She sat, buckled into her car seat, as U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials ordered the windows rolled down and announced they would be detaining Cristy Maryori Villafranca Trejo — the child’s mother and Turcios’s wife — for a missed court appearance.

The child watched as the figures handcuffed her mother.

“It took me a minute to realize what was going on — my heart just dropped,” Turcios told Military Times about the encounter. “It was very hard looking at my daughter crying because of what was going on and not being able to do something and keep my family together.”

On July 11, ICE detained Villafranca Trejo as the family drove home after a trip to Walmart. Turcios said he observed a vehicle following his family out of their military housing subdivision on the way to the store and then, when the family left Walmart, it reappeared.

He was pulled over shortly after, the sergeant said, as unmarked vehicles boxed in the family’s Dodge Durango.

“All I was trying to do was stay calm because my daughter was watching everything that was going on and that was already a lot for her,” he said more than a month after his wife was detained. “She’s only six, and she was going through a lot. She’s still going through a lot right now.”

Turcios, who is stationed at Fort Bliss, Texas, has been legally married to Villafranca Trejo since August 2022, according to the couple’s Louisiana marriage certificate. His wife is registered as his dependent in the Army’s personnel system, along with her son and the daughter the couple share. Prior to her detention, the family of four was preparing for a military move to an Oklahoma base where Turcios was set to be stationed.

Instead of preparing to report to his new unit, Turcios said he visited his wife at Camp East Montana, an immigration detention center located on the Fort Bliss grounds.

A July report published by Human Rights Watch, a New York-based international nonprofit, in collaboration with the American Civil Liberties Union, found that detainees at the camp were subjected to excessive use of force, medical neglect, barriers to legal assistance and “conditions of confinement that amounted to enforced disappearance.”

Turcios said his wife had experienced an infection. He told Military Times that she was concerned the underwear she had been given was not clean. She also said she had to wear the same clothes for about a week. Human Rights Watch reported accounts of laundry at the facility being returned irregularly and dirty.

As of publication, Villafranca Trejo had not received updates on her status.

“They don’t give us any updates on her case. They’re completely silent from their part — like nobody at all,” he said. “They don’t communicate with my lawyer. They don’t communicate with my wife. They don’t communicate with me. We don’t know what’s going on.”

After his Monday visit last week, authorities tried to deport his wife. They woke her up in the middle of the night, he said, and took her to the airport. Turcios said Villafranca Trejo had a panic attack trying to explain that her appeal was in process and her husband was in the military.

Turcios received a call in the early morning hours asking him to verify her account. Another call came later in the morning saying that authorities had verified his wife’s status and she would be returned to the detention camp.

A Department of Homeland Security spokesperson confirmed that on Aug. 17, Villafranca Trejo “was removed from her scheduled deportation flight after a legal impediment developed.”

In response to questions about her July apprehension, the department responded that on the date in question, “ICE conducted a targeted immigration enforcement operation to arrest Cristy Maryori Villafranca Trejo, an illegal alien from Honduras. Villafranca Trejo illegally entered the United States in 2016 and was released into the country under the Obama administration.”

The statement also added, “Being in detention is a choice.”

Turcios said that his wife, who was born in Honduras, came to the United States looking for “a better life,” before the couple met in late 2018.

He said his wife believed her case had been closed after a series of initial appointments in the early years after her arrival. When the couple began applying for her citizenship in 2024, Turcios said they learned that a missed appearance had led to the issuance of a removal order in 2017.

The couple immediately began working with legal counsel to appeal.

Efrain Diaz-Carrasquillo, an attorney working on Villafranca Trejo’s case, said even though the case is being appealed, her detention is technically legal. She was likely detained because her name popped up in ICE’s system, he said, and because ICE is authorized to detain her, they did.

“The fact that ICE has, or is entitled to detain her doesn’t mean they have to,” he said, adding she has no criminal record. “She married an American citizen, and they are trying to adjust her status in USCIS,” Diaz-Carrasquillo said, referring to the U.S. Customs and Immigration Services, the federal agency that processes residency and citizenship authorizations.

“She’s doing everything possible to adjust her status and be legal in the United States,” he said, but her case could take years.

Turcios, who deployed to the Middle East in 2023, said the unexpected detention has upended his family’s life and made fulfilling his duties as a noncommissioned officer difficult.

He said Villafranca Trejo supported him throughout his career and was the mainstay of his military family care plan, a formal document detailing who will care for a soldier’s dependents during a deployment. Without her, he is essentially a single parent, responsible for school drop-offs and leading soldiers.

Military Times spoke with an active-duty soldier who worked with Turcios, who described the noncommissioned officer as approachable and dependable.

“You can see the results of his leadership in his soldiers,” said the soldier, who was granted anonymity for fear of reprisal. “They’re consistently on time, prepared, know what they’re supposed to be doing, and are ready to execute whatever mission or task is put in front of them.”

When ICE pulled the family’s vehicle over, Turcios said his patrol cap — marked with sweat from extensive wear in uniform — was on the dashboard. Despite the ordeal, the soldier said his wife’s detainment has not changed his feelings about his service.

