CHICAGO — In a change of pace, President Donald Trump announced Friday that he would be sending the National Guard to Memphis on a crime-fighting mission after threats of a Chicago deployment were met with weeks of pushback from local and state leaders.
In a sit-down with Fox News on Friday morning, the president announced that he would be sending the National Guard to Memphis to address crime concerns, indicating that he had the full support of the mayor, a Democrat and the governor of Tennessee, a Republican.
During the sit-down, Trump referred to Memphis as a “deeply troubled” city, adding that his administration was going to “fix that just like we did in Washington.”
While Trump seems to have narrowed his sights on a Memphis Guard deployment, the president lamented that he was not able to conduct a similar operation in Chicago, telling Fox hosts that he “would have preferred going to Chicago,” but said local politicians had fiercely resisted his plan.
Trump went on to call Chicago a “hostile” place with “professional agitators.”
“Because of the unified opposition from community leaders and elected officials in Chicago and throughout the state, the Trump administration backed down from its threats of sending in the National Guard to Chicago. We continue to call on the federal government to send additional resources to help us continue to drive down violent crime, but we reject any military occupation of our city. The way to reduce violence is by focusing on the strategies that work: effective policing, violence prevention, and investing in communities,” Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson said in a statement shared Friday.
The news comes a little under a month after the president surprised city and state leaders with the threat of a potential National Guard Deployment during an Oval Office meeting with FIFA’s president.
Trump had initially hinted at the plans following the deployment of National Guard troops in Washington DC, which he said was done to crack down on crime.
The president claimed that a local deployment was needed due to the outrageous crime in Chicago, but data provided by the city paints a different picture.
CPD reports that Chicago saw a significant decline in violent crime during the first half of the year.
Almost immediately, the plan was met with significant pushback from state and local leaders who called it a political stunt, insisting that nobody had asked for a military operation to be conducted in Chicago.
“Mr. President, do not come to Chicago. You are neither wanted here nor needed here,” Gov. Pritzker said during a news conference addressing the threats in late August.
After narrowing his sights on Chicago, the president appeared to take several steps in an attempt to bring the Guard to the Windy City, even signing an executive order calling for additional National Guard units.
But Pritzker said he felt there was no emergency to warrant the deployment, and without a specific request by the governor, the president lacked the authority to send in the National Guard for participation in law enforcement operations.
By early September, the president seemingly began walking back on his plans for a Chicago guard deployment shortly after a judge ruled that his administration had broken the law back in June when it ordered Marines and the National Guard into Los Angeles.
While the president struggled to mobilize the Guard in Chicago, a separate immigration enforcement operation dubbed “Midway Blitz” got underway in the city, stoking fear in immigrant communities.
The operation was not a large-scale anti-crime effort involving the National Guard; instead, only ICE agents were utilized.
DHS officials said the operation was specifically targeting “criminal aliens who flocked to Chicago and Illinois because they knew Governor Pritzker and his sanctuary policies would protect them and allow them to roam free on American streets.”
Despite a significant focus on Chicago by ICE, Mayor Johnson said he and the local police force had been left in the dark about the plans.
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