State and federal officials are insisting that 27 Hawaii National Guardsmen deployed to Washington, D.C., remain there only to support events celebrating the country’s 250th anniversary after contradictory messages this week from Hawaii leaders and the task force in Washington the troops are working under.
In a statement Friday, a spokesperson for Joint Task Force-District of Columbia said the Hawaii National Guard members are “integrated into the task force and support the same authorized mission as other National Guard personnel assigned to the operation; however, their duties are only focused on Freedom 250 event support.”
A Hawaii National Guard spokesperson said the detachment “will continue its mission in Washington, D.C., until late August after the
final America/Freedom
250 event, the Freedom
250 Grand Prix which occurs from Aug. 21-23. The goal is to get them home before Labor Day,” Sept. 7.
However, a spokesperson for JTF-DC told Honolulu Civil Beat on Thursday that Hawaii guardsmen’s duties include supporting local and federal law enforcement as well as providing monument security, “community safety” patrols, protecting federal facilities and traffic control.
The JTF-DC’s comments to Civil Beat contradicted a statement Hawaii National Guard commander
Maj. Gen. Stephen Logan gave Wednesday to the Honolulu Star-Advertiser that Hawaii personnel sent to Washington are not a part
of the “Make D.C. Safe and Beautiful” multi-agency crime-reduction initiative launched last year.
“Our troops are strictly supporting the America/Freedom 250 events,” Logan said. “I have personally communicated with the commander of the DC Joint Task Force about this
distinction.”
Gov. Josh Green declined to speak with the Star-
Advertiser but told Hawaii Public Radio on Thursday that “we humbly allowed 27 volunteers to go to D.C. to work on the America250 Project, not to be part of immigration enforcement, not to be part of the D.C. police operations, but just to be a part of celebrating this country.”
This all follows growing calls from local and national organizations for Green to recall the guardsmen back to the islands.
In a joint letter to Green last week, the ACLU of Hawai‘i, Indivisible Hawai‘i,
Hawai‘i Coalition for Immigrant Rights, Our Hawai’i and others told the governor that “nearly 5,000 National Guard members from states aligned with the president’s agenda have been sent to patrol neighborhoods throughout Washington, D.C., under the guise of controlling street crime, despite going against the will of the district’s residents and local government.”
On Wednesday, Our Hawai’i joined 23 more groups in sending Green a separate letter stating, “There is nothing normal about the way President Trump has used National Guard forces in the nation’s capital or other cities across the country, and no reason to trust his administration to use your Guard forces appropriately or even lawfully.”
The organizations behind that letter include the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University’s School of Law, the American Federation of Teachers and the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund.
JTF-DC was formed in August 2025 after Trump declared a state of emergency and called on state governors to send troops ostensibly to fight crime and “restore order” in the District of Columbia.
The first guardsmen to
arrive were mostly dispatched by Republican governors who were vocal supporters of Trump, while several “blue” states, including Hawaii, joined litigation challenging the deployments.
But this summer, several Democratic governors who previously condemned Trump’s use of National Guard forces accepted requests from the White House to send troops as the nation celebrated its 250th anniversary. In addition to Green, they include Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, Maryland Gov. Wes Moore, Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear, North Carolina Gov. Josh Stein and Virgin Islands Gov. Albert Bryan Jr.
Sergio Alcubilla, the community engagement director at the ACLU of Hawai‘i, said the latest assurances change nothing.
Walz, Moore, Beshear and Stein have withdrawn the guardsmen who arrived in Washington before the July 4 weekend.
Some of those troops were withdrawn before the holiday after their governors learned they were being assigned duties beyond the scope of 250th celebrations. The Hawaii guardsmen arrived July 6, and just days later, on July 9, the District of Columbia Council unanimously called on Whitmer and Bryan to recall their troops.
“I think that’s really where the fear is, that once we commit these troops thousands of miles away, they’re going to be under the control of the task force and at the direction of the president,” Alcubilla said.
Elizabeth Goitein, senior director of the Brennan Center’s national security program, said in an email, “We now have three different descriptions of what Hawai’i Guard forces are doing in D.C.,” and that the latest is “frankly puzzling.”
Critics also expressed concern that Hawaii guardsmen are supporting Freedom 250 events as opposed to America250 activities, which are separate initiatives. Congress created the bipartisan U.S. Semiquincentennial Commission in 2016 that established America250 to plan the 2026 celebrations.
But shortly after Trump’s return to the White House in 2025, he signed an executive order creating Task Force 250, an additional 250th anniversary planning group under the Department of Defense and named himself as chair and Vice President JD Vance as vice chair. That group’s events are under the Freedom 250 umbrella and have so far included the Great American State Fair and UFC fight on the White House lawn on Trump’s birthday.
Goitein described Freedom 250 as “Trump’s heavily politicized vanity project that has been plagued with reports of corruption and self-enrichment.”
“The official T-shirt for the Grand Prix (motor race), which had to be recalled after it provoked widespread outrage, was emblazoned with the words ‘One Nation, One Race,’” she said. “If the purpose
of the Hawaii Guard’s deployment is to support Trump’s divisive alternative to America250, that’s concerning in its own right.”
Alcubilla also questioned the seemingly partisan nature of Freedom 250 events.
“I think that really it’s a fear when you’re using federal resources basically to push a partisan agenda. If these are kind of more like right-wing-leaning type of events, I feel like our guard members are being co-opted just for the theatrics behind it, and that’s a concern.”
