Geoff Bennett:
For a closer look, we’re joined now by Juliette Kayyem, a former assistant secretary at the Department of Homeland Security. She’s now at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government.
Juliette, it’s great to have you here.
So, historically, presidents, as we just heard, they federalized the National Guard at a governor’s request during a time of crisis, like after Hurricane Katrina, or to enforce court orders, as was the case in Little Rock back in 1957 to enforce integration.
What happened over the weekend is without precedent, the president deploying the Guard over the governor’s objection. What are the implications?
Juliette Kayyem, Former U.S. Department of Homeland Security Assistant Secretary: Well, they are huge. I mean, there’s really no — there’s not only no precedent to this. There’s no sort of check on it. We don’t know, if this is the standard if what happened in L.A. is the standard now for federalizing the National Guard and deployment of active military.
The Trump administration has so lowered the floor and the distinction between civil and military actions, that they appear now to be one and the same. It’s important to remember there’s two distinct issues here, and I’m not even going to talk about immigration.
The first is, what are the standards for deployment of a federalized National Guard? To just put it in context, the last time this was done, as you said, the governors, both — in both instances, the governors wanted it — was 1992, the L.A. riots. By then, by the time that they were called, over 60 people had died, had been killed in a city that was literally on fire everywhere throughout Los Angeles.
And then again in 2005, with Hurricane Katrina response, by then 1,400 Americans were dead. There is protests. There is violent protests in L.A. There are cars on fire. There’s name-calling. There’s agitation. But there is nothing that satisfies the standards that we saw in ’92 and 2005.
The second thing I want to say is the deployment of active military into a very complicated web of first responders who are training and working together all the time is not always beneficial. And there’s a lot of challenges in terms of the introduction of a militarized force into civilian law enforcement, firefighters, emergency managers. And in the past, it has not worked very well.