The influx came the morning after the Republican president announced he would be activating the guard members and taking over the District’s police department, something the law allows him to do temporarily.

The showdown in Washington is the latest attempt by Trump to test the boundaries of his legal authority to carry out his tough-on-crime agenda, relying on obscure statutes and a supposed state of emergency to speed up the mass deportation of people in the United States illegally.

The U.S. capital Washington sued Donald Trump on Friday over his attempted takeover of the city's police force, escalating a power struggle between the U.S. president and the city's leadership.