Texas National Guard troops arrived in Illinois on Wednesday, intensifying the conflict between President Donald Trump and state and local officials over the necessity of a military presence in Chicago. Hours later, Trump called for Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson and Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker, both Democrats, to be jailed for “failing to protect” immigration officers.
Pritzker rebuked Trump on Wednesday, telling the Chicago Tribune that the 79-year-old president is suffering from dementia.
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“He doesn’t know anything that’s up to date,” Pritzker told the newspaper. “It’s just something in the recesses of his brain that is effectuating to have him call out these cities.”
Pritzker and Johnson have fought against Trump’s will to send troops to Chicago, which has recorded an unprecedented decrease in violent crime so far this year. The officials sued the Trump administration on Monday to block the deployment. However, a judge declined to temporarily override the president’s order.
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Texas Gov. Greg Abbott authorized 400 Texas National Guardsmen to be deployed to Illinois for at least 60 days.
Combatting realities of deployment
The politicians turned to the public to continue their debate over the necessity of military action in the Midwest. Their arguments centered on the severity of violent crime and the conduct of people protesting against Trump’s immigration enforcement actions.
Pritzker called Trump’s mental capacity into question hours before troops left Texas for Illinois.
“This is a man who’s suffering dementia,” Pritzker said.
Trump ordered the National Guard to patrol Chicago a month after he said troops would not go into states governed by politicians who don’t support the actions.
“We’re pretty much waiting until we get asked,” he said during an Oval Office meeting on Sept. 4.
So far, the governors of Louisiana and Tennessee, both Republicans, have requested federal help in their states. However, Trump ordered troop deployments to Portland and Chicago in response to a rise in protests against aggressive immigration enforcement.
Troops are heading to the Windy City as protests continue at an Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in Broadview, about 12 miles west of Chicago. The Trump administration has characterized some actions at protests as violent and suggested that demonstrations are being paid for or organized by an unknown body. Arrests have happened at some protests for obstruction, resisting arrest and firearms possession.
In a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on Tuesday, Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., questioned Attorney General Pam Bondi over whether troop deployments are a best practice or are being used to mask “abject failure of leaders at the state and local level.”
Bondi claimed that cities need the National Guard to protect federal buildings.
But Tillis asked, “Are we masking an underlying problem that will come back the minute that we leave?”
