President Donald Trump, who once bragged he could solve Chicago’s crime problem within a week, announced plans Wednesday to flood the city with a “surge of federal law enforcement” to address ongoing violence.
Though agents will be sent across to cities across the country, Trump singled out Chicago as the one in most critical need of additional resources.
“Perhaps no citizens have suffered more from the menace of violent crime than the wonderful people of Chicago, a city I know very well,” Trump said.
“The citizens of Chicago are citizens of America,” Trump said.
Attorney General William Barr said more than 200 federal agents would be sent to Chicago, where they will engaged in “classic crime fighting” such as investigating murders and making arrests. The new agents will include members of the FBI, US Marshals Service, the DEA and the Department of Homeland Security, among others.
Officials were quick to point out the difference between the Chicago surge and the situation in Portland, Oregon, where unidentified agents are arresting protesters for allegedly vandalizing federal building and taking them away in unmarked cars. The Chicago effort will focus more on helping local police deal with the increase in neighborhood violence, they said.
“In Chicago, we see an unprecedented rise in crime against fellow citizens,” said Chad Wolf, acting Secretary for the Department of Homeland Security. “The DHS mission in Portland is to protect federal property and our law enforcement officers. In Chicago, the mission to protect the public from violent crime on the streets.”
The announcement comes a day after a mass shooting outside a South Side funeral home during which 15 people were injured in what police described as an ongoing gang conflict. The city has experienced one its most violent summers in recent memory with 414 homicides this compared to 275 at the same time last year official CPD statistics show. It represents a 51% increase.
Trump’s plans to send additional federal agents to Chicago this week set off alarm bells at City Hall and in activist circles, as the scope of their duties was not made public. Trump had said he would be sending the additional agents to combat violence here and in other cities, but also referenced extra agents in Portland, Oregon, as doing “a fantastic job.”
On Monday, the Tribune reported that the Department of Homeland Security was crafting plans to deploy about 150 federal agents to the city this week. A source with knowledge of the situation said by Tuesday, officials had been told half that number would come from Homeland Security Investigations, a section of DHS, and the rest coming from other federal agencies, such as the FBI and Drug Enforcement Administration.
Absent any details from the president earlier this week about how these resources would be used, Mayor Lori Lightfoot expressed concern the federal agents would be used unlawfully against protesters. She pointed to their presence in Portland, where protesters were allegedly being snatched off the streets by agents, drawing condemnation from state officials there and leading to a lawsuit filed against DHS and other federal law enforcement by Oregon’s attorney general.
Lightfoot initially threatened to sue if President Donald Trump tried to send federal agents into Chicago without her permission.
She changed her tone after talking with U.S. Attorney John Lausch, a former colleague who she has said she respects and admires, who assured her an influx of law enforcement would be working “collaboratively” with Chicago cops against violent crime, and not confronting protesters.
But Lightfoot said the city would proceed with caution and would not welcome “troops” from the Trump administration to the city’s streets.
Chicago police and other big-city departments across the country regularly work with federal agencies such as the FBI, DEA, ATF and the U.S. attorney’s office on investigations into drug- and gun-trafficking and myriad other crimes tied to violence. In Chicago, such investigations are often based in certain neighborhoods on the South and West sides where much of the violence in the city occurs. One incentive for the partnership is the potential for a lengthier prison sentence for people tried and convicted in the federal system as opposed to being prosecuted in state court.
Such partnerships over the years have been through federal programs such as Project Exile, aimed at shifting more gun prosecutions to federal judges so they can hand down stiffer penalties on convicts, and Project Safe Neighborhoods, designed to better coordinate federal resources and local intelligence on crime.
For Lightfoot, the prospect of increased federal assistance for anti-crime efforts is a thorny proposition. More federal agents could help with the city’s skyrocketing violence, but the unfolding controversy in Portland and Trump’s repeated harsh rhetoric toward Chicago has led to high public mistrust in the federal government, which she’s acknowledged.
“I don’t put anything past this administration, which is why we will continue to be diligent and why we will continue to be ready,” Lightfoot said. “If we need to stop them and use the courts to do so, we are ready to do that.”
The announcement about federal agents coming to Chicago is the latest development in an ongoing war of words between the Republican president and Democratic mayor.
In recent weeks, Lightfoot repeatedly has questioned the sincerity of Trump’s offer to help Chicago and denounced his response to George Floyd’s killing by a Minneapolis police officer.
Last month, Trump lashed out at Lightfoot and Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker over Chicago’s gun violence, saying the two had put their “own political interests” ahead of the lives of residents and insisting that “law and order” was needed.
