With each phone call home, the troops describe a mission unlike any other.
One soldier from Tennessee told his father that from 4 p.m. to 4 a.m. every day, his only task is to walk around Chinatown. Another service member from Mississippi told a loved one that she’d been repeatedly cursed at while on patrol. During a call to his wife, a guardsman from Louisiana said there was confusion about what the military was actually doing there.
“We haven’t gotten critically low on morale, but we’re falling fast,” said one soldier who, like others quoted in this story, spoke to CNN on the condition of anonymity because they’re not authorized to speak to the media and feared reprisal.
Of the more than 2,200 National Guard soldiers President Donald Trump deployed to Washington, DC, last month, in addition to a wave of federal law enforcement, roughly 1,300 are from out of state. Guardsmen on the DC mission and their relatives who spoke to CNN said they left behind civilian jobs and children to serve – a sacrifice they understood when they enlisted.
And while domestic missions typically have National Guard troops responding to crises like hurricanes or wildfires, in DC, much of their work has involved more mundane tasks – patrolling popular tourist destinations and assisting with “beautification projects” including picking up trash, raking leaves and laying mulch.
Most of that beautification work has been assigned to soldiers from the DC National Guard to avoid angering GOP governors who have sent their troops.
For some, the mundane orders aren’t an issue. One father of a Guardsman joked that this is like a vacation for his son. But the mother of another soldier from Mississippi said her daughter is missing out on “a lot of first events with her child” to serve in Washington.
It’s also unclear how long the deployment will last. A senior official familiar with the planning told CNN military orders for Guardsmen on the mission are expected to be extended through the end of December, though the official stressed that was largely to ensure the continuity of their benefits like health care coverage, and not necessarily to indicate the mission will continue through year’s end.
Trump has also threatened to mobilize the National Guard to other cities, including Chicago, Baltimore and New Orleans, as part of his administration’s crackdown on crime. He’s said he could keep National Guard members in Washington “as long as I want” by declaring a national emergency.
For a mission that already carries a price tag of about $1 million a day, costs are continuing to mount. Expenses include an estimated $7 million in catered food for the first 10 weeks and $5 million for 18 weeks of laundry services, according to a CNN review of contracts.
An additional $5 million for a tent city has also been approved, the contracts show, along with $600,000 in air conditioning rental and more than $500,000 for land mobile radios.
The troops are assigned to stay in hotels, most of which are located in suburban Virginia. Housing is among the biggest expenditures. Hotel rooms are provided for out of town troops, while housing allowances are given to DC National Guard members.
Though some of the National Guard and their families contacted by CNN expressed support for Trump and his decision to send troops to DC, they acknowledged the personal sacrifices for soldiers on the mission. In many cases, the standard military pay is less than what a soldier or airmen may be earning in their civilian careers. Some have had to make special arrangements for childcare while they’re away.
“I don’t know what he thought he’d be doing, but I really don’t think he thought he’d just be walking around for 12 hours every day,” said the father of a Guardsman from Tennessee.
“When I talked to him, he was just like, ‘Yeah, this is crazy,’” the father added. He said his son, a car salesman, is making less money now while deployed.
Typically, Guardsmen only receive full military benefits like a housing allowance or health care coverage when they’re on active orders for more than 30 days.
A statement on Monday from Joint Task Force-DC, which is overseeing the DC mission, acknowledged there had been “concerns about the pay and benefits” for service members on the mission, but said “the majority of service members are mobilized on orders extending beyond 30 days, ensuring they qualify for full benefits.”
“I mean, we’ve got to get these cities cleaned up,” said the mother of one Guardsman from Tennessee. “We’re very much pro boots on the ground. If that’s what it takes, we back the troops.”
In situations when the National Guard has been deployed for an emergency, such as in the wake of a major hurricane, their presence is typically welcome and applauded. But in Washington, some soldiers have received a chilly reception from locals, family members said. City residents who disagree with Trump’s federal interference have hung posters on street corners calling for the soldiers to leave.
