Deployments of the United States National Guard to cities across the country have cost American taxpayers roughly $600 million, according to new data published by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO).
The CBO, which for decades has provided Congress with economic and budget analyses, said Wednesday that to date upwards of $589 million has been spent by the Trump administration’s deployment of Guard soldiers into cities including Portland, Los Angeles, Chicago, Memphis, as well as Washington, D.C. CBO estimates that the totality of those deployments, excluding the deployment to New Orleans that occurred at the end of last year, cost approximately $496 million through the end of December 2025.
Continued deployments at current levels will cost an additional $93 million per month, per the CBO. For every additional Guard unit activated in the future, the CBO projects that costs will increase by $18-21 million per 1,000 soldiers. The Trump administration has kept 200 National Guard personnel mobilized in Texas after they left Chicago.
“The costs of those or other deployments in the future are highly uncertain, mainly because the scale, length and location of such deployments are difficult to predict accurately,” CBO Director Phillip Swagel wrote in a Jan. 28 letter to Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-OR), ranking member of the Senate Budget Committee. “That uncertainty is compounded by legal challenges, which have stopped deployments to some cities, and by changes in the administration’s policies.”
‘Highly Successful’ Missions
Military.com asked the White House about its satisfaction with the various National Guard deployments, and whether the costs associated have proven beneficial for citizens’ morale and reasons including safety.
“Thanks to the Trump Administration’s highly successful efforts to drive down violent crime, cities like Memphis and D.C. are much safer for residents and visitors—with crime dropping across all major categories,” White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson told Military.com. “The media should talk to individuals who are able to go about their daily lives without fear of being assaulted, carjacked or robbed thanks to the Trump Administration, rather than amplify ridiculous and unfounded assertions that our efforts are not effective.”
Merkley, in his own statement shared with Military.com, said “the American people deserve to know how many hundreds of millions of their hard-earned dollars have been and are being wasted on Trump’s reckless and haphazard deployment of National Guard troops to Portland and cities across the country.”
Military.com originally reported in October 2025 that Merkley, other Senate Democrats wrote a letter to the CBO, requesting a broad analysis of the costs of activating, deploying and compensating National Guard personnel, as well as the cost to sustain and maintain these deployments. This new CBO letter is a response to that inquiry.
Math Behind CBO’s Cost Analysis
On June 7, 2025, President Donald Trump issued a memorandum directing that at least 2,000 National Guard personnel be called into federal service to protect federal government personnel and property. That led to about 4,200 National Guard personnel being activated and deployed to Los Angeles, along with about 700 active-duty members of the Marine Corps. That deployment was largely completed by late summer.
In August, Trump ordered approximately 2,400 National Guard personnel from the District of Columbia and various states to activate and deploy in the nation’s capital. On Nov. 26, U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth—following the shooting of two West Virginia National Guard members in the District—announced the deployment of an additional 500 soldiers.
Subsequent deployments included about 1,500 personnel in September to Memphis; about 400 that same month to Portland; and about 575 personnel, including 200 from Texas, to Chicago in October.
On Dec. 22, about 350 National Guard personnel were deployed to address crime in New Orleans but are operating in their state capacity.
This is how the CBO conducted its cost analysis of all deployments:
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Costs incurred for basic military pay and benefits, including health care, during mobilization.
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Costs to provide lodging for active-duty and National Guard personnel.
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Costs to provide food, more routinely known as subsistence.
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Transportation costs to move personnel from their home stations to their deployments and back again, in addition to costs to transport personnel between their lodging and their assigned location each day.
Since National Guard members are called to federal service, they are compensated at the same rate as personnel in the military’s active component, CBO estimates that the increase in military personnel costs using metrics provided through the Pentagon’s 2025 budget, the average increase in costs when changing Guard personnel from non-mobilized to mobilized status is approximately $95,000 per person per year, or $260 per person per day.
“CBO does not expect the military to incur significant costs to operate and maintain equipment during domestic deployments,” Swagel wrote. “So far, such deployments appear to mainly involve foot patrols conducted by small units, without the extensive types of supporting forces or heavy equipment associated with operations in combat zones.
“Similarly, CBO has no basis for anticipating that the Department of Defense (DoD) will need to purchase equipment to replace any damage during domestic deployments.”
Swagel said that three main uncertainties exist in analyzing potential future costs of deployments: how long deployments last and when they conclude; the scope, location(s), and how big future deployments could be in terms of personnel; and outcomes from legal filings in certain states that have challenged initial National Guard deployments.
Deployments Are Trump’s ‘Vanity Projects’
Merkley’s letter last year was co-signed by U.S. Sens. Angela Alsobrooks (D-MD), Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), Cory Booker (D-NJ), Tammy Duckworth (D-IL), Dick Durbin (D-IL), Andy Kim (D-NJ), Alex Padilla (D-CA), Chris Van Hollen (D-MD), Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), and Ron Wyden (D-OR).
Duckworth told Military.com that the CBO estimates are even worse than originally anticipated.
“These open-ended, unjustified missions are not just an immense waste of taxpayer dollars; they are harmful to our military’s readiness, morale and resources and create an incredibly dangerous precedent,” Duckworth said. “While thankfully we’ve seen these deployments stopped in Chicago, Los Angeles and Portland, Trump remains obsessed with misusing the military to intimidate Americans in their own communities—with his deployments in D.C. and Memphis continuing to cost millions of taxpayer dollars per month.”
Van Hollen told Military.com that the cost associated with the deployments is a result of the Trump administration’s “gross abuse of power.”
On top of that is the human cost borne by local communities and by the troops themselves whose lives have been needlessly upended for Trump’s desire to co-opt them as his own personal police force. – Sen. Van Hollen
Alsobrooks told Military.com that Americans’ health care needs, for example, are being provided less attention as opposed to the wants of “a president who is using the military for his own vanity projects and political agenda.”
Warren and U.S. Rep. John Garamendi (D-Calif.) released a report in December, reportedly finding that DoD committed at least $2 billion to support immigration enforcement through mobilizing and deploying troops to American cities and the Southern border, deporting and transporting immigrants on military aircrafts, and detaining individuals on U.S. military installations, etc.
“Our military budget is not a slush fund for the president to carry out his political stunts,” Warren told Military.com. “Our National Guard and Marines are needed to respond to natural disasters and national security threats. Ripping them away from their homes, jobs, and families in pursuit of a cruel immigration agenda is a disrespect to their service.
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and the Trump administration have displayed gross incompetence by deploying out-of-control ICE and CBP agents in American cities. Our military should have no part in it. We need accountability and this administration must answer for wasting more than half-a-billion taxpayer dollars.
Last September, Padilla introduced the Safeguarding the Use of the National Guard (SUN) Act, which would require the president to submit a comprehensive report to Congress within 15 days of deploying the National Guard, except in the case of a natural disaster.
“CBO confirmed what we already knew: Donald Trump’s completely unnecessary National Guard deployments have cost taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars and is expected to cost upwards of a billion dollars if allowed to continue,” Padilla told Military.com.
“Our servicemembers didn’t sign up to be immigration enforcement agents, and they should not be used as political pawns by the president,” Padilla added.
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