The Pentagon is reportedly planning to deploy U.S. military personnel into Chicago as soon as September as President Donald Trump escalates his threats to Democratic cities with a stated aim of tackling crime, homelessness and undocumented immigration.
Department of Defense officials have reportedly been planning for weeks in a model that could be used to occupy other American cities with thousands of National Guard troops, according to reporting by The Washington Post on Saturday, citing officials familiar with the plans.
“We won’t speculate on further operations,” a defense official told The Independent on Saturday. “The Department is a planning organization and is continuously working with other agency partners on plans to protect federal assets and personnel.”
If approved, the deployment could draw parallels to the contentious operation ordered by Trump in Los Angeles this June.
That saw 4,000 members of the California National Guard and 700 active-duty Marines dispatched, despite fervent opposition from state and local leaders.
Discussions have also taken place regarding the possible deployment of thousands of active-duty troops in Chicago, although this is currently deemed less probable, according to two officials who spoke on condition of anonymity due to the sensitive nature of the subject.
Speaking in the Oval Office on Friday, Trump threatened to send active-duty military personnel into America’s third-largest city to tackle what he described as out-of-control crime under Democratic leadership.
“We're going to make our cities very, very safe. Chicago is a mess. You have an incompetent mayor, grossly incompetent, and we'll straighten that one out, probably next that'll be our next one after this, and it won't even be tough,” Trump said.
The president then claimed that the Windy City’s Black population — including “African American ladies, beautiful ladies” — were “screaming” for him to “please” come to Chicago.
“So I think Chicago will be our next, and then we'll help with New York,” he said.
In addition to Los Angeles, the president has also taken similar action in Washington, D.C., with National Guard soldiers patrolling the streets.
At Trump's request last weekend, the Republican governors of three states said they were sending hundreds of National Guard troops to the nation’s capital.
This month, the president declared what he called a “crime emergency” to justify his administration taking control of the city’s Metropolitan Police Department while deploying National Guard troops and federal law enforcement agents into the city’s streets, claiming that the White House must “rescue” the city from “crime, bloodshed, bedlam and squalor and worse.”
Crime data collected by the FBI shows violent crime hit a 30-year low last year in Washington, which is a self-governing federal district under the jurisdiction of Congress. The Justice Department is reportedly investigating whether city officials manipulated crime data after the president accused the capital city of creating “fake crime numbers” to undermine his federal takeover.
Fox News reported on Friday that the Trump administration reportedly plans to similarly mobilize up to 1,700 National Guard troops across 19 states in the coming weeks.
“The State of Illinois at this time has received no requests or outreach from the federal government asking if we need assistance, and we have made no requests for federal intervention,” according to the state’s Democratic Governor JB Pritzker.
“The safety of the people of Illinois is always my top priority,” he said in a statement Saturday in response to The Washington Post’s reporting.
“There is no emergency that warrants the president of the United States federalizing the Illinois National Guard, deploying the National Guard from other states, or sending active-duty military within our own borders,” he added.
“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 is causing working families,” he said.
Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson said the city has “grave concerns about the impact of any unlawful deployment of National Guard troops,” calling the president’s approach “uncoordinated, uncalled for, and unsound.”
Johnson warned that such a deployment could “inflame tensions between residents and law enforcement,” and would undermine the progress the city has made in reducing crimes, noting that homicides are down 30 percent, robberies by 35 percent, and shootings by nearly 40 percent.
“There are many things the federal government could do to help us reduce crime and violence in Chicago, but sending in the military is not one of them,” the mayor said.
The National Guard is feeling the cost of the president’s insistence on using its troops to carry out his federal law enforcement agenda, with leadership concerned that prolonged deployments will eat into funding intended for training and operations.
