North Dakota's National Guard leader says the state has not been directed to mobilize troops for federal law enforcement support in Washington, D.C., or elsewhere, despite a recent executive order from President Donald Trump.
In the August order, Trump directed Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth to: “begin ensuring that each State’s Army National Guard and Air National Guard are resourced, trained, organized, and available to assist federal, state, and local law enforcement in quelling civil disturbances and ensuring the public safety,” and “Designate an appropriate number of each state’s trained National Guard members to be reasonably available for rapid mobilization for such purposes.”
The executive order marked another step in the Trump administration’s increasing use of National Guard troops as support for local law enforcement, a decision that has drawn criticism and alarm from some.
So far, the administration has ordered guardsmen deployed to Los Angeles to quell protests that developed against Immigration and Customs Enforcement activity in the city.
Mitchell Johnson
Brig. Gen. Mitchell Johnson.
They have also been deployed to Washington, D.C., to generally assist law enforcement. After discussing the possibility of deploying troops to Chicago to do much of the same, the administration instead announced Friday that it would be deploying troops to Memphis, Tennessee. The mayor of Memphis has said he is “not happy” about the deployment.
Brig. Gen. Mitch Johnson, adjutant general of the North Dakota National Guard, said maintaining readiness is already the main goal of the state's Guard. Over 1,000 guardsmen participated in their regularly scheduled training at centers across the state over the past weekend. He said no specific mission tasking has been passed down from Washington related to the August executive order.
“Normally what happens is something like the executive order comes out, and then resources and guidance will flow after that, and we haven't had anything specific in North Dakota yet,” Johnson said.
He does suspect that resources and guidance stemming from the executive order will be coming.
North Dakota’s Army and Air National Guard have military police troops that could be activated either federally or by the state to support law enforcement, but Johnson said the state’s Guard trains for specific mission sets and has not received one that relates to supporting law enforcement yet.
“We're not spending drill weekend preparing for any specific activation beyond what we already have in our normal flow of deployments,” Johnson said.
The state has roughly 100-400 troops on active deployment in a given year, comprising 50 guardsmen deployed to the southern U.S. border and a smattering of other guardsmen deployed in Europe, Africa and the Middle East, according to Johnson.
North Dakota Guard troops were recently activated by the governor to assist with the flooding of the Guadalupe River in Texas as part of the Emergency Management Assistance Compact allowing states to activate their National Guard in support of other states. Johnson said elements of North Dakota’s Air Guard operated unmanned aircraft from Fargo to help with recovery efforts.
In May, National Guard Blackhawk helicopters assisted in combatting wildland fires across the state after an emergency declaration from Gov. Kelly Armstrong.
© 2025 The Bismarck Tribune (Bismarck, N.D.). Visit www.bismarcktribune.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
