WASHINGTON – President Donald Trump said Wednesday that he would send federal law enforcement officers to Chicago to address the recent increase in violence in the city, marking his latest deployment of federal agents in Democrat-led cities that, according to the president, are out of control.
“I am announcing that the Justice Department will immediately dispatch federal law enforcement to the city of Chicago. The FBI, ATF, DEA, the US Marshals Service and Homeland Security will together send hundreds of law enforcement officers together. the law rated Chicago as helping to reduce violent crime, “Trump announced Wednesday at a White House event about crime in cities.
The president said he would also send police to other cities, “soon,” including Albuquerque.
Trump has recently been criticized for sending federal forces to cities, from Washington, DC, to Portland, Oregon, without permission from local officials. Oregon Attorney General Ellen Rosenblum sued the Department of Homeland Security on Friday after federal agents were deployed to Portland to quell the Black Lives Matter protests and a group of big city mayors formally asked leaders Tuesday. of Congress to investigate Trump’s use of federal agents in the cities.
“We must remember that the job of policing a neighborhood falls on the shoulders of elected local leaders. Never forget it. When you give up your duty, the results are catastrophic. Americans must hold their city leaders accountable,” Trump said on Wednesday.
Trump has suggested that he is considering sending federal police to New York, Philadelphia, Detroit, Baltimore, as well as other cities.
“Unfortunately, the cities that are in trouble are run by Democrats,” Trump said later Wednesday at a White News press conference when asked if he was unfairly attacking certain cities for political reasons. “I think in their own way, they want us to come in.”
“At some point, we may have no choice but to go in,” he said.
Federal agents have already been dispatched to Kansas City, Missouri, as part of the Trump administration’s “Operation Legend” aimed at tackling violent crime in the cities.
Mayor Quinton Lucas told Chuck Todd on MSNBC that officers were asked to be there for “investigative support” in solving murder cases.
Gun violence in the United States has increased this summer, hitting communities of color already struggling through the coronavirus pandemic. In Chicago, the shootings have increased 76 percent compared to the same period last year, with almost all the bloodshed concentrated in the city’s predominantly black and brown communities. Fifteen people were injured in a shooting at a Chicago funeral home on Tuesday.
Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot announced Tuesday that her administration would work with federal agents to help tackle the recent violence, but warned the White House that it would not tolerate any abuse of power.
“Yesterday I sent a letter to the president describing various ways that if he really wanted to partner with us he could do it,” Lightfoot told the Chicago Tribune on Tuesday. “What we do not appreciate, and what we will not tolerate, and what we will fight is the deployment of unidentified federal special secret agents on our streets to detain people without cause and take away their civil rights and civil liberties without due process.” “
