(AFP) – US President Donald Trump called Wednesday for the Democratic governor of Illinois and mayor of Chicago to be jailed for resisting his mass deportation campaign, a day after armed troops from Texas arrived in the state. Chicago, the largest city in Illinois and third-largest in the country, has become the latest flashpoint in a crackdown by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents that has sparked allegations of rights abuses and myriad lawsuits. Masked ICE agents have surged into several Democratic-led cities to conduct raids, stoking outrage among many residents and protests outside federal facilities.
“Chicago Mayor should be in jail for failing to protect Ice Officers! Governor Pritzker also!” Trump posted Wednesday on his social media platform. Trump’s attacks on Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson and Illinois Governor JB Pritzker, both Democrats, follow similar extraordinary public calls by the president for his political opponents to face legal charges. Trump later hosted an event at the White House regarding left-wing Antifa groups which focused on Portland, another Democratic-run city on the US west coast which has also become a flashpoint. The roundtable featured a number of right-wing independent journalists who said they had been assaulted by left-wing demonstrators from Antifa, which Trump recently classified as a terrorist group despite its ill-defined nature. “We have a very serious left-wing terror threat in our country,” Trump said. His Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, who was in Portland a day earlier, said Antifa protesters were “just as dangerous” as the Palestinian militant group Hamas. “They have an agenda to destroy us just like the other terrorists,” Noem said.
Local officials argue that city and state law enforcement are sufficient to handle the protests, but Trump claims the military is needed to keep federal agents safe, heightening concerns by his critics of growing authoritarianism. After National Guard deployments in Los Angeles and Washington, DC, 200 troops arrived in Illinois on Tuesday. “Elements of the Texas National Guard, under Title 10 authority and command and control of U.S. Northern Command, are employed in the greater Chicago area,” US Northern Command posted on X. “These soldiers are employed to protect U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and other U.S. Government personnel who are performing federal functions, including the enforcement of federal law, and to protect federal property.”
Chicago Governor Pritzker, seen as a potential Democratic candidate in the 2028 presidential election, has become one of Trump’s most fiery critics. He pledged Wednesday to “not back down,” listing a litany of grievances against Trump’s immigration crackdown. “What else is left on the path to full-blown authoritarianism?” he wrote on X. “We must all stand up and speak out.” Chicago Mayor Johnson has announced “ICE-free zones” where city-owned property will be declared off-limits to federal authorities, following raids, including one in which Black Hawk helicopters descended on a housing complex. Johnson accused Republicans of wanting “a rematch of the Civil War.”
Trump’s call for the arrests of the Illinois Democrats came on the same day that former FBI director James Comey was arraigned on charges of lying to Congress. Comey’s indictment came just days after Trump urged his attorney general to quickly take action against him and others. Trump’s immigration crackdown is aimed at fulfilling a key election pledge to rid the country of what he called waves of foreign “criminals.” But he has also faced some legal setbacks, including a judge in Oregon temporarily blocking his bid to deploy troops in Portland. Trump said this week he could invoke the rarely used Insurrection Act to force deployments of troops around the country if courts or local officials are “holding us up.”
– Daniel STUBLEN
© 2024 AFP