“I love this country, and I’m proud of serving in the Army,” he said, adding that his wife supports his career wholeheartedly.

The situation faced by Turcios’s family, however, is becoming more common.

An Associated Press report published in August found that more than 50 parents and spouses of active-duty service members had been detained under the Trump administration, and at least six have been deported.

In response to the AP’s investigation, over 60 lawmakers penned a letter announcing the launch of an investigation into whether or not the Pentagon is coordinating with the Department of Homeland Security to deport military members and their families.

In the letter, lawmakers said reports suggested the two agencies were collaborating “to identify and detain non-citizens during routine check-ins, visits, and drop-offs at military installations — converting military bases into ‘traps’ for individuals this Administration deems deportable, all while DoD continues to recruit new service members with the promise of immigration protections.”

Though military spouses and close family members are not guaranteed legal residency or citizenship, spouses have historically been offered programs like Military Parole in Place, which grants legal temporary residence to a service member’s undocumented family.

The Pentagon did not respond to questions from Military Times about whether DoD tracks immediate family members who have been detained or deported, or if it has assessed the effects on readiness.

Asked about resources available to soldiers should their family members be detained, a Pentagon official said in a statement, “We would refer you to the military service departments, as each service provides varying but limited legal assistance in line with federal law.”

Turcios, meanwhile, said he is paying out of pocket for his family’s legal assistance.

For now, he makes appointments to visit his wife. They speak through a window and cannot touch.

The couple’s daughter, who watched her mother’s arrest from the back seat, often wonders aloud about her. The child started school this year without Villafranca Trejo.

“She asks me every day, ‘When is my mom coming back home?’ and I don’t have an answer to that,” Turcios said. “It’s just heartbreaking for me, just looking at her and not being able to give her an answer when her mom is coming back to our family.”

The department sought to fund 90% of its maintenance needs, but the GAO found that the services continue to request funding for only about 80% of their needs, according to the report released Friday. The funding shortfall led to an estimated $285 billion of maintenance backlogs in fiscal 2025.

“DOD has not fully determined the risks to its mission and to the quality of life of its personnel as a result of not meeting its funding goal,” the report reads. “Fully determining and communicating these risks would provide better information to DOD and Congress to weigh budget priorities.”

GAO authors examined Army, Navy, Marine Corps and Air Force military installations across the U.S. and its territories for this report.

The report found that the department does not request the full amount of maintenance funding as recommended by its Facilities Sustainment Model, which estimates the average annual sustainment funding requirement for facilities based on their size, location and other factors.

This contributed to the increased backlog of deferred maintenance needs. Even though in 2014 an Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition, Technology, and Logistics memorandum was issued to establish a goal of funding regular maintenance at 90% or higher of the amount estimated by the Facilities Sustainment Model, the GAO continues to find that the services are not meeting that goal.

Instead, the Army, Navy and Air Force requested about 80% for fiscal years 2017 through 2020. The Marine Corps requested funding decreased from 80% to 40% over the past five fiscal years, opting to fund more facility restoration and modernization projects in exchange for reduced sustainment funding, the report says.

Maintenance and improvement projects’ backlogs can contribute to service members’ quality of life and negatively affect installations’ missions.

“By requesting less funding for installation maintenance and improvement projects than its models and experts recommend, DOD has chosen to accept some degree of risk that mission or quality of life will be negatively affected,” the report says.

In past reports, the GAO has found that barracks maintenance were “chronically neglected” and resulted in poor conditions of enlisted service members that affected their quality of life. Thousands of service members lived in substandard barracks, with some hosting potentially serious health and safety risks, a 2023 report found.

Of the 31 recommendations issued in 2023, the department implemented 19 as of April 2026. But many remain unaddressed, such as establishing an oversight structure for barracks, the report says.

The GAO found that challenges in hiring and retaining key maintenance workers are seen in remote and isolated locations and other obstacles include private sector employment competition as well as federal hiring, pay and work eligibility practices.

Military departments have not fully identified the extent of maintenance workforce shortages or created plans to address the hurdles.

The GAO also found that installations rely on maintenance work order data systems to respond to needs, but the tracking is limited and the data is generally unreliable for determining the effectiveness of maintenance performed across the services.

In the report, the GAO made 13 recommendations, including strengthening departmental oversight, determining risks associated with funding maintenance below levels proposed and improving maintenance data reliability.

The department fully or partially concurred with 12 recommendations and did not concur with one.

In November 2025, U.S. Army Europe and Africa, in collaboration with the Department of the Army and U.S. European Command, charged the unit with learning from dedicated drone forces, including those fielded by Ukraine, and feeding those lessons back to the Army to support the Pentagon’s push for U.S. drone dominance.

The official, who spoke on background, said in a statement that after the massive, multinational Exercise Saber Junction in August and September, the battalion will return to its airborne infantry mission.

The statement did not include the unit’s name or the number of soldiers.

The move, first reported by the Wall Street Journal, comes as Acting Chief of Staff of the Army, Gen. Christopher LaNeve, issued the Army’s strategic roadmap titled “The Army Azimuth.”

