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On Monday, Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry (R) sent a letter to the Department of Defense requesting federal assistance to “activate” up to 1,000 National Guard troops in the state’s “urban centers” through fiscal year 2026.
The deployment “would support state and federal law enforcement agencies in addressing ongoing public safety concerns regarding high crime rates,” Landry wrote in his letter.
The governor seeks to activate the National Guard on Title 32 status, which means the troops are under state control, but the federal government foots the bill for their pay and benefits.
Elected officials and activists are speaking out against the potential military occupation of their state, and an emergency protest is planned for this evening in New Orleans.
“We don’t embrace the notion of having National Guardsmen with M-16s walking the streets of New Orleans, militarizing our communities and perhaps adding more insult to injury,” said Louisiana Rep. Troy Carter (D), as per The Daily Beast.
Clare Leavy, chair of the advocacy group Indivisible New Orleans, called Landry’s plan “immoral and unnecessary.”
“People of conscience must do everything possible to protect our communities from persecution and abuse,” Leavy said in a statement. “We stand proudly with our partners to say NO TROOPS IN OUR STREETS.”
“Trump and Landry plan to use the military to harass and oppress our Black and immigrant residents, and these attacks on our communities must be defeated,” Toni Jones, chairwoman of the New Orleans Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression, said in a statement.
Landry wrote in his letter that the “proposed mission and scope for the Louisiana National Guard would be to deploy throughout the state to urban centers [and] supplement law enforcement presence in high-crime areas.”
The governor singled out Shreveport, Baton Rouge, and New Orleans, claiming that they had “elevated violent crime rates,” despite the fact that crime has declined in all three cities.
“New Orleans has had the fewest murders this year since 1970,” Jeff Asher, co-founder of AH Datalyst, wrote on BlueSky in response to Landry’s letter.
“Carjackings are down 80% relative to 2022, vehicle burglaries are down 70%, shootings are down 63%,” he continued. “This is a wholly unnecessary stunt that will hurt local businesses.”
WWL-TV, the local CBS affiliate, reports that “crime is already on a downward trend” in Shreveport, Baton Rouge, and New Orleans, all cities with predominantly Black populations. About 56 percent of residents in Shreveport and New Orleans are Black, and Black residents make up the largest demographic in Baton Rouge, representing about 45 percent of the population.
Landry’s claims about crime rates in those cities are “simply not true,” WWL-TV reported.
“In July, the Shreveport Police Department described a decade low rate of violent crime,” the WWL-TV reported. “In Baton Rouge, an August 2025 report shows all violent crimes are down …. And in New Orleans, crime is at historic lows.”
The Louisiana governor appears to be taking a page out of Trump’s fascist playbook. In recent months, the president has made misleading claims about crime in D.C., New Orleans, and Memphis to justify plans to invade those cities, all of which have declining crime rates, majority Black populations, and are run by Black mayors. In August, Landry sent National Guard troops to Washington, D.C to support the president’s occupation of the city.
Trump has also announced that he’s sending National Guard troops to Portland, Oregon, a predominantly white city, to crush protests against Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
In response to Landry’s letter, Hina Shamsi, director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s National Security Project, said in a statement, “We cannot allow military policing of our communities to become normalized.”
“When military troops police civilians, we have an intolerable threat to individual liberty and the foundational values of this country,” she said.
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