Boston Mayor Michelle Wu said Tuesday that her administration is actively preparing for the Trump administration to attempt to send the National Guard into Boston.
“We are following what’s happening in other cities around the country very closely,” Wu told Margery Eagan, the cohost of GBH’s Boston Public Radio, when Eagan asked what the city would do in the event of a National Guard deployment to Boston. “Unfortunately, we have seen a little bit of what it would look like if that should come to pass, and that this federal administration is willing to go beyond the bounds of constitutional authority and federal law to try to activate National Guards even when local communities aren’t asking for it and don’t want it.
The mayor says her administration is reviewing the relevant legal history.
“We are reviewing all the court cases now, and getting ready should it come to that,” Wu added. “And we’d be working very closely with community members to ensure people know what’s happening and that this is not something that is needed or wanted or legally sound.”
President Donald Trump mobilized the Washington, D.C. National Guard to participate in what he cast as a crackdown on violent crime in the District of Columbia earlier this month. Because the nation’s capitol is not a state, there were fewer legal hurdles for Trump to overcome when he took that step — compared to, earlier this year, when he deployed the California National Guard over the wishes of Gov. Gavin Newsom. Newsom then sued the federal government.
Trump has also suggested he may soon deploy the Illinois National Guard to Chicago to crack down on crime there, and recently signed an executive order tasking Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth with forming specialized National Guard units trained in responding to threats to “public order” in every state.
During her Boston Public Radio interview, Wu suggested Trump’s interest in sending various National Guards to the nation’s cities might be a provocation aimed at eliciting a violent response that confirms what she called his antipathy to urban areas, but also said it could be a simple way for the president to “tes[t] the boundaries of how much power can be grabbed, how much authoritarian action will be tolerated step by step in this country.”
“In this moment, however we got here, every mayor of every major city is having to take preparations for the National Guard coming in against their will,” Wu said.
The Wu and Trump administrations have been locked in a steadily escalating war of words over whether Boston is obeying federal immigration law, dating back at least to Wu’s appearance before a Congressional committee hearing this spring. Wu insists that Boston’s policy, which essentially allows Boston police to cooperate with federal agents on cases involving undocumented immigrants who pose a serious criminal threat while not providing aid in civil deportation cases, is both fully legal and beneficial to overall public safety in the city.
Various members and allies of the Trump administration have emphatically disagreed, however. Trump’s special envoy for special missions Richard Grenell went so far as to label Boston’s approach an “insurrection” in a recent post on X, formerly Twitter. Acting Immigration and Customs Enforcement director Todd Lyons has also vowed to “flood” Boston with ICE agents in response to what he describes as the mayor’s intransigence.
