Tag: JB Pritzker

Amid growing angst, anxiety and even annoyance over the continued sketchy details surrounding the Trump administration’s threats to deploy forces into Chicago, Gov. JB Pritzker on Wednesday said he expects federal agents to assemble here by the end of the week, and suburban officials have been told to expect about 300 immigration agents to be sent to the area as part of increased operations.

“They haven’t confirmed any of that to us, but what we’re hearing is that they’ll be assembled, ready to go on Friday, and that they will begin actions on Saturday,” Pritzker said, referring to possible additional immigration enforcement in the Chicago area.

Pritzker’s latest comments came after President Donald Trump once again said he wanted the two-term governor to ask him to send in the National Guard to help stem crime in Chicago — a move Pritzker has repeatedly vowed he would not do, arguing it’s unnecessary and an authoritarian move to put troops on the streets of the nation’s third-largest city.

While Trump has said the issue of sending troops to Chicago isn’t political, his campaign team sent out a fundraising email Wednesday stating, “WE’RE GOING INTO CHICAGO” and declaring as “breaking news,” “CHICAGO WILL BE LIBERATED.”

The email sought donations of as little as $15 to “join the MAGA Blitz and say: LIBERATE CHICAGO – SAVE AMERICA – STAND WITH TRUMP!”

“The Radical Left Governors and Mayors of crime ridden cities don’t want to stop the radical crime. I wish they’d just give me a call. I’d gain respect for them,” Trump was quoted in the email from his political team. “This isn’t a political thing; We have the right to do it because I HAVE AN OBLIGATION TO KEEP AMERICA SAFE!”

During his comments in Washington, Trump claimed Chicagoans want him to send the National Guard into the city and that politicians who oppose such a move, including Pritzker, are “out of tune” with their constituents.

As Trump attempted to lure Pritzker into asking for the president’s help, he did find another governor — Louisiana Republican Gov. Jeff Landry — asking for federal assistance, with Trump pivoting to say he might send Guard troops to New Orleans.

The move appeared to be aimed at cutting into the criticism from Democratic governors that the White House was only focusing on blue states.

“We have a great thing going. I could do that with Chicago. We could do that with New York. We could do it with Los Angeles,” Trump said. “So we’re making a determination now, do we go to Chicago, or do we go to a place like New Orleans, where we have a great governor?”

Pritzker, a 2028 presidential aspirant, maintained on Wednesday that he thought the Trump administration was staging the Texas National Guard for deployment in Illinois, even after a report from the Houston Chronicle on Tuesday said Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s office had denied that claim.

“I’m not suggesting that I am absolutely certain of whether or not the Texas National Guard will, in fact, end up in the state of Illinois. What I know is that we’ve been told by people who seem to have the credentials to know,” Pritzker said Wednesday at the Metropolitan Peace Academy on the Lower West Side.

The governor also reiterated that the state “cannot stand in the way” of federal law enforcement.

“It’s not like we’re going to have armed men standing in between,” he said, but rather, the state could combat potential illegal actions in court.

As the politicians spoke with reporters, local law enforcement near the Naval Station Great Lakes in North Chicago, which is expected to act as the nerve center for the federal effort, met with federal authorities who on Wednesday morning briefed them on the roughly 300 agents’ arrival and the potential for the National Guard’s deployment, according to Gregory Jackson, chief of staff for North Chicago Mayor Leon Rockingham Jr. The city’s police chief, Laz Perez, was among those in attendance, Jackson said.

As a result, Rockingham and Waukegan Mayor Sam Cunningham said they are taking steps to ensure the safety of people in their communities, where there is fear of family separation in mixed families where some members are documented and others are not.

“I don’t believe that a time has come in our country where the National Guard and ICE are coming into our community to basically scare the Latino population,” Rockingham said. “I didn’t think our country would ever get to that point.”

The officers will stay in hotels in Waukegan, Gurnee and possibly other area communities. National Guard troops will be used as they were in Los Angeles to protect federal buildings, Jackson said.

Federal buildings in the area include the Navy base, the James A. Lovell Federal Health Care Center and an FBI firing range in North Chicago, as well as a U.S. Social Security Office in Waukegan.

Along with representatives of law enforcement from neighboring communities, Jackson said U.S. Navy personnel and naval police were at the briefing, as well as representatives of ICE, U.S. Customs and Border Patrol and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.

With the naval base in North Chicago becoming a focal point of the federal effort, Illinois U.S. Sens. Dick Durbin and Tammy Duckworth, both Democrats, said they had requested a meeting with the secretary of the Navy about “Trump’s plan to use Naval Station Great Lakes to house ICE officers.”