In the public statement, LaNeve said the Army needed to “counter enemies who employ stand-off weapons, including unmanned systems and WMD.” For American troops, he emphasized, “the fundamentals of Soldiering, ensuring a strong grounding in warrior ethos, individual Soldier readiness, and small unit tactical skills.”

The Pentagon has focused heavily on expanding its drone arsenal following a June 2025 executive order directing the U.S. military to enhance its unmanned aerial systems capabilities. Following that order, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth issued a July 2025 memorandum in which he said that “U.S. units are not outfitted with the lethal small drones the modern battlefield requires,” and pledged to revamp the military’s drone acquisition and fielding efforts.

U.S. Central Command this month announced the creation of a multinational task force that will use one-way attack drones in the air, on the water and underwater alongside regional partners. CENTCOM’s task force follows its 2025 establishment of Task Force Scorpion Strike, which is based in the Middle East and outfitted with one-way attack drones.

The officers stopped the attack and arrested him, according to a police report. It was the kind of assault police might encounter on almost any night in almost any city.

But one detail stood out to police officer Xavier Jimenez, who wrote the report: “There was approximately 15 national guard members in the area on routine patrol who did not take any action.”

President Donald Trump deployed thousands of National Guard troops to Washington last summer as the centerpiece of what he describes as a no-holds-barred effort to combat crime, especially in cities run by Democrats. Every day, small clots of soldiers in camouflage and body armor patrol tourist-heavy areas of the U.S. capital, including national monuments, subway stations and the area around its professional baseball park.

What the soldiers seldom do, Reuters found, is fight crime.

Since their arrival last August, the National Guard soldiers Trump ordered to Washington have been mentioned in only a tiny fraction — about 1.3% — of the criminal cases filed in the Superior Court of the District of Columbia, which handles nearly all the city’s criminal prosecutions. In dozens of cases, the soldiers appear not as people making the arrests but as victims of crime.

The roughly 4,500 soldiers currently deployed to Washington outnumber its 3,200 police officers. And they cost more: The Trump administration last year told Congress that sending guardsmen to the capital cost about $1.65 million a day — before officials doubled the number of troops this summer. The city’s most recent police budget was about $1.5 million daily.

The administration told Congress it plans to keep sending soldiers to Washington — though it has not said how many — until the end of Trump’s presidency in 2029 at a cost of $1.4 billion.

To gauge the impact of that deployment, Reuters reviewed every publicly available charging document filed in Superior Court and interviewed lawyers, residents, service members and others who are familiar with their work.

The soldiers mostly responded to minor incidents in neighborhoods that are wealthier, whiter and less dangerous than the rest of the capital, Reuters found after comparing court records to the city’s demographics and crime information. Reuters could find no reference in court records to soldiers doing any kind of law enforcement in the neighborhoods where about 82% of the city’s 859 murders occurred over the past five years.

The White House did not respond to questions about soldiers’ work. Spokeswoman Lauren Bis said Trump’s efforts in the city have “driven down crime, beautified the city, and improved quality of life for countless individuals.”

D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser, who has called the deployment “problematic,” declined to comment, as did the city’s police department.

The National Guard task force managing the Washington deployment did not respond to questions about its work or its cost. A spokeswoman, Leona Hendrickson, said soldiers were too busy to be interviewed.

Although soldiers have sometimes broken up fights or assaults, many of the crimes for which they detained people have been minor.

In October, soldiers chased down a man who had taken two slices of pizza and offered $2 as partial payment, according to police records. A week later, they stopped a man who threw a rock at a bus. In April, they detained a man who allegedly stole two beef jerky sticks worth about $7 from a pharmacy, according to the report. Last month, six soldiers held a woman who drank a bottle of root beer without paying.

The Rev. William Young, who lives in the Navy Yard neighborhood where soldiers patrol frequently, laughed when asked whether the troops made him feel safer.

“It’s a way of keeping fear in all of us,” he said. “This is not how a capital of democracy should be protected, by having soldiers marching to protect the streets.”

‘THEY COULD HAVE DONE MORE’

Reuters found 217 criminal cases in Washington in which police mentioned the involvement of the National Guard. In about a quarter of them, 62 cases, soldiers single-handedly stopped people suspected of a crime, often for things like shoplifting or jumping turnstiles to avoid paying subway fare. In another 43 cases, soldiers helped police officers arrest someone.

Videos obtained by community groups also show troops in groups of 20 or more stationed outside subway stations at night, blocking teens from descending the escalators to enforce a city curfew.

“It’s like they brought people here from all across the country, just to be here. And they harass people a lot more than they are actually doing police work,” said the Rev. Norman Nixon, the pastor of the Union Temple Baptist Church.

Although the guardsmen have been deputized as U.S. Marshals, according to government records, they have limited law-enforcement power. The Defense Department has described their work as “presence patrols,” a show of force meant to deter crime rather than respond to it. They can detain suspects, but then must call police officers to make a formal arrest.

