As the Pentagon reportedly plans a military deployment to Chicago as early as September, local officials are saying they will fight in the courts and on the streets any effort by the Trump administration to send federal law enforcement to the Windy City.
The details of the plan, first reported by The Washington Post, reportedly include mobilizing “a few thousand” National Guard servicemembers, similar to the operation ordered by Mr. Trump in June, when he sent 4,000 California National Guard members, and 700 active Marines to the City of Los Angeles.
Officials familiar with the plans say that a military intervention has long been in the works, and like recent efforts at Washington, any plans in Chicago would be done in conjunction with Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s operations of searching for undocumented immigrants.
While the Defense Department would not confirm details of the deployment, it told the Post that it is continuously working on plans and coordinating “with other agency partners on plans to protect federal assets and personnel.”
Reports of the Trump administration’s plans were immediately met with opposition. Illinois Governor JB Pritzker said in a series of posts on X Saturday that Mr. Trump was looking to “manufacture a crisis” at Chicago to serve his own needs.
“There is no emergency that warrants the President of the United States federalizing the @IL_Natl_Guard, deploying the National Guard from other states, or sending active duty military within our own borders,” he said.
“Donald Trump is attempting to manufacture a crisis, politicize Americans who serve in uniform, and continue abusing his power to distract from the pain he’s causing families.”
Chicago’s mayor, Brandon Johnson, said that the city has not received word from federal officials regarding plans to send in troops, but that city officials are taking his statements seriously.
“The problem with the President’s approach is that it is uncoordinated, uncalled for, and unsound. Unlawfully deploying the National Guard to Chicago has the potential to inflame tensions between residents and law enforcement when we know that trust between police and residents is foundational to building safer communities,” he said in a statement on Friday.
On Saturday Mr. Johnson raised the stakes, saying that the city will not permit federal troops.
“We will take legal action but the people of this city are accustomed to rising up against tyranny and if that’s necessary, I believe that the people of Chicago will stand firm alongside of me, as I work every single day to protect the people of this city,” he said in an interview that aired on MSNBC.
The president, emboldened after recently carrying out the federalization of law enforcement at Washington, D.C., has touted that he wants to expand federal takeovers in other cities, but Chicago tops his list.
“Chicago’s a mess. You’ve got an incompetent mayor. Grossly incompetent. We’ll straighten that one out, probably next,” he said on Friday. “It probably won’t even be tough.”
Administration officials have touted the Washington, D.C., takeover, saying the streets are now safe for visitors and it has achieved a week without any murders, a stat that locals say had happened just a few weeks earlier before federal intervention.
House Republicans have introduced a new resolution that would extend the federal takeover of D.C.’s law enforcement indefinitely. Current law under the D.C. Home Rule Act currently places a cap of 30 days.
A new Washington Post-George Mason University poll reveals that nearly eight in 10 D.C. residents oppose the federal troop deployment, with 79 percent rejecting the use of military and federal law enforcement in their city. Mr. Trump has disputed claims that the deployment is unpopular among residents in the nation’s capital.
“They’ll say bad things about me and then they’ll say, ‘Thank God he’s here,’ because half of them got mugged and they don’t want to get mugged again,” Mr. Trump said from the Oval Office on Friday.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by PostX News and is published from a syndicated feed.)
