LAREDO, Texas — The Trump administration has deployed military Strykers to the southwest border, ramping up immigration enforcement in ways unseen during the Biden administration and more visible to local communities.
In Laredo, Texas, one Army Stryker – an eight-wheeled armored vehicle used in military operations – is stationed in front of the Rio Grande River, a stone’s throw from Mexico and steps from a city park. It’s parked underneath the pedestrian bridge that connects Laredo to its sister city, Nuevo Laredo, Mexico.
President Donald Trump has increased military presence in non-border cities as well, deploying the National Guard to Los Angeles in response to anti-ICE protests and to Washington, D.C., to combat crime.
Trump has argued that tackling illegal immigration will also reduce crime committed by undocumented immigrants.
Changes at the border
Border enforcement in the Laredo sector looks different today than it did just a few years ago, according to Border Patrol Chief of the Laredo Sector Jesse Muñoz, who says stricter enforcement policies and advanced technology have reshaped operations.
Apprehension numbers are historically low, averaging just 20–25 per day, compared to thousands in past years.
Muñoz, who began his career as a Border Patrol agent in Laredo in 2006, described the changes as transformative. “It’s really kind of changed border enforcement, how we operate,” he said.
At any given moment, Border Patrol cars patrol city roads and station themselves along the river, where city parks are also located. Although Laredo residents are all too familiar with seeing Border Patrol vehicles, some say they’ve noticed an increased presence.
“You notice that there's a lot more Border Patrol in town,” said business owner Janet Zapata.
Border Patrol falls under the Department of Homeland Security, a federal agency, and is not a military branch. However, the all-hands-on-deck approach, coordinated among Border Patrol, the Laredo Police Department, the Webb County Sheriff’s Department, the military, and other local law enforcement agencies, has positioned the city to become one of the safest in the U.S.
“Their presence here is obvious, given an enforcement aspect that we've really haven't seen,” said Public Information Officer Joe Baeza with the Laredo Police Department.
The location of the military vehicle is steps from the Tres Laredos city park and near an outlet mall, uniquely reflecting a dichotomy between two worlds – residents living their daily lives as immigration agents circle around.
"It's normal to see Border Patrol to me. My mom lives about a block away from the river, by Laredo South, and we hear Border Patrol all the time, and it's just part of life," said local journalist Alex Cano. "That's what you see. You see a possible chase. You just make sure you move to the side. But you know that it has nothing to do with you."
LPD does not directly handle immigration enforcement, but officers may encounter a situation that requires collaboration with Border Patrol, like a traffic stop involving an undocumented immigrant ending in a high-speed chase or busting a stash house.
Stash houses are where human smugglers hold migrants, often in overcrowded and unsanitary conditions for days or weeks. LPD has received fewer reports of stash houses.
“It’s probably because of the substantial drop in the number of people coming here,” Baeza said.
Things have looked different at the border, but “safe” is how locals characterized Laredo; the city’s annual homicide rates often don’t surpass double digits. Overall, life in Laredo, as residents described, is community- and family-oriented, frequently misjudged by outsiders looking in.
“Every city does have danger, but just because we're living on the border doesn’t mean it’s actually dangerous,” Zapata said.
Immigration can be portrayed as a crisis and chaos, but Laredoans say life is more about community than conflict.
But does militarization improve public safety?
The arrival of military surveillance vehicles at the river raised concerns among some residents. Muñoz dismissed the idea of militarization, insisting the assets are strictly supportive.
“There is no militarization at the border. They’re here to help with border security,” he told The Fulcrum. “They don’t do any military operations. They’re 100% in a support role.”
The Center for Civilians in Conflict, an organization that advocates against governmental policies that it deems harmful to civilians, defines militarization as the influence of equipment, tactics, and mindset on domestic law enforcement. This includes the transfer of military equipment and the regular flow of personnel to local law enforcement agencies.
Police militarization “is where the police and military intersect in weaponry, funding, and tactics, according to another organization, War Resisters League.
The Laredo Police Department said it does not work directly with either the military or Border Patrol.
However, public interest and debate over what’s visible spark the question of whether the Trump administration’s policies and actions are effective for public safety.
The military has traditionally been called upon to respond to civil disorder, not crime, according to Ronald Spector, a George Washington University professor emeritus of history and international relations and a Marine veteran.
“I don’t think there are many instances where in the past where the National Guard was called up specifically to reduce crime,” Spector told The Fulcrum. “The National Guard and the militia before that were conceived as forces that would be called up in case of civil disorders, such as strikes or riots.”
