In Chicago, federal agents rappelled from Black Hawk helicopters onto an apartment building. In Portland, Oregon, masked officers clashed with protesters wearing inflatable animal costumes. In the nation's capital, police set up checkpoints and troops patrolled the streets.

Since early June, President Donald Trump has surged federal resources into a growing number of Democratic-led cities as part of widening crackdowns on illegal immigration and violent crime.

The deployments have sparked intense backlash, a dizzying number of legal battles and upended daily life in communities flooded with federal agents and National Guard troops.

The Trump administration says the added resources are needed to service the president’s mass deportation campaign and clamp down on violence in liberal cities. Critics, including state and local officials, say the deployments are an illegal show of force and a power grab.

Across the country, federal operations have taken different forms, shaped by levels of cooperation between federal and local officials, protests over heightened immigration enforcement and the scale of the operations themselves.

In several cities, immigration raids touched off a wave of demonstrations, prompting Trump to call up National Guard troops. In others, federal agents worked closely with local police to target crime more broadly, setting up roving patrols and checkpoints. One major commonality: The cities all experienced a surge in immigration enforcement.

Reporters across the USA TODAY Network spoke with experts, residents, officials and local advocates to capture the impact of federal intervention in U.S. cities, including Los Angeles, Washington, DC, Memphis, Portland and Chicago – a short list that seems likely to grow as the president eyes deployments to other cities.

Many residents and local officials said the cities didn't need intervention, especially a deployment of troops. Some living in crime-stricken areas said while they generally support the idea of more law enforcement in their communities, they want the operations to target violent crimes – not immigration violations.

Experts, meanwhile, said targeted police work is the most effective way to lower crime and worry that the federal government's flood-the-zone tactics, both in immigration enforcement and general crimefighting, could erode public trust in police.

“Aggressive enforcement needs to be reserved for the most aggressive criminals,” said Thomas Abt, director of the Center for the Study and Practice of Violence Reduction. He added that broad, heavy-handed policing has “limited benefits and a lot of collateral consequences.”