With each phone call home, the troops describe a mission unlike any other.

One soldier from Tennessee told his father that from 4 p.m. to 4 a.m. every day, his only task is to walk around Chinatown. Another service member from Mississippi told a loved one that she’d been repeatedly cursed at while on patrol. During a call to his wife, a guardsman from Louisiana said there was confusion about what the military was actually doing there.

“We haven’t gotten critically low on morale, but we’re falling fast,” said one soldier who, like others quoted in this story, spoke to CNN on the condition of anonymity because they’re not authorized to speak to the media and feared reprisal.

Of the more than 2,200 National Guard soldiers President Donald Trump deployed to Washington, DC , last month, in

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