One hundred National Guard troops will be deployed to Illinois at the request of the Department of Homeland Security, U.S. military officials said on Monday, a mobilization that would occur over the objections of Gov. JB Pritzker of Illinois, a Democrat.
President Trump has threatened for weeks to send the National Guard to the Chicago area, as he has done in Los Angeles and has promised to do in Portland, Ore., vowing to combat crime in cities led by Democrats.
Mr. Pritzker denounced plans of a deployment, saying at a Monday afternoon news conference in Chicago that a D.H.S. memo had asserted that troops were needed to protect Immigration and Customs Enforcement facilities during a period in which federal authorities have intensified immigration arrests in the Chicago region.
D.H.S. officials did not respond to a request for comment.
“What I have been warning of is now being realized,” Mr. Pritzker said. “One thing is clear: None of what Trump is doing is making Illinois safer.”
Mayor Brandon Johnson of Chicago, a Democrat, also pushed back against the move, pointing out that violent crime in the city has dropped in recent years and the presence of National Guard troops would do little to assist local authorities in Chicago.
It was unclear when troops would be deployed in Illinois or where they would be sent.
In Broadview, Ill., a small suburb west of Chicago, an ICE facility has been the site of increasingly tense protests for several weeks. Demonstrators have tried to block government vehicles from entering and exiting the parking lot of the facility, which is used for processing immigrants who have been arrested in the area.
Attorney General Pam Bondi said on Monday that the Department of Justice was deploying agents to “protect ICE facilities, arrest violent agitators on the spot and bring the strongest federal charges possible.”
Local officials have said that ICE agents have responded to protesters and journalists with outsize aggression, firing tear gas and pepper rounds at people gathered near the building. One reporter on Sunday said she was driving her truck outside the facility when an ICE agent shot a chemical agent through her open window, even though no protesters were present.
In downtown Chicago on Sunday, federal agents wearing face coverings and camouflage and carrying rifles stunned passers-by as they walked in a group, patrolling areas busy with tourists, questioning people and making arrests.
Mr. Johnson said that the intention of those agents was to “strike fear in our communities.”
ICE has made hundreds of arrests in the Chicago area since they began “Operation Midway Blitz” in Illinois three weeks ago, an effort to crack down on illegal immigration.
Hamed Aleaziz contributed reporting.
Julie Bosman is the Chicago bureau chief for The Times, writing and reporting stories from around the Midwest.
Eric Schmitt is a national security correspondent for The Times. He has reported on U.S. military affairs and counterterrorism for more than three decades.
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