National Guard to Fight Chicago Crime Insists Trump
By Reuters | 02 Sep, 2025

Dreams of militarizing the nation's greatest democratic cities motivate Trump to ignore legal precedent and national voter opposition.

President Donald Trump said on Tuesday that he plans to send National Guard troops to fight crime in Chicago, which would mark an extraordinary effort to militarize the nation's third-largest city and set up a legal battle with local officials who have vowed to fight such a move. 

Trump's comments come just hours after a federal judge blocked Trump's administration from using the military to fight crime in California. 

After Trump's comments, Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker said that he had learned from reporters that the Trump administration has "gathered ICE agents and military vehicles, and that there are more ICE agents that are on the way."

Since taking office, Trump has attempted to broaden the role of the military on U.S. soil, which critics say is a dangerous expansion of executive authority that could spark tensions between the military and ordinary citizens.

"We're going in. I didn't say when, but we're going in," Trump told reporters in the Oval Office. 

Trump at one point said he would "love to have" Pritzker call and request troops, but "we're going to do it anyway." 

"We have the right to do it," Trump said, adding that the federal intervention would extend to Baltimore as well. 

Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson said over the weekend that Chicago police will not collaborate with any National Guard troops or federal agents if Trump deploys them to the city in coming days as he has threatened in the past. 

Pritzker on Tuesday said that the administration was staging Texas National Guard for deployment in Illinois, along with federal agents from ICE, Customs and Border Control, the Department of Homeland Security and other agencies.

Pritzker, a Democrat whose name has also been floated as a possible 2028 presidential candidate, said in the coming days, Chicago could expect to see similar scenes as those that have played out in Los Angeles and Washington, D.C., where military personnel have already been deployed.

LIMITS TO PRESIDENTIAL POWER?

Trump has been threatening to expand his federal crackdown on Democratic-led U.S. cities to Chicago, casting the use of presidential power as an urgent effort to tackle crime even as city officials cite declines in homicides, gun violence and burglaries.

Local officials and residents in Chicago, the nation's third-largest city, have been preparing for the possible arrival of federal agents and troops.

The Democratic mayor, surrounded by other city leaders, signed an executive order on Saturday aimed at preparing Chicago for any U.S. enforcement operation, as Trump has staged in Los Angeles and Washington.

U.S. officials have told Reuters that there has been initial planning at the Pentagon about what a deployment of National Guard troops to Chicago would look like.

Trump has much less power over Chicago and Baltimore than he does over Washington, D.C., where as president he holds more sway since it is not a U.S. state.

Trump is almost certain to face legal challenges if he uses a provision known as Section 12406 to send National Guard troops from Republican-led states into Democratic strongholds.

Some Republican governors have sent hundreds of National Guard troops to Washington at Trump's request. The president has depicted the capital as being in the grip of a crime wave, although official data shows crime is down in the city.

Chicago has long had high levels of gun violence but crime, including homicide, has declined in the last year.

In July, the Baltimore police department said there had been a double-digit reduction in gun violence compared to the previous year. The city has had 84 homicides so far this year, the fewest in over 50 years, according to the mayor.

Johnson, who was speaking with reporters on Tuesday after Trump's comments, said the president did not care about gun violence in Chicago. 

"He just wants his own secret police force that will do publicity stunts whenever his poll numbers are sinking, whenever his jobs report shows a stagnating economy, whenever he needs another distraction from his failures," Johnson added. 

The injunction put in place by the judge against the military deployments in Los Angeles applies only to the military in California, not nationally. But the judge said that Trump's stated desire to send troops to Chicago and other cities provided support for his ruling.

(Reporting By Nandita Bose, Jarrett Renshaw, Idrees Ali, Phil Stewart and Renee Hickman. Writing by Idrees Ali; Editing by Leslie Adler, Alistair Bell and Nick Zieminski)