President Donald Trump says he will deploy the National Guard to Chicago to help with crime in the city.
“We’re going in. I didn’t say when. We’re going in,” Trump said at the White House on Tuesday.
“Chicago is a hellhole right now, Baltimore is a hellhole right now,” he added.
Chicago ranks 13th in total crime rates for American cities with populations of at least 250,000, with Memphis, Cleveland and St. Louis plagued with the highest total crime rates, according to FBI crime data.
Even as Chicago’s crimes rates are down across the board this year, dozens of people were shot and at least seven people were killed in the city in a surge of violence over the Labor Day weekend.
The city’s leaders and Illinois Governor JB Pritzker have said they do not want U.S. troops to assist in the city. Pritzker said Sunday such a move would be an “invasion,” and added that the Trump administration has not communicated any plans to his office.
The news comes hours after a federal judge in California ruled that the president illegally violated the Posse Comitatus Act, which limits the power of the federal government to use military force for domestic matters, when he deployed 4,000 National Guard troops and 700 Marines to Los Angeles in June.
“The evidence at trial established that Defendants systematically used armed soldiers (whose identity was often obscured by protective armor) and military vehicles to set up protective perimeters and traffic blockades, engage in crowd control, and otherwise demonstrate a military presence in and around Los Angeles,” U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer said in a 52-page filing.
White House spokeswoman Anna Kelly called Breyer “a rogue judge” trying to “usurp the authority of the Commander-in-Chief” and vowed to fight the decision.
More than 2,200 National Guard troops are deployed in Washington, D.C., where crimes were already on the decline prior to their deployment, according to FBI crime data.
Since the deployment, crime has continued to decrease with the administration surge of federal resources.
According to the Washington, D.C., Metropolitan Police Department, 20-year homicide trends last year were at their lowest point since the 2020 pandemic.
However, homicide rates last year were almost twice as high as in 2012, when the nation’s capital experienced a 50-year low in the number of homicides per capita. But those rates are 68% lower than the record highs of the 1990s, from about 80 homicides per 100,000 residents to about 25 homicides per 100,000 residents, FBI crime data shows.
President Trump has accused D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser of providing “highly inaccurate crime figures” by stating that total violent crime in the capital was at a 30-year low. The Justice Department has launched an investigation into whether the Metropolitan Police Department has falsified its data.
The president has claimed that crime in D.C. was the “worst ever” and that it had been “many years” since the city had a murder-free stretch of even a week. Neither statement is supported by data.
On Tuesday, the president praised how much he felt that D.C. had changed since his deployment of federal law enforcement and National Guard troops, saying, “You can walk right down the street even by yourself, and you’re totally safe. Washington, D.C., is great.”
