In Chicago, federal agents rappelled from Black Hawk helicopters onto an apartment building. In Portland, Oregon, masked officers clashed with protesters wearing inflatable animal costumes. In the nation's capital, police set up checkpoints and troops patrolled the streets.
Since early June, President Donald Trump has surged federal resources into a growing number of Democratic-led cities as part of widening crackdowns on illegal immigration and violent crime.
The deployments have sparked intense backlash, a dizzying number of legal battles and upended daily life in communities flooded with federal agents and National Guard troops.
The Trump administration says the added resources are needed to service the president’s mass deportation campaign and clamp down on violence in liberal cities. Critics, including state and local officials, say the deployments are an illegal show of force and a power grab.
Across the country, federal operations have taken different forms, shaped by levels of cooperation between federal and local officials, protests over heightened immigration enforcement and the scale of the operations themselves.
