THE SET-UP: What do they know that we don’t?
There must be a reason why the Trump Regime has directed the National Guard to create a “quick reaction force” in each of the fifty states. The QRFs will be manned by “troops trained in crowd control and civil disturbance that can be ready to deploy to U.S. cities by January,” according to a leaked memo reviewed by the military news outlet Task & Purpose.
Apparently, the Trump Regime expects civil unrest in the near future.
In fact, they anticipated it back in August. That’s when Trump signed Executive Order 14339. Subtitled “Additional Measures To Address the Crime Emergency in the District of Columbia,” the order mostly deals with Trump’s “crime crackdown” in the nation’s capital. He directed the National Park Service to…
…hire additional members of the United States Park Police in the District of Columbia to support the policy goals described in Executive Order 14333 (Declaring a Crime Emergency in the District of Columbia).
He directed the US Attorney for the District of Columbia to…
…”hire additional prosecutors to focus on prosecuting violent and property crimes.”
And he also directed the…
…D.C. Safe and Beautiful Task Force established in Executive Order 14252 of March 27, 2025” to “establish an online portal for Americans with law enforcement or other relevant backgrounds and experience to apply to join Federal law enforcement entities to support the policy goals described in Executive Order 14333.
So far … no big deal. Just series of hiring directives. But then he directs the Secretary of Defense to…
…immediately create and begin training, manning, hiring, and equipping a specialized unit within the District of Columbia National Guard, subject to activation under Title 32 of the United States Code, that is dedicated to ensuring public safety and order in the Nation’s capital.
Title 32 of the U.S. Code outlines the role of the United States National Guard. That sets up the next directive, which we now know spurred the creation of the QRFs…
The Secretary of Defense shall immediately 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 order whenever the circumstances necessitate, as appropriate under law. In coordination with the respective adjutants general, the Secretary of Defense shall designate an appropriate number of each State’s trained National Guard members to be reasonably available for rapid mobilization for such purposes. In addition, the Secretary of Defense shall ensure the availability of a standing National Guard quick reaction force that shall be resourced, trained, and available for rapid nationwide deployment.
“Available for rapid nationwide deployment” is where it gets a little tricky because National Guard members in Title 32 status “fall under the command and control of their state or territory governor.”
That issue came up on October 23rd during a White House “panel” on Trump’s illegal war on suspicious speedboats. The Secretary of Warfighter Lethality was asked about then-rumored plans for the QRFs. Here’s the exchange via Task & Purpose:
When asked about the plans earlier this month, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth said he would not comment on “particulars,” but said the U.S. has “multiple layers of National Guard response forces.”
“We’ve got a lot of different ways that, constitutionally and legally, we can employ title 10 and title 32 forces, and we will do so when necessary,” Hegseth added.
It’s the Title 10 authority they are banking on. It’s similar to Title 32, but it applies to the US Military in the aggregate. I’d be willing to bet they’ve already got White House-generated legal memos asserting that the President’s Title 10 authority “trumps” the Title 32 authority given to governors. The key for them is to just get the boots on the ground and establish their operational presence as a “fact on the ground.” The longer they remained planted on the ground, the more that fact sets a precedent.
Either that or Trump will finally invoke the Insurrection Act, federalize the QRFs and deploy them wherever he sees fit. Once he gets that tool, he’s going to use it … if only to demonstrate that he can. And when he does, the Guard will roll out with the accoutrements of a clampdown:
The states are directed to use the “Interservice Nonlethal Individual Weapons Instructor Course.” They will also provide “Level I” and “Level II” civil disturbance training, which includes courses on de-escalation of force techniques, crowd control, handheld radio communications, proper use of body shields, batons and tasers, pepper spray, and public safety, according to the memos.
The “Interservice Nonlethal Individual Weapons Instructor Course” is exactly what it sounds like … training in the use of non-lethal weapons and techniques. You can view a short video of Marines being trained thusly back in 2017. One thing is certain, everybody who goes through the course gets tased. The other thing that’s certain is that, as a National Guard spokesperson told Task & Purpose, the QRFs are new territory for the Guard:
The guardsman, who previously mobilized for a mission to assist law enforcement, said the gear and training that the QRF forces are getting is “taking it up a level.”
