Donald Trump will deploy 300 members of the National Guard in Illinois, state governor JB Pritzker said on Saturday.
“In the coming hours, the Trump Administration intends to federalize 300 members of the Illinois National Guard,” Pritzker said in a statement. He added: “They will pull hardworking Americans out of their regular jobs and away from their families all to participate in a manufactured performance, not a serious effort to protect public safety.”
“For Donald Trump, this has never been about safety. This is about control,” Pritzker continued.
The Illinois governor called the Trump administration’s actions “outrageous and un-American.” He claimed that his state had been given an ultimatum: “Call up your troops, or we will.” Pritzker said there was “no need for military troops on the ground” in Illinois.
He also added, “This demand follows unprecedented escalations of aggression against Illinois citizens and residents.”
“Yesterday, Kristi Noem’s and Greg Bovino’s masked agents threw chemical agents near an elementary school, arrested elected officials exercising their First Amendment rights, and raided a Wal-Mart. None of it was in pursuit of justice, but all of it was in pursuit of social media videos,” Pritzker said.
On Tuesday, Trump said that his administration would be “going into Chicago very soon.” The US president made the remarks while addressing military generals and admirals in Quantico, Virginia. Trump said then about Pritzker: “That’s a big city with an incompetent governor. Stupid governor.”
The US president has long implied that he could mobilize the National Guard in Illinois. In September, Trump posted a graphic of himself with the words “Chipocalypse Now,” wearing a cowboy hat with explosions and military helicopters behind him. The Truth Social post said: “I love the smell of deportations in the morning. Chicago about to find out why it’s called the Department of WAR.”
Trump also warned the “weak and pathetic Governor” Pritzker to “straighten it out FAST.”
Previously, the US president sent the National Guard into Democrat-led Los Angeles and Washington, DC. Louisiana’s Republican governor, Jeff Landry, has asked for up to 1,000 Louisiana National Guard troops to be activated in his state.
Earlier this week, Pritzker said that the Illinois National Guard “received word that the Department of Homeland Security has sent a memo to the Department of War seeking the deployment” of troops to Illinois. The mobilization, Pritzker said, is for the “protection of ICE personnel and facilities.”
“What I have been warning of is now being realized,” Pritzker said. “One thing is clear: none of what Trump is doing is making Illinois safer.”
The National Guard’s deployment is just one of the Trump administration’s recent actions in Chicago. The Department of Homeland Security announced on Wednesday that ICE and US Border Patrol officers arrested “more than 800 illegal aliens,” including the “worst of the worst,” as part of Operation “Midway Blitz” in Chicago.
The operation started on September 8 and is intended to “target the criminal illegal 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,” the DHS said in a press release.
On Friday, Office of Management and Budget director Russ Vought announced $2 [amount incomplete].
Pritzker’s announcement regarding the National Guard’s mobilization came on the same day officials reported that Border Patrol agents in Chicago shot a woman after officers were “rammed by ten cars.”
According to a statement released by the DHS, one of the drivers was a woman armed with a semi-automatic weapon, forcing officers to open fire. Their statement added that the woman in question was part of an internal threat bulletin circulated after allegedly doxxing and threatening law enforcement officials online.
DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said: “Unfortunately, JB Pritzker’s Chicago Police Department is leaving the shooting scene and refuses to assist us in securing the area. There is a crowd growing and we are deploying special operations to control a growing crowd.”
Images captured at the scene showed a large presence of federal agents, who blocked a road using their vehicles as a crowd of protestors formed.
A spokesperson for the Chicago Police Department told Daily Mail: “The Chicago Police Department responded to the 3900 block of S. Kedzie Ave Saturday morning for a call of a person shot. CPD responded to the scene to document the incident. CPD officers were also on-scene to maintain safety and traffic control for all living and working in the area.”
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