US President Donald Trump called for the arrest of the mayor of Chicago and the governor of Illinois, both Democrats, as his administration prepares to send military troops to the streets of the nation’s third-largest city.
Trump’s call to arrest two prominent opponents of his crackdown on immigration comes as another high-profile political rival, former FBI Director James Comey, is due to appear in court to face criminal charges that have been widely criticized as flimsy.
On his social media platform, Trump accused Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson and Illinois Governor JB Pritzker of failing to protect immigration agents operating in Chicago.
“Chicago’s mayor should be in jail for not protecting ICE officers! Governor Pritzker too!”, Trump wrote, referring to the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) team.
Hundreds of Texas National Guard soldiers have gathered at an Army facility on the outskirts of Chicago, despite objections from Pritzker, Johnson, and other Democratic leaders in the state. Trump has threatened to send troops to more US cities, which he said last week could serve as “training grounds” for the Armed Forces.
Trump ordered the deployment of National Guard troops to Chicago and Portland, Oregon, following previous deployments to Los Angeles and Washington, D.C. In all cases, he defied fierce opposition from Democratic mayors and governors, who claim Trump’s allegations of lawlessness and violence do not reflect reality.
“My goal is very simple. STOP CRIME IN AMERICA!”, he wrote on his social media platform.
Violent crime has been falling in many US cities since the Covid-era peak, and National Guard troops have so far been used largely to protect federal facilities, not to fight street crime.
Protests against Trump’s immigration policies in Chicago and Portland have been largely peaceful and limited in size, according to local authorities, far from the conditions described by Trump administration officials.
Pritzker accused Trump of trying to foment violence to justify greater militarization, and his state filed a lawsuit to block the military mobilization in the city. On Monday, a federal judge allowed the mobilization to proceed for now. Another federal judge blocked the deployment to Portland.
Trump threatened to invoke an anti-insurrection law to override any court order blocking him. That law was last invoked during the 1992 Los Angeles riots.
Source: brasil247.com