The captain of the vessel declares that the refugees are welcomed to the United States, but the Guardsmen open fire on them and take several bags of cocaine hidden in the boat.
It is revealed that the armed personnel were Latin American guerrillas disguised as Guardsmen on board a hijacked Coast Guard vessel.
They are led by the Soviet operative Mikal Rostov (Richard Lynch), the fake Coast Guard captain who opened fire on the Cuban refugees.
Later that day, hundreds of additional guerrillas land on the beaches of Southern Florida and move inland using several pre-positioned trucks.
US National Guard troops are called up, martial law is declared in the city, and armed civilians organize to protect their communities from further guerrilla attacks.
One community evacuates their children by school bus to safer rural areas, unknowingly containing a bomb planted by Nikko Kador, Rostov's right-hand man.
However, after arriving at a carnival bombed by the terrorists, Hunter realizes that they are spread out too far for him to stem the tide of their attacks effectively and so devises an alternative plan.
Alarmed by the threat, the government establishes a special theater command for the Southeastern United States with the headquarters at the Georgia-Pacific Tower in Atlanta.
The FBI takes Hunter into custody for vigilantism against the terrorists, and he is taken to the command center, where he goads Rostov on national television to come out and kill him.
[8] Norris said he got the idea to make the film after reading an article in Reader's Digest that said hundreds of terrorists were running loose in the United States.
[11] According to the 2014 documentary Electric Boogaloo: The Wild, Untold Story of Cannon Films, the scene in which terrorists destroy homes in a suburb with rocket launchers featured explosions in actual houses.
Hartsfield–Jackson Atlanta International Airport was going to bulldoze an entire suburban neighborhood to extend a runway, so the filmmakers were allowed to destroy the existing homes.
movie of a goofiness to make one long for the sanity and conviction of John Milius's Red Dawn," adding that though Chuck Norris "seemed on the verge of becoming a kind of benign Clint Eastwood character, he loses all credibility in this awful film.
Even though Mr. Norris collaborated on the screenplay and helped to choose the director (Joseph Zito), the movie treats him as if it wanted to prove that he has absolutely no future on the screen.
"[15] Variety wrote, "A brainless plot would be almost forgivable were it not for the perverse depiction of innocents butchered in Invasion U.S.A. Star Chuck Norris, who co-wrote the script and has recently chiseled a popular niche with his 'Missing in Action' and 'Code of Silence' pictures, hits his nadir with this vicious-minded commodity from the Cannon Group.
"[17] Michael Wilmington of the Los Angeles Times called it "a brutal, one-note, sadistic affair (though it has, to its credit, non-stop action, a good score and a chilling performance by Lynch).
"[18] Paul Attanasio of The Washington Post wrote, "'Invasion USA' might actually be fun in a campy way if it weren't so dourly exploitative", and called Norris "an actor whose most evocative facial expression is his beard.