Estimating the Costs of Troop Deployments to U.S. Cities
Report
Federal troop deployments to U.S. cities cost a total of $496 million in 2025, CBO estimates. Continuing current deployments will cost $93 million a month; 1,000 Guard personnel deployed to a city will cost at least $18 million a month.
This letter responds to a request that the Congressional Budget Office estimate the costs associated with federal deployments of National Guard personnel to U.S. cities. CBO was asked to focus on three categories of costs: the costs to activate, deploy, and compensate National Guard personnel; the operational, logistical, and sustainment costs of maintaining those deployments; and any additional direct or indirect costs associated with the use of National Guard or other military forces.
Since June 2025, the Administration has deployed National Guard personnel or active-duty Marine Corps personnel to six U.S. cities: Los Angeles, California; Washington, D.C.; Memphis, Tennessee; Portland, Oregon; Chicago, Illinois; and New Orleans, Louisiana. The Administration has also kept 200 National Guard personnel mobilized in Texas after they left Chicago. CBO estimates that those deployments (excluding the one to New Orleans, which occurred at the end of the year) cost a total of approximately $496 million through the end of December 2025.
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. That uncertainty is compounded by legal challenges, which have stopped deployments to some cities, and by changes in the Administration's policies. The factors CBO used to estimate the costs of deployments in 2025 suggest that continuing the ongoing deployments at their size as of the end of 2025 would cost $93 million per month. More generally, deploying 1,000 National Guard personnel to a U.S. city in 2026 would cost $18 million to $21 million per month, depending mainly on the city's cost of living.
