Donald Trump says he’ll send the military into Chicago to protect immigration officers.
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Donald Trump has said the governor of Illinois and mayor of Chicago, both Democrats, should be jailed – as his administration appears poised to deploy troops on the streets of the third-largest US city.
The US president said on Truth Social that governor JB Pritzker and mayor Brandon Johnson failed to protect federal immigration officers, without offering any evidence.The standoff raises the temperature in an already heated rhetorical battle between Trump and local officials in Democratic-led cities and states.
The Chicago mayor quickly fired back at Trump, saying “this is not the first time Trump has tried to have a Black man unjustly arrested. I’m not going anywhere.”
Pritzker vowed: “I will not back down.
“Trump is now calling for the arrest of elected representatives checking his power. What else is left on the path to full-blown authoritarianism?”
The arrival of National Guard troops in Chicago follows similar deployments to Los Angeles and Washington DC to stem what the president has described as “out of control” crime.
Last month, Washington DC Attorney General Brian Schwalb filed a lawsuit challenging the deployment, saying “it is not only unnecessary and unwanted, but it is also dangerous and harmful to the District and its residents”.
Trump has also directed them to enter Memphis, Tennessee, and Portland, Oregon. A judge has blocked their deployment to Portland, but allowed them to go to Chicago for now.
The state of Illinois and the city of Chicago filed a lawsuit on Monday to block the deployment. A hearing is scheduled for Thursday.
Trump has threatened to invoke the Insurrection Act and use the military if courts stop the deployments, which he has defended as necessary to address rampant crime and defend immigration enforcers.
“If I had to enact it, I’d do it, if people were being killed and courts were holding us up, or governors or mayors were holding us up,” Trump said on Monday.
