“An insurance policy” Professor Emeritus William C. Banks on Washington State Legislation to Block National Guard from Entering Their State

Professor Emeritus William C. Banks spoke with Stateline for the article “Blue states fear invasion by red-state National Guard troops for deportations.” Banks discussed current federal laws and how Washington State’s proposed legislation might be redundant.

“It’s like an insurance policy,” he said of the bill. “It may be a very good idea to call attention to the independence of the state government and its perspective that they’d very much like to be in charge of their own internal affairs, including migration or whatever else might be going on.”

Banks said the measure, if passed as expected, could be something that state leaders point to if, for example, Idaho or Montana were considering deploying their National Guard units to Seattle to carry out Trump’s immigration enforcement.

However, he said, the whole discussion becomes irrelevant the moment Trump invokes the Insurrection Act, which would allow for federal military intervention in a nonconsenting state.