Donald Trump has withdrawn National Guard troops from Chicago, Los Angeles, and Portland.
The President touted the achievements of the troops in bringing down crime in the Democrat-run cities but claimed that their work had been stymied by local opposition.
‘We are removing the National Guard from Chicago, Los Angeles, and Portland, despite the fact that CRIME has been greatly reduced by having these great Patriots in those cities, and ONLY by that fact,’ Trump wrote on Truth Social on Wednesday.
‘We will come back, perhaps in a much different and stronger form, when crime begins to soar again – Only a question of time! It is hard to believe that these Democrat Mayors and Governors, all of whom are greatly incompetent, would want us to leave, especially considering the great progress that has been made.’
Trump ordered troops into the cities earlier in 2025 primarily to protect Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents carrying out raids on illegal migrants amid violent protests by far-left agitators. The President also asserted that the presence of the troops would help to bring down crime.
However, the deployments faced immediate legal challenges, with federal courts – including eventually the Supreme Court last week – ruling that Trump lacked authority to federalize the troops without meeting specific criteria, such as to quell a rebellion.
Initial plans had called for hundreds of troops in each city but many soldiers were blocked from actual deployment and placed on standby or had already been partially withdrawn as legal hurdles were raised.
The full withdrawal announced by Trump on New Year’s Eve comes after the Supreme Court on December 23 ruling that refused to lift blocks on the Chicago deployment. This effectively halted similar efforts in Portland and Los Angeles.
Donald Trump has withdrawn National Guard troops from Chicago, Los Angeles, and Portland
Members of the National Guard walk past the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., on December 19
Violent crime plunged dramatically in 2025 across the US – including the largest one-year drop in homicides ever recorded. There is no clear evidence tying this trend to National Guard deployments.
Washington DC’s deployment of around 2,000 troops started in August, by far the largest, focused on crime and homelessness. In the first 20 days after soldiers arrived, violent crime in the capital dropped by almost 50 percent compared to the same period in 2024, according to a CBS News analysis.
Two National Guard soldiers were shot, including one fatally, just before Thanksgiving further fueling debate over the deployments. An Afghan who served with US forces in his homeland has been charged with murder over the attack.
Trump saw it of evidence of the need for troops in the crime-ravaged Democratic city, while Democrats warned that he was turning soldiers into political targets.
Last week’s ruling marked a rare setback for the Trump administration at the high court , which has a 6-3 conservative majority and has frequently backed his broad assertions of presidential authority since his return to the White House.
The conservative-dominated court has allowed Trump to ban transgender people from the military, claw back billions of dollars of congressionally approved federal spending, move aggressively against immigrants and fire the Senate-confirmed leaders of independent federal agencies.
Three justices – Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch – publicly dissented.
Alito and Thomas said in their dissent that the court had no basis to reject Trump’s contention that the administration needed the troops to enforce immigration laws. Gorsuch said he would have narrowly sided with the government based on the declarations of federal law enforcement officials.
The Trump administration has argued that the troops are needed ‘to protect federal personnel and property from violent resistance against the enforcement of federal immigration laws.’
But U.S. District Judge April Perry wrote that she found no substantial evidence that a ‘danger of rebellion’ is brewing in Illinois and no reason to believe the protests there had gotten in the way of Trump’s immigration crackdown.
Perry had initially blocked the deployment for two weeks. But in October, she extended the order indefinitely while the Supreme Court reviewed the case.
The ICE facility in the west Chicago suburb of Broadview has been the site of tense protests, where federal agents have previously used tear gas and other chemical agents on protesters and journalists.
Last month, authorities arrested 21 protesters and said four officers were injured outside the Broadview facility. Local authorities made the arrests.
The Illinois case was one of several legal battles over National Guard deployments.
In California, a judge in September said deployment in the Los Angeles area was illegal. By that point, just 300 of the thousands of troops sent there remained, and the judge did not order them to leave.
In Oregon, U.S. District Judge Karin Immergut, a Trump appointee, in November blocked the planned deployment of troops in Portland. The administration had appealed that ruling.
District of Columbia Attorney General Brian Schwalb is suing to halt the deployments of more than 2,000 guardsmen in the nation’s capital. Forty-five states have entered filings in federal court in that case, with 23 supporting the administration’s actions and 22 supporting the attorney general’s lawsuit.
More than 2,200 troops from several Republican-led states remain in Washington, although the crime emergency Trump declared in August ended a month later.
A federal judge in Oregon has permanently blocked the deployment of National Guard troops there, and all 200 troops from California were being sent home from Oregon, an official said.
A state court in Tennessee ruled in favor of Democratic officials who sued to stop the ongoing Guard deployment in Memphis, which Trump has called a replica of his crackdown on Washington, D.C.