“Go home,” a crowd of people chanted two weeks ago to some troops standing outside the Columbia Heights metro.
“The president is driving a wedge between the people and the military,” Retired Army Maj. Gen. Randy Manner, the former acting vice chief of the National Guard Bureau from 2011-2012, said in an interview with CNN.
“Our military’s duty is to defend our nation overseas and to be there to save lives in times of a natural disaster,” Manner added. “So this idea that the National Guard are there to watch us and to intimidate us, if it is continued over the next months and years, will absolutely drive this feeling that those men and women in uniform are not us, and they are against us.”
The contingent of more than 2,000 National Guard soldiers has been divided into serving the “safe and secure mission” and a “beautification task force.” The troops working on the secure mission are assigned to support federal and local law enforcement efforts, while the beautification project is largely designed to clean up national park properties in the city.
The senior official familiar with the DC mission said that while morale among those deployed is generally good at the moment, that could change if their orders are extended and people are kept from their families and civilian careers. The person added that senior leaders in the DC Guard have made a point in participating in the “beautification projects” – largely trash pickup – to ensure the tasks don’t fall to just junior soldiers or airmen.
An out-of-state Guardsman standing outside a metro station during Labor Day weekend told CNN that the reaction to his presence there is “50-50.” Some people have stopped to take photos with him and have thanked him for serving. Others leveled disapproving looks, he said.
He added that he would be in Washington “until they tell us we can go home.”
Trump officials have said the troops are there to establish a presence at various locations – mostly federal monuments and metro stations – and act as a crime deterrent. The intention is to free up law enforcement agents to address crime elsewhere in the city. The senior official familiar with the mission said the Guard has heard from local law enforcement that their presence has in fact been a deterrent to crime they might usually see in the area.
As of Tuesday evening, Joint Task Force-DC said there had been a 37% drop in carjackings in DC, a 50% decrease in robberies, and a 23% drop in violent crime since the mission began. Though Trump justified the troop surge to Washington by saying that crime was “out of control” in the city, violent crime declined in 2024 and has declined again so far in 2025. The Justice Department has said it’s investigating whether that data from the DC Metropolitan Police Department was manipulated.
Social media pages for the state National Guard units part of the DC mission have posted photos of smiling soldiers around the city. Family members and friends commented wishing for the troops to stay safe.
Some soldiers have also been doing things like replanting grass. Manner said that some are now referring to the troops as “National Gardeners,” which he believes is also “very deflating” for them.
“To date, Guardsmen have cleaned more than 3.2 miles of roadways, collected more than 500 bags of trash, and disposed of three truckloads of plant waste in coordination with the U.S. National Park Service,” the Joint Task Force-DC said in an update on Monday.
Trump’s executive order in March, titled “Making the District of Columbia Safe and Beautiful,” ordered federal agencies to restore federal monuments that have been defaced or damaged, remove graffiti from local areas, and “uplift and beautify public spaces and generate in the citizenry pride and respect for our Nation.”
A South Carolina National Guard officer who knows soldiers deployed to Washington said that all servicemembers must obey lawful orders, but “the problem is, this is not a clear set mission.”
“If you wanted to be smart about it, then you might send a water purification unit to DC to help them with purifying water, or you could’ve sent an agriculture unit to help with farming,” the officer said. “But an infantry unit to rake? That doesn’t make any sense.”
On Labor Day, some National Guard stood beside armored military vehicles at Washington’s Union Station as a small number of protesters holding upside down American flags and signs gathered in front of them. Other soldiers walked around the city’s baseball stadium while the Nationals played that afternoon.
The wife of one Guardsman deployed to Washington said more clarity on the mission’s timeline would help. She and her husband have three children with another on the way. Just like past deployments, she’d avoided asking when he’ll be home.
“It’s a little unusual in terms of what National Guard are usually deployed for, but I mean, I guess I would say I’m open to it,” the wife said. “I feel like maybe they would get a little boost in morale if they could just get a little bit more details.”
CNN’s Julia Benbrook, Veronica Stracqualursi and Max Rego contributed to this report.
