All were skeptical about the administration's original reason for the deployment — to help with law enforcement after declaring a "crime emergency", despite a 30-year low in violent crime in the city.

"Now, with it being a year, it's hard to feel like that justification holds any water," said one guard member. "It feels like the guard is being exploited in a sense."

Another said it feels more like a political stunt, pointing out the way the guard has been inserted into certain narratives by the administration, like being ordered to patrol the perimeter of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool following its faulty renovation.

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"My very initial reaction was just, I guess, shock and feeling like this context and this situation just felt like a very authoritarian move that kind of felt uncharacteristic of something you would see in our country," said one member of the D.C. guard, adding that the reasoning behind the deployment contributed to the confusion.

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"At some point, I found myself going, well, at least this isn't that bad. At least I'm not doing anything illegal, and that's always counterbalanced with, like, this is wasting everyone's time," one said, adding that it became clear that the "point of the mission is presence."

One member who served in Afghanistan likened the patrols to tactics commonly used by the U.S. military during the War on Terror in communities to instill goodwill and monitor the opposition.