Washington DC - Protesters rallied across the US over the weekend against US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) as well as President Donald Trump's use of the National Guard to take control of cities.

Thousands of protesters took to the streets of Washington DC on Saturday to demand an end to Trump's aggressive use of the National Guard to take over and patrol the city's neighborhoods.

The "We Are All DC" march featured characters from all walks of life, including pro-Palestine demonstrators and anti-ICE activists, denouncing Trump and calling for US residents to "Resist Tyranny."

Protesters marched over a two-mile distance from Meridian Hill Park to the Freedom Plaza ahead of the four-week anniversary of Trump's invasion of DC.

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Trump justified his decision last month to deploy the National Guard under the guise of addressing crime and homelessness, despite the fact that crime has been gradually decreasing in the city over recent years.

Speaking to the Associated Press, former US diplomat and DC resident Mark Fitzpatrick called out the "authoritarian nature" of Trump's actions in DC and warned against accepting such a blatant affront to democracy.

"Federal agents, national guards patrolling our streets, that’s really an affront to the democracy of our city," Fitzpatrick said.

"We don't have our own senators or members of the House of Representatives, so we're at the mercy of a dictator like this, a wanna-be dictator."

In downtown Chicago, thousands rallied against Trump's threats to invade the city and step up his mass deportation effort.

Trump has been particularly viscious with his threats to abduct and deport large quantities of people, and has vowed to crackdown on what he terms "sanctuary cities."

As a result, large portions of Chicago's population, as well as migrants across the country, are fearful of being taken off the street by masked and often unmarked ICE agents in increasingly violent and aggressive arrests.

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Speaking to Reuters, Peg Devlin, a 76-year-old Chicago resident whose German-Jewish parents fled Nazism, said that "I've never experienced what my mother experienced as a German Jew... I will not sit back and watch that happen here."

The protests were in part triggered by Trump's threat on Saturday to deploy the new Department of War against Chicago and his claim that, "I love the smell of deportations in the morning."

Illinois Governor JB Pritzker condemned Trump's comments in a post on X, slamming Trump for being a "wannabe dictator."

"The President of the United States is threatening to go to war with an American city," Pritzker wrote. "This is not a joke. This is not normal. Illinois won't be intimidated by a wannabe dictator."