcement efforts in Minneapolis, like previous efforts in Los Angeles, Washington, D.C., Chicago, Charlotte, Portland and, more recently, Maine– is intended to enforce “law and order,” there is no apparent rhyme, reason, or necessity to deployments beyond political terror.
Trump is now attempting something unprecedented that contravenes every historical tradition in the United States: the brutal application of federal forces against a state and region for no apparent reason other than the fact that they are led by members of the political opposition.
By deploying DHS immigration and border security agents, rather than deputy marshals from the Justice Department — as presidents have done in the past — Trump is also changing the nature and tenor of his federal force. Marshals, whose work and training involve constitutional rights and protections, have historically been used to protect civil rights and valid court orders and are endowed with powerful federal law enforcement powers and authorities. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers are different. They are not trained in normal federal law enforcement standards of dealing with the public and are expected to operate with very limited authority to enforce immigration matters, not general federal laws. CBP officers in particular are less a regular law enforcement agency, based on due process, than a paramilitary force intended to operate in border regions. They were never planned have regular contact with American citizens and civilians.
Trump has also attempted to use troops in similar crackdowns over the past year and has been blocked by federal courts, which, among other things, have previously blocked his federalization of the California National Guard.