Court records describe 35 instances in which the troops were witnesses to crimes, sometimes simply watching until police officers arrived. They have told officers about a drug deal, a man urinating in public, another who exposed himself to a subway policeman and two men writing with chalk on a monument outside the city’s train station, one of them wearing a banana costume.

Evelyn Jones said she wonders whether soldiers could have saved her nephew, Keon Jones, who was stabbed to death in April near a trendy strip of hotels and restaurants on the city’s waterfront.

The soldiers called emergency services after finding Jones unresponsive after a fight. They later told police they thought Jones was merely intoxicated. They did not realize, until after officers reached the scene, that he had been stabbed so severely his intestines were spilling out. He died in hospital about two hours later.

“They could have done more to help him,” his aunt said.

The service members themselves have often been victims, a fact underscored last year when two soldiers from West Virginia were shot not far from the White House, killing one of them.

Reuters found 62 cases in which people were charged with pushing, punching or threatening soldiers. Nine were accused of spitting on the soldiers. One man allegedly tried to grab a soldier’s pistol as the soldier tried to arrest him for stealing baseball caps in a subway station. Another man was charged after he told a group of soldiers that he wanted to “shoot you, in between your balls, with a bazooka,” according to a police report.

And twice, police in Washington arrested off-duty soldiers for violating the city’s firearms laws, though the U.S. Attorney’s Office dropped the charges against both of them.

This summer, they took on a new mission: guarding the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, which the Trump administration spent millions of dollars to renovate, only to see it turn green with algae as its liner peeled away. Trump claimed the pool was sabotaged by vandals. But U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia Jeanine Pirro eventually conceded that a government contractor “botched” the job.

PATROLLING SAFER NEIGHBORHOODS

The U.S. has long used National Guard soldiers to respond to disasters, help secure major events like the Super Bowl and occasionally quell riots, but they haven’t been used for everyday crime-fighting. Trump also authorized smaller deployments in Memphis and New Orleans and has mused about sending soldiers to other cities.

“You do not want armed soldiers on the streets of America,” said Gen. Randy Manner, who retired in 2012 as the second-in-command of the National Guard Bureau. He said soldiers are ill-prepared for police work and more expensive than hiring more police officers.

Determining the soldiers’ impact on crime in Washington is not straightforward. In addition to the soldiers, the Trump administration sent hundreds of extra federal agents into the city, who largely functioned as local police officers.

The number of murders in Washington fell for the third consecutive year. But homicide numbers also dropped in cities where the government has not sent soldiers or additional federal agents. And the total number of violent crimes — serious assaults, robberies and sex offenses in addition to homicides — reported by city police between January and mid-August is marginally higher than last year, about 4%.

A study in May by the nonpartisan Niskanen Center found that sending soldiers into Washington led to fewer stolen cars but had no impact on violent crimes.

Charles Stimson, a senior fellow at the pro-Trump Heritage Foundation, said the soldiers’ visibility served as a deterrent.

“When you’re speeding and you see a cop, you slow down,” he said. “If those National Guard went poof and left town tomorrow, crime would go up.”

The Reuters review of court records found little evidence of soldiers’ presence in high-crime neighborhoods where they might have responded to more serious crimes.

Instead, the court records show soldiers were more likely to be mentioned in arrest records in city neighborhoods that have higher incomes, in which more people have college degrees, and where more people are white. Most of the arrests in which soldiers participated were either near the city’s core or its subway stops.

Reuters used the location of incidents in court records to identify the areas in which soldiers were either assisting the police or seeking help from them, then compared those neighborhoods to the rest of the city. That does not account for places soldiers might have been sent if they did not interact with law enforcement there. But it suggests that their presence was not aimed at quelling the violent crime that had ravaged parts of the city in the past.

Salim Adofo, an outreach coordinator with the Anacostia Coordinating Council, a nonprofit operating in a low-income part of the city, said that matched his experience.

“I haven’t seen them all year,” he said.

But he feels helpless now to aid his brother, who worked for the U.S. government during the war in Afghanistan and has been stuck for nearly two years at a holding camp in Qatar, waiting for a visa to the United States.

Jamshidi’s brother is one of roughly 150 family members of U.S. troops and veterans stranded at Camp As Sayliyah, according to the aid organization AfghanEvac. The camp is currently slated to close Sept. 30. And while organization leaders aren’t confident the U.S. government will follow through on that closure timeline, nothing has been formally communicated, they say, to camp residents who are waiting in limbo.

Jamshidi was born in Afghanistan, but he came to the U.S. with his family around age five. He opted to enlist in the Marine Corps, he said, because he had a deep appreciation for the freedoms America offered, having experienced life without those guarantees in Afghanistan.

“My mother, her dying wish is to see her son before she goes … so we’re trying to keep her healthy until my brother gets there,” Jamshidi said. “I want to continue shining a light on this crisis so the American people can hear these stories and demand change … This is not a partisan issue; it’s an American obligation.”

AfghanEvac leaders say some 3,000 U.S. military family members in all are affected by a hard stop in visa distribution to Afghans that took effect late last year.

They say many, like Jamshidi’s brother, have received consulate Chief of Mission approval and completed the required interviews to come to the U.S.; all they lack is the final paperwork.

