United States President Donald Trump’s deployment of troops in major US cities in 2025 cost nearly $500m, according to the latest estimates from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO).
Trump last year activated more than 10,000 National Guard soldiers and active-duty marines and sent them to Los Angeles, Washington, DC, Memphis, Portland, Chicago and New Orleans in what the president claimed was an effort to deter crime and protect federal immigration enforcement.
- list 1 of 4Mourinho’s Benfica drag Real Madrid with them to Champions League playoffs
- list 2 of 4Russia-Ukraine war: List of key events, day 1,435
- list 3 of 4US agents involved in Alex Pretti’s killing in Minneapolis placed on leave
- list 4 of 4Palestinian journalist Bisan Owda with 1.4m followers reports TikTok ban
end of list
“Since June 2025, the Administration has deployed National Guard personnel or active-duty Marine Corps personnel to six US cities … [and] cost a total of approximately $496 million through the end of December 2025,” CBO director Phillip Swagel wrote in the report released on Wednesday.
The actual number of troops patrolling US streets fluctuated throughout 2025 due to legal challenges to Trump’s orders from city and state officials, and just over 5,000 remained activated by the end of December.
The CBO estimated that an ongoing deployment at that size will cost $93m a month in 2026.
Operations in Los Angeles, Chicago and Portland have all been suspended since the end of December, but they continue in Washington, DC, Memphis and New Orleans.
If Trump sends troops elsewhere, the CBO estimates that deploying 1,000 National Guards to an average US city in 2026 will cost between $18m and $21m a month in 2026, depending on the cost of living.
“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,” the report said.
Advertisement
At $232m, the costliest military operation in 2025 was in Washington, DC, where Trump activated 2,950 troops to patrol the streets of the US capital to address what he maintained was “out of control” crime, according to the CBO.
The CBO estimates that maintaining troops in Washington, DC, will cost the city $55m a month. Trump reportedly plans to keep them in the capital through to the end of 2026.
Los Angeles was the second most costly operation in 2025 at $193m per month.
Starting in June, Trump activated 4,200 National Guard and 700 active-duty marines to patrol the city, although the operation was largely wound down within three months, according to the CBO.
Deployments in Portland and Chicago in 2025 cost $26m and $21m each month, respectively, with 400 and 375 personnel activated for each city at the height of Trump’s enforcement operation last year.
While troops have left Chicago, 200 members of the National Guard remain on standby in the state of Texas, according to the CBO, at $4m a month.
The National Guard deployment in Memphis cost $33m per month last year, and at its height, activated 1,500 personnel. The operation is still under way but local media report that the number of troops remaining is much smaller.
Heading into 2026, Trump approved the deployment of 350 National Guard members to New Orleans at a cost of $6m a month, the CBO said.
