By Juana Carrasco Martín on August 27, 2025 from Havana
National Guard troops assembled Union Station in Washington DC, Photo :Scott Applewhite/AP)
Members of the National Guard, who together with other federal agencies in a Joint Task Force have occupied the U.S. capital, began carrying weapons on Sunday, as ordered by Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, who previously said they would only do so if required by justifiable circumstances.
The new school year is also about to begin, and while all students should be preparing to attend classes, a significant segment of Washington, D.C., residents are not getting their “weapons” of learning ready: books, pencils, notebooks… A discrepancy that gives much food for thought.
The militarization of the city is part of President Donald Trump’s crackdown on crime, which he threatens to extend to other cities—all of which, incidentally, are under Black Democratic mayors—and which has been rejected by the majority of the population, who suspect a second, true purpose behind the president’s agenda: it is not about crime, but about intensifying the hunt for immigrants and their deportation, and in passing, discrediting political opponents and drawing a veil over other problems such as the price increases caused by his tariff hikes on imports.
A Washington Post-Schar School survey of Washington residents found that 79 percent oppose the takeover of the city.
In our standards crime rates in Washington are high, as in virtually all U.S. cities, but they were declining in that city according to official statistics, and in 2025 they were lower than in 2024, but on August 12, the president intervened and took over the command of the Metropolitan Police Department.
Not only did he mobilize the District of Columbia National Guard, but he has also received more than 1,900 troops from the National Guards of West Virginia, South Carolina, Mississippi, Ohio, Louisiana, and Tennessee, who are joining forces with federal ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) and FBI forces.
In addition to this campaign against crime, homeless camps have also been cleared in a “homeless cleanup,” and last Thursday, Vice President J.D. Vance refused to say whether he would support the president’s plan to build yet another nonfunctional wall on the southern border, whose only value is to show how vicious and anti-immigrant the administration truly is.
In addition to this campaign against crime, homeless encampments have also been cleared in a “cleanup” of the homeless, and Vice President J.D. Vance refused to say last Thursday where they are being sent…
We can even talk about another collateral damage of the military occupation of Washington and that is it costs a million dollars a day, according to an analysis by the National Priorities Project, which would be minuscule in the Pentagon’s incredibly huge budget.
As for immigrants, the results have been satisfactory for ICE mission of arresting and detaining thousands of immigrants a day.
Therein seems to lie the essence of Trump’s takeover of Washington, D.C., and with it he is intimidating immigrant parents and deterring their children from returning to school at all.
The Intercept reported that, after an inquiry among immigrants, it asserted, “a regime of terror is being faced” because ICE agents have flooded their neighborhoods and “instead of worrying about having the right notebooks for the school year, many families now fear being detained by ICE when dropping off and picking up their children at school.”
The Intercept recalls that in January, upon assuming the presidency, Trump revoked the memorandum on sensitive areas that prevented ICE from operating in schools, hospitals, and churches.
According to the 2020 census, 11.26 percent of the population of Washington, D.C., is of Latin American origin and 4.81 percent is Asian, and at this time, not only undocumented immigrants, but also those with pending asylum applications and work permits, who by law should not be detained, may be targeted by ICE.
Last Thursday, the Trump administration announced that it is reviewing more than 55 million people with valid U.S. visas to detect any violations that could lead to deportation. According to the Department of Homeland Security, last year there were 12.8 million green card holders and 3.6 million people in the United States on temporary visas, all of whom would in the red zone…
“We’re not playing around,” Trump told the military forces patrolling Washington. That is clear without him saying so explicitly. Chicago and Atlanta are already under threat.
Fascism is taking shape in the US. It doesn’t want homeless, it doesn’t want foreigners. However, security is not increasing; what is growing is public concern and fear.
Source: Juventud Rebelde, translation Resumen Latinoamericano – English