Durbin, the top Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, also demanded the committee’s chair schedule a hearing on “Trump’s threats to deploy the military to Chicago and other American cities,” according to his office.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth told Fox News on Wednesday that he thought a federal judge’s ruling this week that found the deployment of the National Guard to Los Angeles to be unconstitutional would be overturned.

In June, Trump sent more than 2,000 Guard members to California following protests over stepped-up immigration enforcement actions. But a federal judge in California on Tuesday issued an injunction that prohibits the Trump administration from using federalized National Guard troops and military personnel in that state for law enforcement activities.

Hegseth touted the cooperation the Trump administration has received from Washington Mayor Muriel Bowser as “the right kind of collaboration with state, local, city law enforcement” and called it a “template” for other cities.

But the District of Columbia is not a state. Rather, it is a federal district where Trump has greater latitude than he does in dealing with state governors and state sovereignty.

Hegseth declined to provide a timeline for potential Guard intervention in Chicago, saying that the decision lies with the president.

“Whether it’s Chicago or Baltimore or New Orleans, wherever it is, we will be proud to partner with law enforcement that will partner with us. But, as the president has said, he wants governors to invite us in. And, unfortunately, you have got some governors that aren’t willing to do that in Illinois and Maryland,” Hegseth said.

Pritzker on Wednesday said he thought the president might be floating actions in the more Trump-friendly state of Louisiana in response to Tuesday’s court ruling.

The governor also suggested the administration was pushing for him to call the president in order to help in possible future litigation.

“He’s going to end up in court,” Pritzker said, “and that will be a fact that they will use in court, that the governor called to ask for help, and I’m sorry, I’m not going to provide him with evidence to support his desire to have the court rule in his favor.”

Steve Sadin is a freelance reporter.

Originally Published: September 3, 2025 at 6:43 PM CDT

In the face of continued and confusing threats that Chicago would be subjected to a federal incursion over immigration and crime, Gov. JB Pritzker on Tuesday sought to brace Chicagoans for a spike in raids from federal authorities and even potentially the National Guard in coming days.

“Let’s be clear, the terror and cruelty is the point, not the safety of anyone living here,” Pritzker said at a downtown news conference, standing alongside Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson, Cook County President Toni Preckwinkle and other state leaders.

While Trump remained ambiguous — even in his most recent comments Tuesday — about a timeline or the details of a federal crackdown in Illinois, Pritzker made it clear his administration thinks Trump plans to deploy armed military personnel to Chicago’s streets and direct immigration enforcement agents to “raid Latino communities” in the coming weeks.

The deployments would look similar to recent actions the Trump administration took in Los Angeles and Washington, D.C., Pritzker said, citing conversations with unnamed sources and journalists, though he acknowledged the administration’s plans are blanketed in rumors and speculation, and the governor blamed Washington for a lack of coordination.

The governor’s announcement in Chicago came just hours after Trump told reporters in Washington that it was a matter of when — not if — he would send members of the National Guard into Chicago over the city’s crime problem.

“Well, we’re going in. I didn’t say when we’re going in,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office. “Look, I have an obligation. This isn’t a political thing. I have an obligation when we lose, when 20 people are killed over the last two and a half weeks, and 75 are shot with bullets.”

But Pritzker countered that the move was not only political but authoritarian, adding that he specifically has “reason to believe that the Trump administration has already begun staging the Texas National Guard for deployment in Illinois.” The Texas Military Department didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment on Pritzker’s remarks, but in a published report in the Houston Chronicle Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s office disputed the claim.

How Trump’s moves would actually occur, however, remained unclear. Earlier Tuesday, a federal judge in California issued an injunction that prohibits the Trump administration from using federalized National Guard troops and military personnel in that state for law enforcement activities. The judge said the Trump administration “willfully” broke federal law by sending Guard troops to the Los Angeles area in early June after days of protests over immigration raids. Trump dismissed the ruling as a decision from a “radically left judge.”

Pritzker said the state has heard from representatives within the Trump administration that it planned to soon send agents from the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency to assist ICE agents in Chicago. Already, the administration is “staging military vehicles on federal property,” including at the Naval Station Great Lakes in North Chicago, Pritzker said.

Federal officials are preparing for raids, Pritzker said, potentially timed to coincide with planned celebrations for Mexican Independence Day this month — though he later added he was not suggesting people change their plans in anticipation of potential immigration enforcement actions.

The governor said Trump would be looking for “any excuse” to send active duty military to Chicago.

“If someone flings a sandwich at an ICE agent, Trump will try to go on TV and declare an emergency in Chicago,” Pritzker said, apparently referring to a widely shared incident in Washington in which a person threw a sandwich at a federal officer. “I’m imploring everyone, if and when that happens, do not take the bait.”

