WASHINGTON, Aug 23 (Reuters) – The Pentagon is engaged on plans to deploy the U.S. navy to Chicago as President Donald Trump says he’s cracking down on crime, homelessness and undocumented immigration, the Washington Submit reported on Saturday.
The Protection Division planning, within the works for weeks, entails a number of choices, together with mobilizing no less than just a few thousand members of the Nationwide Guard as quickly as September, the Submit reported, citing officers conversant in the matter.
“Chicago is a large number,” Trump, a Republican, instructed reporters on Friday, deriding its mayor as he continued his assaults on cities run by Democratic politicians. “And we’ll straighten that one out in all probability subsequent.”
The Pentagon mentioned in a press release late on Saturday: “We received’t speculate on additional operations. The division is a planning group and is repeatedly working with different company companions on plans to guard federal property and personnel.”
Requested for remark, the White Home referred to Trump’s assertion on Friday.
JB Pritzker, the Democratic governor of Illinois, which incorporates Chicago, mentioned in a press release the state had obtained no outreach from the federal authorities on whether or not it wanted help. He mentioned there was no emergency warranting a Nationwide Guard or different navy deployment.
“Donald Trump is making an attempt to fabricate a disaster, politicize Individuals who serve in uniform and proceed abusing his energy to distract from the ache he’s inflicting working households,” Pritzker mentioned.
A spokesperson for Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson didn’t instantly reply to a request for remark. On Friday Johnson mentioned the town had grave issues concerning the influence of any illegal deployment of Nationwide Guard troops.
“The issue with the President’s method is that it’s uncoordinated, uncalled for and unsound,” the mayor mentioned, including that over the previous 12 months, homicides in Chicago have fallen by greater than 30%, robberies by 35% and shootings by nearly 40%.
At Trump’s request final weekend, the Republican governors of three states mentioned they had been sending a whole bunch of Nationwide Guard troops a whole bunch of miles to Washington, D.C.
The president has portrayed the nation’s capital as a metropolis awash in crime, though Justice Division information exhibits violent crime hit a 30-year low final 12 months in Washington, a self-governing federal district below the jurisdiction of Congress.
In June, Trump ordered 700 Marines and 4,000 Nationwide Guard troops to Los Angeles, towards the desires of California’s Democratic governor, throughout protests over mass immigration raids by federal officers.
(Reporting by David Shepardson in Washington and Ismail Shakil in Ottawa; Further reporting by Idrees Ali; Enhancing by William Mallard and Lincoln Feast.)
