Politics

CPD Will Be Ready if Trump Sends National Guard, ICE Strike Team to Chicago: Top Cop

Chicago Police Supt. Larry Snelling on Thursday said the Chicago Police Department was preparing for President Donald Trump to make good on his threats to send the National Guard and a strike team of Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents to Chicago.

Tom Homan, the former acting director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Trump’s pick to serve as his “border czar,” told reporters at the White House that the Trump administration was considering using Naval Station Great Lakes, which is about 35 miles outside Chicago, to house federal immigration agents or National Guard troops who could be deployed in Chicago, confirming news first reported by the Chicago Sun-Times.

If Trump federalizes the National Guard or sends additional ICE agents to the city, all Chicago police officers will be required to wear their uniforms so “they can be clearly identified,” Snelling said during a virtual news conference.

In addition, Chicago police officers will not be dispatched immediately to reported immigration enforcement operations, Snelling said.

Instead, a supervisor will be sent to the scene and ordered to determine whether the incident only involves federal officials enforcing federal immigration laws, Snelling said. If the incident is an immigration enforcement operation, Chicago police officers will not be dispatched, Snelling said.

“If we know that it’s only immigration enforcement going on, our officers will not be in those areas assisting in any way when it comes to immigration enforcement,” Snelling said.

But officers will not prevent either National Guard troops or federal agents from carrying out their duties, Snelling said.

“We will not interfere with the work that they’re doing,” Snelling said.

That represents an apparent change since the conduct of CPD supervisors and officers during a June 4 federal raid on a South Loop immigration office that triggered a protest and drew widespread condemnation.

CPD officials were accused by several members of the Chicago City Council and immigrant rights groups of violated the city’s Welcoming City ordinance, which prohibits all city employees from assisting federal immigration agents in nearly all cases.

Chicago police officers arrived at the building after getting 911 calls from an ICE employee, the Department of Homeland Security and an alert from a CPD internal monitoring unit, officials said.

Officers did not know a mass arrest of immigrants was underway when they arrived and left the building once that became clear, officials said.

However, several alderpeople said during a committee hearing that they witnessed CPD actively helping ICE agents conduct the mass arrests by clearing the way for agents to make arrests by blocking streets, protecting ICE vehicles, and “escorting” ICE agents to their destinations, making it easier for them to “abduct” people.

No Official Word

However, Mayor Brandon Johnson told reporters that city officials have received no official word from federal officials that a deployment is imminent, or where those troops or ICE agents will be sent or what they will be charged with doing.

“Anything that happens, we will be ready to step up,” Johnson said.

Snelling said his highest priority was to “maintain peace in this city, to make sure that we’re not stoking fears through the neighborhoods and we don’t have people running scared, and it doesn’t create chaos on our streets.”

Undocumented Chicagoans and their families should not fear calling the Chicago police for help, Snelling said.

“We don’t care about your status” when you call for help, Snelling said.

Beatriz Ponce de León, the deputy mayor of immigrant, migrant and refugee rights, said city officials will continue to educate Chicagoans about their rights and what to do to protect their families in the event they are detained by federal agents.

“We recognize fully that the moment is causing much stress and fear in the immigrant community,” Ponce de León said.

Johnson and Gov. JB Pritzker have repeatedly said there is no need for Trump to deploy the National Guard to Chicago, dismissing the president’s pledges to combat crime as cover for an unconstitutional federal overreach.

Pritzker has vowed to challenge any deployment in court.

If Trump makes good on the latest in a long series of threats against Chicago and its leaders, Chicago would join Los Angeles and Washington, D.C., and become the third American city to be occupied by federal troops deployed over the objections of local leaders.

All three cities are led by Democratic mayors who are Black and have refused to help carry out Trump’s goal of implementing the “largest domestic deportation operation in American history.”

Chicago and Los Angeles are also self-proclaimed sanctuary cities and have refused demands from federal officials that local law enforcement help federal agents deport undocumented immigrants. Trump ordered the Metropolitan Police Department in Washington, D.C., to cooperate with Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers when the federal government took control of the department.

Attempts by the Trump administration to force cities like Chicago and Los Angeles to stop protecting undocumented immigrants by yanking federal funding have been blocked by several federal judges indefinitely.

California officials sued Trump alleging he illegally federalized the state’s National Guard without the consent of Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom in June after protests sparked by immigration raids swept Southern California.

A three-day trial of those claims ended earlier this month, but no ruling has been issued.

Contact Heather Cherone: @HeatherCherone | (773) 569-1863 | [email protected]

---