WASHINGTON — All 800 National Guard troops whom President Donald Trump ordered into the streets of Washington this week to fight crime have mobilized for duty, the Pentagon said Thursday.

In round-the-clock shifts of 100 to 200 unarmed soldiers, the Guard will support Washington police and federal law enforcement officers by protecting monuments and federal buildings, conducting “community safety patrols” and carrying out “area beautification,” said Kingsley Wilson, the Defense Department’s press secretary.

“They will remain until law and order is restored in the District,” Wilson told reporters at an unusual midsummer news conference on the steps of a Pentagon entrance. “It’s a deterrent. It makes people feel safe.”

Although crime rates in the capital have been falling sharply in the past two years, Trump has said they are “totally out of control” and threatened a federal takeover of the city’s law enforcement.

The National Guard troops who are fanning out across Washington will not perform law enforcement tasks, Wilson said. But like the National Guard soldiers deployed in Los Angeles this summer to help quell protests that had erupted over immigration raids, the troops in Washington will be able to detain people temporarily in certain circumstances until federal agents arrive.

“They will not be arresting people,” Wilson said. “They may temporarily limit the movement of an individual who has entered a restricted or secured area.”

Asked how much the National Guard deployment would cost, Wilson said she did not know.

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This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

By Eric Schmitt/Kent Nishimure
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