Donald Trump will mobilize the National Guard in Washington, exceptional measures for this city which he says “invaded by violent gangs”, while the mayor of the American capital denies an increase in crime.
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The American president said he initially deployed 800 soldiers of the National Guard to restore “law, order, and public security” in Washington, recalling the mobilization of the latter in Los Angeles, in June, after demonstrations.
These national guards are reservist soldiers trained to intervene on natural disasters, but can also fight abroad. AFP takes stock.
Reservists
The American National Guard is a reserve body for the American armed forces. Unlike active soldiers, its members are not mobilized full -time and have another, civilian job.
Unlike other branches of the armed forces, the national guards are organized at the level of states. They are present in all 50 American states as well as certain territories such as Puerto Rico or Guam.
It is therefore the governor of each state who can mobilize and command this force, except in Washington, a city which enjoys a special status, and whose national guard depends only on the president.
But it also happens that the president takes his direct control in a state at the request of the local governor, or by going beyond his authority, as Donald Trump did in Los Angeles, on June 7, a first since the 1960s.
The budget of the US Ministry of Defense authorizes a total of 433,000 national guards in the country, compared to around 1.3 million active soldiers.
Natural disasters, wars, riots
The national guards are traditionally mobilized in the United States during natural disasters: evacuations, distributions of emergency food, debris cleansing, etc.
But they can also be deployed abroad and integrated into active forces for combat. Hundreds of thousands of national guards have fought in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The COVID-19 pandemic is the last major deployment of the National Guard. Their logistical help was precious to install campaign hospitals and transport medical equipment.
Repression of demonstrations
The national guards are sometimes mobilized during public order disorders or demonstrations.
Donald Trump had already deployed in June the National Guard in California, against the advice of the Democratic Governor, Gavin Newsom, saying that he wanted to restore order in Los Angeles after demonstrations against waves of immigrant arrests by the Federal Immigration Police (ICE).
This was also the case in the past, even if it remains very unusual.
During the demonstrations of Black Lives Matter in 2020, more than half of the States deployed the National Guard to ensure the maintenance of order as well as the establishment of a fire-up. This was also the case in Washington.
Before that, the national guards were deployed in Los Angeles in 1992, during riots and looting consecutive to the acquittal of police officers accused of having passed tobacco Rodney King, a black man.
Dozens of people had been killed and thousands injured.
The National Guard was also mobilized on several occasions during the 1950s and 1960s, the time of the fight for civil rights, to protect African-American children going to school, following the judgment of the Supreme Court, in 1954, rendering segregation in unconstitutional public schools.
