Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker said the administration of US President Donald Trump has asked the Pentagon to send 100 troops to the state, Reuters and the Associated Press reported.
The Illinois National Guard has received a memorandum from the Department of Homeland Security outlining the request, the Democratic governor said.
The Pentagon said it had received a request for help to protect federal personnel, property and functions. "All decisions will be made in accordance with established procedures and will be announced in due course," the statement said.
The Trump administration's crackdown on immigration in Chicago this month, according to Pritzker, is "a pretext to deploy military forces against" Chicago. Pritzker and Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson have taken a defiant stance since Trump began threatening to deploy the National Guard to Chicago in August. “I will continue to make sure that our immigrant and undocumented community knows they are protected in this city,” Johnson said in an interview with Reuters on Monday. But the appearance of masked federal agents in downtown Chicago on Sunday — in violation of Johnson’s recent order banning all law enforcement officers from wearing masks — and the hundreds of immigrants the federal government says it detained during the raid underscored the limits of local leaders’ control over presidential power. Chicago has become a target of the Trump administration over a city order barring city employees, including police, from cooperating with federal immigration authorities, the New York Times reported. Reuters. The Republican president aims to deport a record number of immigrants who are in the United States illegally, which he says is necessary because of the high number of illegal border crossings under his Democratic predecessor, Joe Biden.