As the U.S. marks the fifth anniversary of the chaotic military withdrawal from Afghanistan that ended the war but left thousands of allies stranded, a coalition of refugee assistance and resettlement groups is calling on Congress to pass the Afghanistan TPS Act, which would create temporary protected status for Afghan refugees and allow visa processing to begin again.

Rep. Don Bacon, R-Neb., a retired Air Force brigadier general and a cosponsor of the bipartisan bill, said in a call with reporters this week that he supports a discharge petition, a measure that would force the bill out of committee and onto the House floor for a vote.

“Most Americans want a decent, I would call it a Christian policy here, and that’s not what we’re getting,” said Bacon, who describes himself as an “old Ronald Reagan-type Republican.”

“We have a moral obligation to those we serve with in Afghanistan, who served by our side, helping us out.”

Camp As Sayliyah, which began to be used as an indefinite waypoint for Afghans who’d been evacuated by the U.S. government in 2021, has received over 1,000 refugees. In addition to the limited freedoms and constrained conditions of life at the camp, residents are now contending with post-traumatic stress and other mental health crises from missiles flying overhead due to the Iranian conflict, Jamshidi said.

“There’s missile fragments falling on people’s homes; there’s loud noises and uncertainty,” he said.

One White House proposal has been to send the refugees in Qatar to the Democratic Republic of the Congo, to figure out life for themselves from there. Jamshidi said he served at the U.S. Embassy in DRC’s capital, Kinshasa, in 2018, and the thought troubles him.

“I know the conditions there, and it’s even worse than some areas in Afghanistan,” he said.

Bacon and another member of Congress, Texas Democratic Rep. Julie Johnson, said there wasn’t a clear timeline for filing a discharge petition on the Afghanistan TPS Act, but emphasized it would happen “soon.” They both stressed that the ultimate goal was to create a pathway for permanent resettlement in the U.S. for eligible Afghan allies.

Jamshidi said he was part of a chat group with other troops and veterans with family at Camp As Sayliyah. The chat, he said, has largely gone silent as members have gradually lost hope in a policy solution. Jamshidi said he’s working to hang onto that hope.

“As a Marine, I understand what it means to keep your promise and to stand by our coalition, our partners who served us and who supported us, who sacrificed their life for us, and how important that is,” he said. “So I’m going to continue fighting for that.”

But the services have been unable to complete those requirements because they are hampered by a lack of resources, including a shortage of staff and the technology needed to conduct such assessments, according to a new report from the Government Accountability Office.

In 2024, after extensive reporting by The New York Times on the impact routine weapons training can have on the brain, including traumatic brain injury, the Pentagon issued several policies to protect troops from blast overpressure.

The policies included restrictions on the proximity trainers should have to weapons at firing ranges. They also called for increasing the use of simulators in training, conducting cognitive assessments of all troops and monitoring exposure.

The policies also required new recruits to receive cognitive assessments by the end of 2024. Screening for all active-duty personnel in “high-risk” specialties — such as those who handle howitzers, mortars, M 107 and MK 15 sniper rifles, breaching charges and other weapons — was supposed to be completed by the end of fiscal 2025.

The GAO found that nearly 200,000 recruits were screened in fiscal 2025 and 86% of personnel in occupations at increased risk received assessments, with 87% of Army personnel, 81% of Air Force members and 59% of Navy sailors screened.

But service officials told GAO analysts that they faced challenges fully meeting their obligations and evaluating personnel because of the tight timeline set in memos. They said they did not receive the resources or staff to conduct the assessments and relied on existing resources to meet requirements.

In terms of monitoring service members at regular intervals following their initial assessments, the Defense Health Agency said it did not have enough specialists to meet requirements.

Officials in the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness told the GAO that insufficient industrial hygienists were the “primary barrier to DOD achieving its targets for exposure tracking.”

The Pentagon announced in April that it will begin a one-year pilot program to test a new cognitive assessment tool, an app that service members can use to complete assessments. DoD officials said the app will be less “resource intensive” than current assessments and will help improve the services’ ability to track exposures.

GAO officials also said the Pentagon has taken several steps to educate service members and ensure they receive care if they show symptoms.

According to the GAO, the DoD now distributes informational material to service members on blast exposure, instructs leaders to schedule training breaks and encourages troops to seek treatment. The department is working to improve access to specialty care while also educating military doctors on blast exposure.

“DOD has taken critical steps to prevent and mitigate service members’ exposures to blast overpressure, steps intended to help protect their brain health and the readiness of our country’s military forces,” the report stated.

GAO made two recommendations, saying the department should complete an assessment of the resources needed to implement the policies and take steps to ensure the services have adequate industrial hygiene staff support.

In response, Assistant Secretary of Defense for Health Affairs Keith Bass said the department is on its way to completing the resource assessment and has taken steps to meet the industrial hygiene staff requirements.

“DOD estimates it will complete the actions for both recommendations by December 2026,” Bass wrote.

Editor’s note: This article has been updated to reflect Keith Bass’s correct title.