“It gets into like what you would need for hasty checkpoints and for detainee operations and the training that they’re going to have is much more extensive than what we’re generally doing when we’re training to assist civilian authorities,” they said.
The National Guard Bureau will give each state 100 sets of crowd control equipment and provide two full-time Guardsmen on active duty orders to manage training, equipping, and response. Commanders are directed to provide monthly updates on their unit’s training, personnel and equipment status in an online defense readiness reporting system, according to the memo.
The goal is to have the National Guard quick reaction forces operational by Jan. 1, with units setting aside an additional five days of training. The memo states that five-day courses are available in October, November and December.
The Guardsman said the QRFs will use volunteer National Guard troops, but said they think it’s likely that others will be “voluntold” to join the mission “if enough people don’t volunteer.”
In addition to stealing “voluntold” for personal use, what stands out to me is the training for “hasty checkpoints and for detainee operations.”
On Monday, NBC News reported…
The Trump administration is planning to replace some regional leaders at Immigration and Customs Enforcement with Border Patrol officials in an attempt to intensify its mass deportations effort amid growing frustration with the pace of daily arrests, according to two Homeland Security Department officials, one former DHS official and one federal law enforcement official.
…and…
President Donald Trump’s top aides have welcomed Border Patrol’s more aggressive tactics to secure arrests, such as rappelling into apartment buildings from Black Hawk helicopters and jumping out of rental trucks in Home Depot parking lots, as they’ve become disappointed with ICE, the officials said.
“The mentality is CBP does what they’re told, and the administration thinks ICE isn’t getting the job done,” one of the DHS officials said. “So CBP will do it.”
The regime is clearly seeking to escalate their deportation effort. And by January, they will have QRFs they can send in with CBP-led forces to perhaps run massive checkpoint operations where they attempt to detain immigrant populations en masse.
They could potentially do it with the facial recognition program revealed today by 404 Media. According to their reporting, ICE is using one such program to verify citizenship:
ICE and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) are actively using smartphone facial recognition technology in the field, including in stops that seem to have little justification beyond the color of someone’s skin, to then look up more information on that person, including their identity and potentially their immigration status. It is not clear which specific app the officers in the videos are using. 404 Media previously revealed ICE has a new app called Mobile Fortify, which scans someone’s face and is built on a database of 200 million images. The app queries an unprecedented number of government databases to return the subject’s name, date of birth, alien number, and whether they’ve been given an order of deportation.
The videos are evidence that the more high tech ambitions of the Trump administration’s mass deportation campaign are now a reality. While many ICE operations have been distinctly lowtech, such as simply targeting brown people at a Home Depot parking lot, it is now clear that ICE’s investment in facial recognition technology is an option for officers who are pulling people over or targeting them.
Given all that, it shouldn’t surprise us if and when we see members of the Guard managing a DUI-style checkpoint with ICE and CPB agents face-checking everyone in a Latino neighborhood and immediately detaining those without citizenship.
Should that escalation spark protests, the QRFs will already be on the ground and can easily be voluntold to participate in Trump’s 2016 Midterms strategy. Burning cities would be far more effective than a rally or television ads … particularly in a stagnant economy. And if the QRFs work out, the National Guard might end up birthing America’s first praetorian guard.- jp
Border Patrol takes lead role in Trump administration’s Chicago crackdown, carrying out more arrests than ICE
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/border-patrol-trump-administrations-chicago-crackdown-more-arrests-than-ice/
Trump’s Move To Replace 12 ICE Directors Could Mean More Aggressive and Unconstitutional Immigration Enforcement
https://reason.com/2025/10/29/trumps-move-to-replace-12-ice-directors-could-mean-more-aggressive-and-unconstitutional-immigration-enforcement/
Shake-up at ICE will boost immigration numbers — just not the ones that matter most to Trump
https://www.politico.com/news/2025/10/29/ice-shake-up-will-increase-arrest-numbers-that-doesnt-mean-there-will-be-more-deportations-00628718