With the attack on the marshals, Kennedy also deployed first the Mississippi National Guard and then thousands of federal troops. (That military operation, codenamed Rapid Road, was actually the first and only time during the Cold War that the military activated and used plans developed to suppress civil disturbances in the wake of 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 marchers in Selma after the infamous attack on the Edmund Pettus Bridge by Alabama state troopers, known as “Bloody Sunday.”
In the 1960s presidents began to more regularly use military troops, including the National Guard, in US cities. During the summer riots following police brutality in Detroit in 1967, President Johnson ordered elements of the 82Ra and 101scheduled tribe Airborne divisions arrived in the city and Michigan Governor George Romney called out the Michigan National Guard; More than 40 people were killed, more than half of whom were killed by Detroit police. National Guard troops killed 11 people, including Tanya Blanding, a four-year-old girl who died when a Michigan guard fired a tank-mounted .50-caliber machine gun into her apartment after mistakenly believing a sniper was inside.
While troops were used again during the 1968 riots following the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., the downside and risks of such deployments were clearly seen two years later at Kent State University when National Guard troops opened fire on students protesting the Vietnam War, killing four and wounding nine.
There has been incredibly limited domestic use of federal troops over the years — the 1992 Los Angeles riots being an exception — and presidents and attorneys general up to the Trump administration usually go out of their way to coordinate a surge of federal law enforcement in cities or states.
Even during the height of the deployment of marshals and troops to the South amid the Civil Rights Movement, presidents took action only when state officials either refused to stop violence targeting Americans exercising their constitutional rights, or, in the case of Alabama state troopers, Were Causing violence against peaceful civilians. Often, a president acts only after the insubordination has occurred based on a valid court order – ensuring that a second branch of government is acting as a check-and-balance and trigger for such federal action.
While Trump has said that the immigration enforcement effort in Minneapolis – like previous efforts in Los Angeles, Washington, D.C., Chicago, Charlotte, Portland and, most recently, in Maine – is to enforce “law and order,” there is no apparent rhyme, reason, or need for the deployment beyond political panic.
Trump is attempting something unprecedented today that violates all historical traditions in the United States: the brutal use of federal forces against a state and territory for no apparent reason, led by members of the political opposition.
In deploying immigration officers and border protection agents from DHS rather than deputy U.S. marshals from the Justice Department — as presidents have done in the past — Trump is also changing the nature and tenure of his federal force. Marshals, whose work and training include constitutional rights and protections, are always used to protect civil rights and lawful court orders and come with strong federal police powers and authorities. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) have separate agents. They are not trained to normal federal law enforcement standards of dealing with the public and are intended to operate with severely limited authority to enforce immigration cases, not with normal federal laws. CBP agents in particular are less a regular law enforcement agency based on due process and more a paramilitary force to operate on border areas. They never intended to have regular contact with American citizens and nationals.
Trump attempted to use troops in a similar action last year and was blocked by federal courts, which initially blocked his federalization of the California National Guard, among other instances.
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