Illinois Governor JB Pritzker announced Monday that the Trump administration has formally requested the deployment of military troops to the Chicago area.
Pritzker held a press conference on Monday afternoon in Chicago where he spoke along with Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson and Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul.
The Illinois National Guard received a report that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) sent a memo to the U.S. Department of War seeking the deployment of 100 military troops to Illinois.
DHS said in the memo that they need the troops to protect ICE agents and facilities, Pritzker said.
“What I have been warning of is now being realized,” Pritzker said, adding that none of what President Donald Trump is doing is making Illinois safer.
Trump previously said he planned to send the National Guard to Chicago, calling it a “death trap.”
“So I’m going to go to Chicago early, against Pritzker, Pritzker is nothing,” Trump said. “If Pritzker was smart, he’d say ‘please come in.'”
The Monday request for troops comes as ICE and Border Patrol were seen patrolling around downtown Chicago over the weekend.
The agents made several arrests as they roamed around the area and stopped people at random, including detaining a family.
Pritzker said federal agents “wreaked havoc” on Saturday in Broadview, which is where the ICE processing facility is located.
The facility is experiencing ongoing protests from community members.
“People nonviolently holding signs and chanting against brutality, expressing their First Amendment rights, have regularly been attacked with chemical agents like tear gas, pepper spray, rubber bullets and flash bangs,” the governor said, adding that agents also unholstered their guns and pointed them at protesters.
The governor also said there are “more questions than answers” after ICE agents opened fire and fatally shot a man they were trying to arrest during a traffic stop in Franklin Park.
ICE said Operation Midway Blitz in the Chicago area is “already successfully removing the worst of the worst—including pedophiles, rapists, and other violent thugs.”
U.S. Border Patrol is also running a simultaneous “Operation At Large” in Chicago to target illegal immigrants.
Pritzker called the federal agencies’ actions “authoritarian” and said 60% of the arrests have consisted of those who do not have criminal records.