The governor said he expected the amplified federal presence to last around one month.

The latest intelligence relayed by the governor came after the head of Illinois State Police received a phone call from Trump border official Gregory Bovino over the weekend “indicating that ICE would be deployed to Chicago,” Pritzker told reporters. It is the first outreach the state has received from the Trump administration on the issue, the governor said.

Bovino spearheaded Trump’s immigration crackdown in Los Angeles and is known for his aggressive tactics and social media videos promoting his agents’ role in deporting thousands of immigrants.

“Bovino was short on details and long on rhetoric,” Pritzker said Tuesday.

Pritzker continued to call for Chicagoans to peacefully protest against Trump’s actions, look out for neighbors and know their rights in the face of immigration enforcement. Chicagoans should also “film things that you see happening in your neighborhoods and your streets and share them with the news media,” he said.

“Our goal is not to scare anyone but to prepare everyone to face some ugly realities in the coming days,” Lt. Gov. Juliana Stratton said at the same news conference Tuesday. “Many Illinoisans who look a certain way are going to spend this time living in deep fear.”

Before Pritzker’s public comments Tuesday, Trump renewed his criticisms of the Democratic governor and said he’s responsible for crime in Chicago.

“There’s no place, there’s no place in the world, including you can go to Afghanistan. You can go to places that you would think of, they don’t even come close to this. Chicago is a hellhole right now,” he said.

The president’s comments came following a Labor Day weekend that saw more than four dozen people shot and eight killed between 10 p.m. Friday and 5 p.m. Monday.

Even though the spotlight was once again turned on Chicago violence with the threat of Trump sending in the National Guard, CPD records show the 2025 Labor Day weekend’s killing total actually was slightly down compared to other recent years. Records reviewed by the Tribune show that the Labor Day weekend in Chicago has on average in recent years resulted in 11 killings and about 38 other nonfatal shootings.

The worst recent year came in 2020, when 14 people were killed and 44 were wounded over that holiday period. This year’s figure comes during a continuing trend of better violence numbers in the city since the COVID-19 pandemic. Before the weekend began, Chicago had recorded 266 homicides in 2025, according to the Police Department. That was a 32% decline in killings from the same time period in 2024. Total shooting incidents were also down 36% citywide.

Trump had previously warned of National Guard intervention in Chicago but had said he would like to be invited by Pritzker — something the two-term Democratic governor said would not happen.

Also during the news conference, Trump contended that a morning TV show interviewed a dozen people urging Guard intervention in Chicago.

“Most of them were African American. They were Black. And they were saying, ‘Please, please, please, let the president send it.’ These were people from Chicago. ‘Please. We need help. We need help. We can’t walk outside. We’re petrified,’” Trump said.

“If the governor of Illinois would call up, call me up. I would love to do it now. We’re going to do it anyway. We have the right to do it because I have an obligation to protect this country,” he said.

Asked about violence in Chicago, Johnson pointed the finger back at Trump for the city’s ongoing gun violence epidemic — including this past holiday weekend because “the president continues to allow tens of thousands of guns to be trafficked into our state and our city.”

“Every time someone is shot, every time someone loses their life to violence, it’s a tragedy,” Johnson said. “The fact of the matter is, is that we have illegal guns that are being trafficked in our city. That’s the problem, right? We have done everything in our power locally getting guns off the streets of Chicago.”

The mayor also staunchly rejected the notion Trump would help the situation by sending in troops and instead said local leaders will “take every single measure that we can to protect our people from these threats.”

Trump, who federalized law enforcement in Washington, D.C., as well as deployed the National Guard, said the nation’s capital “serves as a template, and we’re going to do it elsewhere, but Chicago is certainly going to be high.”

But Trump has greater power to federalize resources, such as the Guard, in the District of Columbia, which is not a state. The president’s power is limited elsewhere by state sovereignty.

“It’s an honor to do it. … A lot of presidents wouldn’t do what I’m doing. I don’t need this heat. But when I watch television last night and I’m watching the news and I see that nine people were killed in Chicago and 54 were badly wounded with bullets. I say, ‘That’s not this country. We have to do something,’” Trump said. “We have a lot of people. We have a great force. We have a great military force.”

After he spoke to reporters, the White House issued a statement asking, “For J.B. Pritzker, When Will Enough Be Enough?”

“Pritzker is too blinded by Trump Derangement Syndrome to … act in the best interest of his constituents and end this bloodshed,” the statement said. “The Trump Administration’s message to Chicagoans and residents in Democrat-run cities nationwide is simple: You don’t have to live like this.”

Chicago Tribune’s Alice Yin, Sam Charles and Dan Petrella contributed.

Originally Published: September 2, 2025 at 7:32 PM CDT