{"id":163296,"date":"2025-09-05T21:05:02","date_gmt":"2025-09-05T21:05:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/chicago-gears-up-as-trump-troop-deployment-looms-we-arent-helpless-the-guardian\/"},"modified":"2025-09-05T21:05:02","modified_gmt":"2025-09-05T21:05:02","slug":"chicago-gears-up-as-trump-troop-deployment-looms-we-arent-helpless-the-guardian","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/chicago-gears-up-as-trump-troop-deployment-looms-we-arent-helpless-the-guardian\/","title":{"rendered":"Chicago gears up as Trump troop deployment looms: \u2018We aren\u2019t helpless\u2019 – The Guardian"},"content":{"rendered":"

City on edge as Trump threatens to send in national guard, but organizers and residents are taking steps to push back
Communities are on edge as the long-discussed arrival of federal law enforcement and Ice<\/a> agents in Chicago<\/a> is reportedly set to begin in the coming days, marking the potential start of a contentious period of federal policing in the Democratic-led midwestern city.
Donald Trump<\/a> reaffirmed his commitment to sending federal troops to the city as an effort to curb violence and homelessness on Tuesday, calling it a \u201chellhole\u201d and saying that, though troops would be headed to Chicago regardless, the city\u2019s mayor, Brandon Johnson, and the Illinois<\/a> governor, JB Pritzker, should be calling him personally to ask for his help.
If that were to happen, Chicago<\/a> would become the second US city to receive national guard troops after Trump declared a national crime emergency and deployed about 800 troops to Washington DC in August, having previously sent the national guard to Los Angeles in June.
\u201cWe\u2019re going in,\u201d Trump said about Chicago. \u201cI didn\u2019t say when, [but] we\u2019re going in.\u201d
The statement came in the wake of Chicago\u2019s Labor Day weekend, during which nearly 60 people were shot and at least eight killed, which some experts have said could be used by the Trump administration as further justification for sending troops. Though the shootings marked the city\u2019s deadliest weekend this summer<\/a>, the overall number of violent crimes has continued to drop in recent years and has remained at its lowest levels in the last four decades. Murders committed from June to August totaled 123, the city\u2019s lowest number in 60 years, according to a WBEZ-Chicago<\/a> analysis.
Both Johnson and Pritzker have routinely rejected the popular rightwing political view of Chicago being overly crime-ridden and in need of federal help. And this week, local leadership began preparing the Chicago populace for federal troops, which are expected to descend upon the city as early as this weekend, according to the New York Times.<\/a> At the end of August, Johnson passed the Protecting Chicago initiative<\/a>, an executive order with sweeping measures aimed at limiting Trump\u2019s influence on local law enforcement.
Though the president floated the idea of sending troops to states such as Louisiana first<\/a>, reports suggest Chicago is still primed to be the next city to receive the national guard, whether local leaders agree with the actions or not.
An advance team of at least 30 agents is currently undergoing crowd control and flash grenade training at Naval Station Great Lakes north of Chicago, and 230 agents, most of whom work for Customs and Border Protection, are being sent to Chicago<\/a> from Los Angeles<\/a>, sources told the Chicago Sun-Times<\/a>. During a news conference on Tuesday, Pritzker expressed concern that Ice agents will target Mexican Independence Day events this month. The El Grito Chicago Mexican Independence Day festival, scheduled for this weekend in downtown Chicago\u2019s Grant Park, was postponed<\/a> on Thursday due to concerns about Ice operations.
Among residents who are chafing at the prospect of federal troops coming to Chicago is Edwin Eisendrath, a former member of the Chicago city council who served in the Department of Housing and Urban Development under Bill Clinton and was the CEO of the Chicago Sun-Times from 2017 to 2019. Eisendrath, who currently hosts a progressive political radio show from Chicago\u2019s Lincoln Square neighborhood on the city\u2019s North Side, believes if the goal is to lower crime in Chicago, deploying the national guard won\u2019t work.
To him, there is a \u201chistoric lack of trust in the police\u201d among Chicagoans that will make any actions taken in the name of Trump\u2019s purported intent to lower crime ineffective, especially without taking steps to remove guns and other weapons brought over from neighboring red states with looser gun laws, or funding violence-prevention programming.
That, coupled with Chicago\u2019s history in labor and organizing, may mean different results from what Trump is expecting.
\u201cIf you think of the civic action you\u2019ve seen over history, whether that\u2019s the Pullman strikes a century ago, or Haymarket, or the early union movement, or what we did in the civil rights movement, or the organizing for the Women\u2019s March, Chicagoans are organized. So we aren\u2019t helpless,\u201d Eisendrath said.
There\u2019s also Sjonia Harper, who works in software sales and has lived in Bronzeville, a historically Black neighborhood on Chicago\u2019s South Side, since 2006. Despite the overwhelming outside perception of Chicago\u2019s predominantly Black and brown neighborhoods such as Bronzeville being plagued by violence, Harper said that crime has largely not been a major concern for her.
\u201cAm I scared to walk my dog? No. I walk my dog every day,\u201d she said. \u201cEven when I first moved to Bronzeville in 2006, when I would say crime was higher, I still walked my dog every day and wasn\u2019t afraid to walk around in my neighborhood and make friends with people in my neighborhood.\u201d
Harper also believes it\u2019s important not to ignore the racial component to Trump\u2019s focus on Chicago and other cities to which he has signaled that troops could also be deployed, many of which are led by Black leaders and have large Black populations.