The change in the drills comes as Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi visits South Korea on Wednesday and Thursday for regional security talks expected to cover developments on the Korean Peninsula.

North Korea’s Kim Yo Jong, sister of leader Kim Jong Un, late on Wednesday dismissed the move, saying the nature of the exercises remained provocative and aggressive even if the scale and duration had been reduced, according to a statement published by state media KCNA.

The Ulchi Freedom Shield exercise, which began on Aug. 17, will now run through Aug. 21, South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff and a Pentagon official said, instead of the original end date of Aug. 27.

South Korean Defence Minister Ahn Gyu-back said the allies were moving to cancel the drills’ second phase, media said, adding that it had been expected to involve counterattack operations after an initial defensive phase.

At the suggestion of the United States, the countries agreed on partial adjustments to the duration and scope of the drills, the JCS said. Some combined field manoeuvre training would also be scaled back, although details were still being discussed.

A Department of Defense official said the department had substantially reduced the exercise and associated live-training events, with some cancelled or switched to simulations.

The changes would preserve essential readiness and training aims, with no degradation to U.S. training objectives, the official added.

The changes follow Trump’s order on Sunday to “substantially reduce” the U.S. role in the drills, citing his “very good relationship” with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. On Monday, Trump added that Kim had responded to his steps, without giving any details.

Trump’s objectives in the order appeared to be to pressure Seoul over the pace of its promised U.S. investments under a trade deal, shift attention away from U.S. challenges in Iran and reopen diplomacy with Pyongyang, one analyst said.

“Trump is trying to catch three birds with one stone here,” said Ellen Kim, senior fellow at the Korea Economic Institute of America.

Kim Yo Jong said she was unaware of recent communication between the two but added that Kim Jong Un held fond personal memories and feelings towards Trump.

“The relationship between the two leaders remain excellent,” KCNA quoted her as saying.

North Korea denounces drills

North Korea had earlier on Wednesday denounced the drills and said it would continue exercising its right to self-defense against what it called military threats from Washington and Seoul, KCNA said.

In a commentary, it called the United States and South Korea “warmongers” raising tension on the Korean Peninsula, but stopped short of mentioning Trump, his order or the scaling back.

North Korea’s decision to issue the commentary, rather than a statement by a senior official or a military show of force, may signal an effort to leave room for diplomacy, said Hong Min, a researcher at the Korea Institute for National Unification.

Trump has pushed aides to arrange an in-person meeting with Kim as soon as this autumn, the Wall Street Journal said, citing U.S. officials.

He has discussed holding talks during a possible November trip to Asia for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in the Chinese technology hub of Shenzhen, the paper added.

Reuters could not immediately verify the report.

The White House did not respond to a request for comment on its approach to North Korea or the military exercises.

Pyongyang routinely condemns joint U.S.-South Korean military exercises as rehearsals for invasion, while Washington and Seoul say they are defensive and necessary to ensure readiness against North Korea’s military threats.

Neither South Korean nor U.S. officials knew in advance about Trump’s order, South Korean Foreign Minister Cho Hyun told a parliamentary hearing on Wednesday.

On Tuesday, President Lee Jae Myung said the Ulchi exercises were defensive and Seoul had no intention of using them to attack North Korea or heighten tension on the peninsula.

China, North Korea’s only formal treaty ally, has not commented directly on Trump’s remarks, but Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said in Seoul that Washington should change its “hostile policy” towards Pyongyang, South Korea’s Yonhap reported.

At 19, Miller was searching for something difficult to accomplish and a way to define his identity. While browsing a book about Navy SEALs, he found his challenge.

“I decided to join the Navy and become a SEAL before I even paid for the book,” Miller said in an Army release.

The book mentioned that candidates in the final phase of Basic Underwater Demolition/SEAL training, or BUD/S, were required to run 14 miles.

“I literally grabbed a Marlboro stopwatch that came out of a carton of my mom’s cigarettes, and all I knew was that it was seven miles down to the gas station and back,” Miller said in the release. “So, I just put on my tennis shoes, didn’t bring water, I had the stopwatch to time myself, and I just ran 14 miles.”

In October 1993, Miller began Navy boot camp and later reported to SEAL Team 3 after completing BUD/S training.

“In dive phase,” Miller said, “I got an award called ‘First Time, Every Time.’ That means in every graded evolution that we did, all the drown-proofing and diving, I passed my very first time.”

Despite those accolades, Miller recalls still feeling unfulfilled. He remembers asking himself, “How is it I’ve done all this, but inside I feel just as unfulfilled as I did before I ever joined the Navy?”

Miller’s life changed during a six-hour drive back from training in California with another SEAL. The man began talking about his Christian faith and his time as a missionary in Russia before joining the Navy.

Faith had not been significant in Miller’s life growing up in Kansas. But that conversation would eventually lead him to explore a faith that shaped his career and sense of purpose.

Miller remained in the Navy until 2006. He later attended Lancaster Bible College and Capital Seminary, intending to minister to veterans in a hospital setting.

A fellow student serving as a chaplain candidate connected Miller with the Pennsylvania Army National Guard. Miller eventually commissioned as an Army chaplain assigned to Headquarters and Headquarters Battalion, 28th Infantry Division.

