JUANA SUMMERS, HOST:
National Guard units are like a state's own emergency response team, often there to assist during tornados, wildfires and floods. They rescue people and clear debris. They also deploy abroad to fight in wars. Now, President Trump has enlisted them to help in his deportation campaign. Over the weekend, he bypassed California Governor Gavin Newsom to federalize the National Guard in California to protect federal immigration agents carrying out deportation operations in Los Angeles. We have retired Major General Randy Manner on the line to talk about that. He was the acting vice chief of the National Guard Bureau during the Obama administration. Welcome to ALL THINGS CONSIDERED.
RANDY MANNER: Thank you so much for having me.
SUMMERS: I just want to start by asking you, when you saw President Trump federalizing the National Guard in this manner, what was your reaction? What do you think the implications of this are?
MANNER: There's at least two primary unintended consequences for the average American, no matter whether you live in a blue county or a red county. Is - he absolutely is trying to intimidate the average peaceful demonstrator because most of those demonstrators are actually peaceful. That's No. 1 - suppressing freedom of speech. The second one that we have to be very concerned about is this is also suppressing states' rights. A duly elected governor is elected by the people to guide the state, protect the people. And unfortunately, here we have a federal authority coming in and suppressing that governor and the people of a particular state. So those unintended consequences, it doesn't matter where you are in the political spectrum, they should absolutely alarm you and you should be concerned about it.
SUMMERS: The president, though, does have the right to call up the Guard. We've seen a number of presidents do this during the civil rights era, for example. Tell us what's different here.
MANNER: There are two things. No. 1 is this is a legal order. It's important to say that the president does have the authority to do this. No. 2 is, is it the right thing to do at this time? Certainly, the state of California, the governor has the law enforcement resources there and also, through various agreements, the ability to call them in from additional jurisdictions and even other states, from other governors to assist him. Plus, of course, he has his own National Guard as a backup.
SUMMERS: The National Guard unit that President Trump has called up here, as I understand it, it is an infantry unit. They are not military police. Are they the best ones suited to do this job?
MANNER: It's important to note that the National Guard is not trained on a ready-to-go situation for doing civil disturbance. It requires additional training on literally sitting in the armory and working things out.
SUMMERS: The Department of Homeland Security requested 20,000 National Guard troops last month to help with deportation operations, and a memo obtained by NPR says they would be used in, quote, "night operations and rural interdiction" and guard duty and riot control in detention facilities. If this plan does move ahead, what is your reaction to the Guard being used more broadly in these sorts of operations?
MANNER: No. 1 is we have to remember that there is a cost associated with this. Twenty thousand guardsmen would cost somewhere between 2- to $3 billion a year in terms of the costs for pay and allowances. That is not something that is in the budget. It is something that the president will have to reallocate and the secretary of defense reallocate from other programs that would obviously affect readiness or military construction. No. 2 is, obviously, what is the impact on readiness for the entire military when we start taking large formations like this out of the existing infrastructure? So it's not just like there's 20,000 people ready to go. You have to have them ready, prepared and then to deploy, even in the United States. So its effect will be immense on our national security.
SUMMERS: And then separately, the memo that was obtained by my colleagues at NPR says that National Guard troops will be used in these night operations and rural interdiction. How troubling is that to you?
MANNER: That's potentially extremely troubling. That implies to me that they are going to actually be on the front line of dealing with Americans in cities and rural areas under difficult circumstances, quite frankly, as if they were at war in a foreign nation. And that is not what our National Guard is trained to do. That is not their role, and it's a very, very dangerous path we are going down. We have over a million badged and trained law enforcement officers in our country. These people are the ones that should be performing those actions, not armed military.
SUMMERS: Retired Major General Randy Manner, former acting vice chief of the National Guard Bureau, thank you so much.
MANNER: Thank you so much. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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