On the border, one of the largest interventions occurred in 1916, when President Woodrow Wilson sent the U.S. Army into Mexico after Pancho Villa raided Columbus, New Mexico.
“It was a complete failure… they never captured Pancho,“ Spector said. “Very shortly after the Marines arrived [in Latin America], they realized that they needed police. They weren’t optimum for preventing crime and chasing bandits.”
Ashley N. Soriano is a graduate student at Northwestern University Medill School of Journalism in the Politics, Policy, and Foreign Affairs specialization.
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image of U.S. President Donald Trump is displayed on a digital billboard in Times Square in New York on April 8, 2026.
Trump is stuck between two realities. Neither serves the American people
Normally, I worry that events may overtake a column. But not so with the Iran war.
I don’t worry about running afoul of a headline or Truth Social post from the president because what is said about the situation is no longer very relevant to the reality.
On April 8, Nick Catoggio, my Dispatch colleague, dubbed an earlier stoppage with Iran “Schrödinger’s ceasefire.” This was a reference to the famous thought experiment by the physicist Erwin Schrödinger, who was trying to explain the weirdness of “superpositionality” in quantum physics. A cat in a box is both dead and alive at the same time until you open the box. Schrödinger meant to illustrate the absurdity of the idea that particles aren’t any one thing, but a “cloud of probabilities.”
The Trump administration is stuck in a word cloud of probabilities of his own making. The war is over. The war is on. The war isn’t a war. We have a deal, but we don’t have a deal, but we’re about to have a deal. We destroyed Iran’s military. No, we left it intact. We want regime change. No we don’t. We already accomplished it. We “obliterated” Iran’s nuclear program a year ago. We had to go to war in February to prevent nuclear war. The Strait of Hormuz is open, closed, or something in-between. No deal without “unconditional surrender.” Let’s make a deal!
This everything-all-at-once vibe can be disorienting, particularly since most Americans didn’t have a war with Iran on their bingo cards until the shooting had already started. President Trump didn’t prepare the country or consult with Congress beforehand because he thought it would all be a smashing success in a matter of weeks.
The miscalculation that started it all: killing Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and much of Iran’s senior leadership, on the first day of the war. To “the great proud people of Iran, I say tonight that the hour of your freedom is at hand,” Trump announced on Feb. 28. “When we are finished, take over your government. It will be yours to take. This will be probably your only chance for generations.”
I support regime change in Iran and shed no tears for Khamenei or his goons. But when you start a war by killing the regime’s top leaders, it’s not unreasonable for the remaining ones to conclude that you really intend regime change.
Khamenei was a murderous fanatic, but he was a fairly cautious one. He liked to threaten closing the Strait of Hormuz or attacking our regional allies, but he was reluctant to actually do it, fearing it would invite a regime change war. The mullahs and IRGC goons believed, not unreasonably, that if they lost their grip on power, they’d be lynched by the Iranian people they’ve brutalized for decades.
By starting with a regime change war, Trump removed any reason for the regime not to go for broke. When you have nothing to lose — particularly when you are a millenarian religious fanatic — a Persian Alamo strategy makes a lot of sense.
So Iran closed the Strait of Hormuz and attacked its neighbors.
But it turns out this wasn’t the Alamo. In the contest of wills, Trump blinked. The Iranian regime’s tolerance for punishment proved — so far — to be greater than Trump’s and that of our gulf allies. Militarily we could finish the job, but that would require ground troops and much greater economic turmoil. In a conflict Trump launched unilaterally without the prior support of Congress, NATO or the American people, Trump doesn’t have the political capital for that.
But that’s only half the problem. Trump wants the war over, but he doesn’t want to pay — militarily, economically, politically — what that would cost. So he wants to make a deal that ends it. But there is no deal available that wouldn’t come at an equally undesirable cost. Any deal that looks like what President Obama struck with the Iranians would be too embarrassing to bear. But the Iranians are convinced that they can get just such a deal, and they’re willing to drag things out as long as it takes.
The result: Trump’s in a box of his own making. He thinks he can talk his way out by simply asserting a reality that doesn’t exist. When the financial markets get nervous, he announces a breakthrough that is, at best, a possibility. When the Iranians agree to a deal that looks similar to one Obama might negotiate, Trump goes back to his threats.
It can’t go on forever. But I’m sure it’ll last until long after this column is forgotten.
Jonah Goldberg is editor-in-chief of The Dispatch and the host of The Remnant podcast. His Twitter handle is @JonahDispatch.