Miller’s SEAL background gave him a point of connection with soldiers who might otherwise be hesitant to open up to a chaplain.

“When a soldier’s in front of me and they see, ‘Oh wow, he’s got a combat diver badge and all of that stuff,’” Miller said, “‘This isn’t just a pastor who stepped in off the street and put on camis. Here’s someone that shared some of the things that I’ve done.’”

Miller said that some of the strongest soldiers he has encountered are often the more private ones, whose character and perseverance never receive public recognition through badges or awards.

Maj. David Boyles, a Pennsylvania Army National Guard chaplain who has worked alongside Miller for several years, said Miller is quiet, reserved and humble, contrary to expectations for someone with his military background.

Miller also serves as a civilian chaplain at a senior living community.

“His willingness to step into an environment where growth and change in the people you care for are not likely … is a testament to his servant’s heart and a desire to care for people regardless of any noticeable outcome,” Boyles said.

Compared with his 19-year-old self, Miller now measures strength differently. SEALs are often viewed as outward models of strength, but Miller learned that outward strength does not always reflect what someone carries internally.

He now uses his experiences to understand others’ struggles and serve them through ministry. His military service is no longer something he uses to prove himself; it is something he uses to serve others.

“All of that equipped me for the ministry with a rucksack that was full of everything that I needed,” Miller said. “It wasn’t about me. All of that was for every soldier here.”

According to a memorandum that circulated on social media, eligible soldiers in the 9th Engineer Battalion at Fort Stewart who reenlist by Nov. 14 will be authorized a four-day pass that aligns with the release of Grand Theft Auto VI, or GTA 6, at the end of November.

An Army official confirmed that the document, signed by the unit’s commander, Lt. Col. Ryan D. Hodgson, was authentic.

“The battalion has a new career counselor who approached unit leadership with an idea for an updated creative incentives program to reach FY27 reenlistment goals,” said Lt. Col. Angel Tomko, with the 3rd Infantry Division’s public affairs office.

To qualify for the video game spree, soldiers must re-up for at least two years, Tomko said. So far, 20 out of 130 eligible soldiers have given Uncle Sam a few more years in exchange for 96 hours of simulated criminal bliss.

The video game franchise, which allows players to roam through cityscapes as criminal masterminds, has been a cornerstone of gaming culture for decades. The upcoming edition is highly anticipated, and according to the game’s publisher, Rockstar Games, it will feature an Army veteran named Jason Duval who “grew up around grifters and crooks” and has now “found himself in the Keys doing what he knows best, working for local drug runners.”

First reported by Task & Purpose, the July 28 memorandum says the incentive is for eligible soldiers who sign a reenlistment contract between Aug. 1 and Nov. 14.

“This special pass is specifically designated to coincide with the highly anticipated release of the video game Grand Theft Auto VI (GTA 6),” it reads. Soldiers who acquire the reward will coordinate days off with their individual unit leadership.

Unfortunately for uniformed GTA fans interested in extended carjacking opportunities, the pass cannot be combined with any other passes to give the soldier an absence of more than four days.

The unconventional incentive comes as the Army becomes more selective with traditional reenlistment incentives, with new guidance tying cash bonuses to soldiers’ physical fitness, job proficiency and command assessments.

John and Jackie Kennedy, Sen. John Warner and his wife Elizabeth Taylor, Linda Tripp of Clinton-Lewinsky fame, and, as of last month, Vice President JD Vance and his family, all have resided without fanfare in this pastoral area an hour from Washington, D.C.

But the region’s newest neighbors — the U.S. Army and 73 horses of the Old Guard’s Caisson Detachment — have divided a community that values the proper care of the horses and the detachment’s mission at Arlington National Cemetery, but fears the move could cost local jobs and restrict access to the region’s premier thoroughbred training facility.

The Army finalized an $8.6 million deal on Aug. 6 to buy the Middleburg Training Center, a 149-acre horse farm with 11 barns and ample paddocks and pastures, to house and train the horses that support burials at Arlington National Cemetery.

Army officials said they considered more than 100 properties before choosing the Middleburg Training Center, which has newer barns and facilities and room for more than 200 horses.

During a town hall with residents in Middleburg on Aug. 6 — the same day the Army closed on the property — a panel of officials said the center provided the requisite environment for equine care and met needs for easements, as well as environmental, historical, and cultural concerns.

“We needed a horse farm. The Middleburg Training Center is that farm. The caisson herd moving to the Middleburg Training Center and the Military Mounted Battalion being operational here is a final piece of our grand modernization efforts,” said Col. Jeff Kain, commander of the 3^rd U.S. Infantry Regiment, referring to changes at the unit, which is known as The Old Guard, since 2022.

That year, an internal review found that the horses’ facilities at Joint Base Myer-Henderson Hall in Arlington, Virginia, and Fort Belvoir, in Fairfax, were inadequate, with environmental conditions that contributed to the deaths of two horses.

