WASHINGTON, Aug 23 (Reuters) – The Pentagon is working on plans to deploy the U.S. military to Chicago as President Donald Trump says he is cracking down on crime, homelessness and undocumented immigration, the Washington Post reported on Saturday.
The Defense Department planning, in the works for weeks, involves several options, including mobilizing at least a few thousand members of the National Guard as soon as September, the Post reported, citing officials familiar with the matter.
“Chicago is a mess,” Trump, a Republican, told reporters on Friday, deriding its mayor as he continued his attacks on cities run by Democratic politicians. “And we’ll straighten that one out probably next.”
The Pentagon said in a statement late on Saturday: “We won’t speculate on further operations. The department is a planning organization and is continuously working with other agency partners on plans to protect federal assets and personnel.”
Asked for comment, the White House referred to Trump’s statement on Friday.
JB Pritzker, the Democratic governor of Illinois, which includes Chicago, said in a statement the state had received no outreach from the federal government on whether it needed assistance. He said there was no emergency warranting a National Guard or other military deployment.
“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,” Pritzker said.
A spokesperson for Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson did not immediately respond to a request for comment. On Friday Johnson said the city had grave concerns about the impact of any unlawful deployment of National Guard troops.
“The problem with the President’s approach is that it is uncoordinated, uncalled for and unsound,” the mayor said, adding that over the past year, homicides in Chicago have fallen by more than 30%, robberies by 35% and shootings by almost 40%.
At Trump’s request last weekend, the Republican governors of three states said they were sending hundreds of National Guard troops hundreds of miles to Washington, D.C.
The president has portrayed the nation’s capital as a city awash in crime, although Justice Department data shows violent crime hit a 30-year low last year in Washington, a self-governing federal district under the jurisdiction of Congress.
In June, Trump ordered 700 Marines and 4,000 National Guard troops to Los Angeles, against the wishes of California’s Democratic governor, during protests over mass immigration raids by federal officials.
(Reporting by David Shepardson in Washington and Ismail Shakil in Ottawa; Additional reporting by Idrees Ali; Editing by William Mallard and Lincoln Feast.)