\u201cIt\u2019s not going to just end with [Chicago]. It\u2019s going to expand. He\u2019s already talking about New Orleans, and if you think about all the cities he\u2019s talking about \u2013 LA, Black mayor; DC, Black mayor; Chicago, Black mayor; Baltimore, Black mayor; New Orleans, Black mayor. We have to be able to call it out for what it is,\u201d she said.
Harper anticipates federal troops employing law enforcement practices with the potential to create violence, not prevent it, including racial profiling, stop-and-frisk and establishing checkpoints in wealthy neighborhoods. She\u2019ll primarily be working from home to limit the chances of encountering troops, and plans to routinely check up on her neighbors to share information from the \u201cknow your rights\u201d campaigns she\u2019s absorbed.
For 22 years, John Orleans has lived in North Austin, a predominantly Black neighborhood on Chicago\u2019s West Side often evoked because its high crime rates<\/a> have continued to fall in recent years. He believes increased investment and access to resources such as healthcare, grocery stores and infrastructure in neighborhoods like his could have a bigger impact on crime than deploying federal troops.
\u201c[When] people have places to go, restaurants to eat at, places to shop, their neighborhood gets better. We\u2019ve seen this in other neighborhoods in the city. When I was growing up, Wrigleyville wasn\u2019t a great neighborhood, and now, just try to find an apartment there,\u201d Orleans said.
Sign up to This Week in Trumpland<\/span>
A deep dive into the policies, controversies and oddities surrounding the Trump administration
after newsletter promotion
The Indivisible Chicago Alliance, a progressive organization of activists and neighborhood chapters, is one of several local groups sharing \u201cknow your rights<\/a>\u201d campaigns, trainings and planned actions from a collection of like-minded partner organizations, including the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights, which itself partners with the National Immigrant Justice Center (NIJC), the center\u2019s director of communications, Tara Tidwell Cullen, said.
The NIJC has been responding to threats from Ice in Chicago since the start of Trump\u2019s second term in January, and has been working with its partners to expand the scope of its work as federal troops head to Chicago, Cullen added.
Other groups, such as Personal Pac, which typically organizes around reproductive rights, are collaborating with similar organizations and distributing information through the Hands Off Chicago website<\/a> to \u201cstand up against the unconstitutional and racist regime of Donald Trump\u201d, Personal Pac\u2019s CEO, Sarah Garza Resnick, said. And the National Lawyers Guild (NLG) is preparing a team of more than 350 volunteers for legal observation during future protests and civil litigation that could arise from encounters between the public and troops, Matthew McLoughlin, the director of operations for NLG Chicago, said.
Currently, Trump is facing legal challenges that may halt his ability to deploy the national guard and Ice agents as he would like. On Tuesday, a judge ruled that the president violated federal law<\/a> when he deployed thousands of national guard troops to Los Angeles earlier this summer during protests against Ice, and on Thursday, the District of Columbia sued Trump in federal court<\/a> over his deployment of troops there.
Matt Conroy, a Democratic candidate for Illinois\u2019s fifth congressional district, recognizes Chicago does have work to do to address crime, but he\u2019s concerned federal troops will primarily \u201cterrorize\u201d predominantly Black and Hispanic communities while costing the local and federal government money.
\u201cRather than addressing the root cause of this, they\u2019re just doing what they think looks good for the TV and pretending to be a strongman authoritarian, and that\u2019s all that Donald Trump<\/a> really wants to be,\u201d Conroy said.
\u201cWhat they\u2019re doing is completely illegal. \u2026 Honestly, [Trump could] invoke the Insurrection Act, but [it\u2019s important] to stay together, have a plan, know your rights and be respectful of law enforcement, to not escalate the situation further, and to provide [Chicago residents] with additional resources.\u201d
Members of the national guard should also defy unlawful orders that call for violence, Conroy said.
Denise Poloyac, a board member for the Indivisible Chicago Alliance, believes that if federal troops and Ice agents begin active law enforcement activities, community will become increasingly important. That means not going to protests alone or uninformed about their organizers, and engaging in de-escalation tactics.
\u201cWe can\u2019t be effective if we don\u2019t act together, and I think we draw our strength from each other. I think that is the strength of Chicago, and that\u2019s what\u2019s going to get us through this, and, you know, I think that\u2019s the strength of a lot of places in this country,\u201d Poloyac said.
\u201cI think that\u2019s what Trump\u2019s administration doesn\u2019t understand, that we are in a community.\u201d
<\/span> This article was amended on 5 September 2025 to correct the spelling of Matthew McLoughlin\u2019s surname.<\/p>\n

source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

City on edge as Trump threatens to send in national guard, but organizers and residents are taking steps to push backCommunities are on edge as the long-discussed arrival of federal law enforcement and Ice agents in Chicago is reportedly set to begin in the coming days, marking the potential start of a contentious period of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":163297,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-163296","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-us","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/163296","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=163296"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/163296\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/163297"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=163296"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=163296"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=163296"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}