According to the report, obtained by CNN, the deaths were attributable to poor conditions and care, with one horse dying as the result of a blocked gastrointestinal tract likely caused by ingesting sand and gravel, while the other died from colic as a result of eating poor-quality hay.

Two more horses died later that year, including a geriatric horse who suffered surgical complications following a fracture and another from “acute abdominal distress,” which may also have been caused by ingesting poor-quality hay or gravel.

As a result of the issues and subsequent public outcry, the service revamped its entire program, establishing a Military Working Equid Task Force, suspending support for caisson burials at Arlington, and dismantling most of its horse units elsewhere.

Most of the Arlington horses were moved to an equestrian facility in Aldie, Virginia, as the service instituted a basic horsemanship course, replaced the heavy caisson with lighter-weight versions for burials and created a new 08H Army Equestrian military occupational specialty to focus on caring for the service’s animals.

Residents mourning loss of facility

While most of the residents who packed the Middleburg Community Center on Aug. 6 were horse-lovers, riders, owners and trainers who favor the service’s efforts to protect the herd, they expressed dismay over the selection of the Middleburg Training Center as the Army’s new home.

The facility contains the state’s longest racetrack and hosts more than 1,000 horses each year. Without it, Virginia’s growing thoroughbred racing industry and the region’s economy will suffer, they said.

“Has the Army conducted an economic analysis on the loss of revenue that is now going to come forward … because of the loss of services for veterinarians, blacksmiths, equine dentists, therapy service providers, shipping companies, your tack stores, your feed stores, all the local community that generates revenue, horsemen included, because of you guys taking over the training center?” asked Megan Connolly, a former training center employee.

According to Rep. Suhas Subramanyam, D-Va., the facility contributes “thousands of jobs and tens of millions of dollars to the local economy that may be lost.”

During the town hall, Subramanyam asked whether the Army and the community could reach an agreement to lease back portions of the facility to those who work in Virginia’s burgeoning racing industry.

“I think it would go a long way if we were able to at least lease back part of the property to the training sector,” Subramanyam said.

The Middleburg Training Center was built in 1956 by philanthropist and horse enthusiast Paul Mellon. In its heyday, it produced the Kentucky Derby winner Spectacular Bid. Over the years, it fell into disrepair, though it never went unused because of its 7/8-mile sand track, the only one in the region.

Charles Kuhn, founder of JK Moving Services, purchased the facility in 2017 for $1.6 million. He made significant improvements to the barns and paddocks and preserved it from development.

Kuhn also purchased Wolver Hill Farm, another Middleburg property, in 2021, and placed it in a conservation easement to preserve its racing legacy and protect it from development. He leases a portion of the 500-acre expanse to the Vances.

According to the Virginia Equine Alliance, the facility supplied 825 full-time jobs and had an economic impact of $86.2 million from 2017 to 2023.

The alliance has expressed a desire for the property to be shared with the public in some capacity, given that the Army will not use the track and will occupy only a few of the barns.

Residents requested that a sharing agreement be considered and asked about jobs, the Army’s vision for the property, future fencing, housing and the track.

“You really have two extremes you can go toward: one would be this is a kind of a secret closed base. Nobody gets on it without a password of some kind, and it’s mysterious, it’s like Area 51 comes to Middleburg,” said Mike Pillsbury, owner of a nearby horse farm and former chairman of the Defense Policy Board. “The other extreme is you’re like Disneyland, and you sell tickets and you give tours … or you could do something in-between.”

Examining sharing options

Maj. Gen. Antoinette Gant, commander of Joint Task Force – National Capital Region/U.S. Army District of Washington, told attendees that a legal team is exploring the idea of community utilization, although she could not provide any definitive answers.

“The primary mission … is to make sure that we can be able to support the requirements … to ensure that the forces in the Military Mounted Battalion are able to do their jobs,” Gant said.

But, Gant added, the Army also is “looking at it from a legal standpoint to see what does that truly mean – a joint-use type of facility.”

According to Gant, the service plans to create an advisory committee in the community and encourage people with requisite experience to apply for jobs the Army may need at the facility.

Those jobs, however, are likely to be a fraction of the current number, given that the Army has its own veterinarians, techs and other staff.

The pending change has already prompted horse trainers and owners to relocate to other states that support thoroughbred racing, attendees said, and they expressed sadness over losing a facility at the heart of the state’s racing aspirations.

“This is a knife coming right into the middle of this tradition and this lifestyle that has been going on here for centuries … Gen. Patton was a fox hunter here,” said Wayne Chatfield-Taylor, a breeder and former center employee.

“This community has so much depth for this kind of horsemanship that has been available to us at this training center that it’s very difficult for me to see that we turn this over to the government,” Chatfield-Taylor said.

Under the purchase, current tenants and horses must leave the center by Oct. 31. The Army will take possession on Nov. 1 and expects the battalion to be operational at the center by June. The horses, many of which are now housed in modular stables at Fort Myer, are expected to move in between 2027 and 2028.

Kain said the Army wants to be part of the Middleburg community and hopes residents will, in turn, welcome the soldiers.

“Teach, coach, and mentor our young equestrians as this is a budding military occupational specialty,” Kain said.