Illinois politicians are sounding an alarm and bracing for possible National Guard deployments to Chicago amid President Donald Trump’s calls for widespread federal takeovers of American cities with increased reliance on troops to accomplish his agenda.
Democratic Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker warned in a statement earlier this month that there were “imminent plans for immigration enforcement and National Guard deployments in Chicago” and the surrounding areas. Similarly, Democratic Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson signed an executive order on Aug. 30 demanding Trump “stand down from his threat” to deploy military forces into the Midwestern city.
“The City of Chicago will do everything in our power to defend our democracy and protect our communities,” Johnson said in a statement. “With this executive order, we send a resounding message to the federal government: We do not need nor want an unconstitutional and illegal military occupation of our city.”
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On Saturday, Trump posted on social media: “‘I love the smell of deportations in the morning …,’” adding, “Chicago about to find out why it’s called the Department of WAR.” The post also featured an image that read “Chicopalypse Now” and showed Trump dressed as Lt. Col. Bill Kilgore, a fictional character played by actor Robert Duvall in the 1979 film “Apocalypse Now” that takes place during the Vietnam War.
While it’s unclear whether or when a military deployment to Chicago would happen, such a move comes on the heels of the administration’s current federal takeover and National Guard deployment to Washington, D.C., as well as this summer’s deployment of Marines and other troops to Los Angeles amid immigration enforcement raids.
Such moves are alarming military experts and activists, who say that further military deployments into more U.S. cities would harm readiness as well as morale for residents and troops.
“The president of the United States is threatening to go to war with an American city,” Pritzker wrote Saturday on the social media platform X. “This is not a joke. This is not normal.”
Trump, speaking with reporters Sunday, appeared to downplay his post.
“We’re not going to war; we’re going to clean up our cities,” Trump said. “We’re going to clean them up so they don’t kill five people every weekend. That’s not war. That’s common sense.”
White House border czar Tom Homan said Sunday on CNN’s State of the Union that immigration enforcement action would be happening in Chicago and other cities this week and added that “National Guard are always on the table.”
On Monday, the Department of Homeland Security announced “Operation Midway Blitz,” a crackdown that “will target the criminal illegal aliens who flocked to Chicago and Illinois.”
Sara Haghdoosti, a Chicago resident and the executive director of the progressive advocacy nonprofit group Win Without War, said the rhetoric from the president has been alarming.
“As someone who lives in Chicago, it’s terrifying,” Haghdoosti told Military.com in an interview Tuesday. “A commander in chief is meant to be someone who is thinking about how to keep folks safe, not declaring war on our own communities. And even if he walked it back, the fact that he ever considered saying that, the fact that it was articulated, is deeply horrific.”
More than 2,000 Guardsmen from six states had been sent to Washington, D.C., as of last month, according to a National Guard news release. Tasks have varied from patrolling Metro stops to picking up litter and cleaning up graffiti throughout the city. Experts have estimated that the ongoing deployment is costing roughly $1 million a day, CNN reported.
Haghdoosti told Military.com that Win Without War has started a billboard campaign in D.C. and outside of military bases across the country that reads, “Is this what you signed up for?” It hopes to inform National Guardsmen of their rights and will connect them with resources under the Trump administration’s heavy reliance on the Guard for its domestic agenda.
“We want service members to know that someone has their backs,” Haghdoosti said.
Since January, the Trump administration has relied heavily on active-duty and National Guard troops, including sending roughly 10,000 to the U.S. southern border and nearly 5,000 to LA in June.
In addition to the heavy financial cost of those deployments, there are fears of harming morale and readiness, Jennifer Kavanagh, the director of military analysis at the Defense Priorities think tank in Washington, D.C., told Military.com.
“If you’re using National Guard forces, you pull them away from their jobs, you keep them away from their families and then if, God forbid, there were a crisis overseas where we actually needed military forces, you would have worn down the readiness,” Kavanagh said. “You’d have these units that have already been deployed for two months on city streets, and you’d have a whole range of other implications.”
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