Illinois Governor JB Pritzker (D), centre, walks to a news conference in Chicago. Pritzker said he will not support US President Donald Trump sending the National Guard to Chicago to fight crime. Photo / Joshua Lott, The Washington Post
After a stretch of sweltering summer heat, residents gathered for lunch in Humboldt Park - a historically Puerto Rican neighbourhood on Chicago’s West Side, dining on outdoor patios as business owners waved to neighbours passing by.
The scene was a stark contrast to the “killing field” that United States President Donald Trump had described hours earlier.
Trump has vowed to send in members of the National Guard to combat what he calls rampant crime that local leaders have failed to address, despite data showing violent crimes, including homicides, falling in recent years here and in many other large cities across the country.
If the President follows through, Chicago could become the third major city to see a military presence this year. He sent troops into Los Angeles in June and into Washington, DC, in August.
While Chicagoans acknowledge problems in their city that need attention, some said the idea of armed uniformed personnel patrolling the streets is an outsize response that they worry is not only politically motivated, but anti-democratic.
Through to the middle of August, the Police Department reported a 23% decline in violent crime compared to the same period last year.
“This is how it starts,” said Alexis Figueroa, 48, an art gallery owner and North Side resident.
“You do it in one city, they don’t complain enough, you do it in another, they don’t complain enough, you do it in the whole country - and then you do whatever the hell you want.”
Pentagon officials have for weeks been preparing to mobilise forces to deploy to Chicago as Trump vows to crack down on crime, illegal immigration, and homelessness.
The plan, which the Washington Post first reported, drew immediate condemnation from city and state leaders, who questioned Trump’s legal authority to send in forces they didn’t request.
Yesterday, Illinois Governor JB Pritzker and Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson, both Democrats, again decried the plans in a news conference at a downtown park.
They were flanked by other officials and community members, including Democratic senators Dick Durbin and Tammy Duckworth, a combat veteran who served in the Illinois National Guard. All said they opposed Trump’s plan to send military troops to Chicago.
“The last thing that Chicagoans want is someone from the outside of our city, who doesn’t know our city, try to dictate and tell us what our city needs,” Johnson said.
He and the other Illinois politicians spoke at a lectern adorned with a sign that read “Chicago The City of Big Shoulders”, referring to poet Carl Sandburg’s famous love letter to the city.
Multiple officials acknowledged that they would welcome help to prevent further violence in Chicago - but not in the form of uniformed service members. They proposed other assistance, including funding for violence prevention programmes that the Trump Administration previously froze.
Should the National Guard deploy in Chicago, Pritzker said he would challenge the move in court. California Governor Gavin Newsom (D) also sued the Trump Administration after National Guard members and Marines were sent to Los Angeles.
In Washington, the Home Rule Act gives the president direct authority over the city’s National Guard forces, but Trump doesn’t have the same power in Illinois, said William Banks, a professor at Syracuse University College of Law who studies national security and constitutional law. Washington, he said, was a special case because it isn’t a state.
Illinois is a different scenario, one where Pritzker would typically command the state’s National Guard.
If Trump is met with a court challenge, it’s unclear whether a federal judge would de-escalate the deployment.
After California sued over the National Guard deployment there in June, a federal appeals court ruled that Trump could keep the troops there.
Banks said National Guard members aren’t always trained to interact with civilians - just as civilians aren’t used to seeing uniformed troops on the streets.
“In almost all circumstances, we don’t expect soldiers, whether they’re National Guard or regular military, to enforce the law,” Banks said.
“We expect that to be done by people who wear police civilian uniforms, who are from our communities, and live in our neighbourhoods.”
Figueroa, the North Side resident, said Trump was targeting Chicago for political reasons, echoing the comments state and local leaders have been making.
Figueroa agreed that the city’s crime, often gang and drug-related, is a pressing problem. But he said he doesn’t feel that it’s as widespread a concern here as Trump has insisted it is.
Residents in Humboldt Park said the presence of National Guard members, armed or not, would do little to solve crime. Instead, they said they feared it would intimidate immigrant families, stymie business, and snarl commutes.
Pritzker said Chicagoans don’t want their neighbourhoods “turned into a war zone by a wannabe dictator”.
“Ask if they’d like to pass through a checkpoint with unidentified officers in masks while taking their kids to school,” he said.
John Roman, a senior fellow with the non-partisan National Opinion Research Centre at the University of Chicago, said there were no emergencies in Chicago crime data.
Roman and other local criminologists are analysing the Chicago Police Department’s data, the same numbers that are reported to the FBI and eventually become official federal crime stats.
There have been 262 homicides in Chicago this year, down 32% compared to the same period last year, according to data posted on the city’s website.
In 2024, there were 583 homicides in total, a 28% decline from a recent peak of 805 in 2021.
“The idea of bringing in the military into a city is unprecedented, other than in times of tremendous, widespread social unrest,” Roman said.
“There’s no support for the idea that there’s widespread unrest in Chicago this summer.”
The mayor’s office and Chicago police did not reply to requests for comment about how they would respond if National Guard members were deployed.
Several Chicagoans said some degree of crime is an unfortunate reality in any major city - and always has been, making the fixation on present-day Chicago ring false.
If the federal government wanted to help Chicago address crime, it could start by sending funding, not soldiers, said Jess, a community school safety programme worker who spoke on the condition that his last name not be used.
“When you cut all the programmes, all the support, what are they going to do?” said Jess, who described himself as politically independent.
The city needs support in backfilling the ranks of retired police officers and bolstering youth engagement programmes, he said.
“Chicago, overall, is hands down way better than before,” the lifelong resident said.
“Like every city, we have pockets of crime. Everybody’s going to talk smack, but I love Chicago.”
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