Politics

Trump Deserves No Credit for Continued Drop in Crime in Chicago: Johnson, Pritzker

Federal agents who have carried out a series of increasingly aggressive raids in Chicago as part of President Donald Trump’s effort to deport undocumented immigrants deserve no credit for the continuing drop in violent crime across the city derided by Trump as a “war zone,” Mayor Brandon Johnson and Gov. JB Pritzker said.

As reports mounted this week that Border Patrol chief Gregory Bovino, whose brash social-media presence and frequent appearances in the media have come to define what the Trump administration calls “Operation Midway Blitz,” is planning to leave Chicago soon, Bovino said his agents were responsible for the drop in crime since the beginning of September, when he arrived.

“The United States Border Patrol is dedicated to making American cities safer, one deportation at a time,” Bovino posted on social media, as a spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security told reporters “We aren’t leaving Chicago.”

“Crime way down in Chicago thanks to President Trump and Secretary (Kristi) Noem’s leadership,” Bovino wrote as he shared a post from Trump that denounced what he called “radical opposition and obstruction from the mayor and the governor.”

But crime in Chicago has been dropping significantly since the COVID-19 pandemic began to wane in 2022, a trend that accelerated after Johnson took office in May 2023 and has continued since, according to Chicago Police Department data.

For the first time since 2015, Chicago is on pace to end the year with fewer than 500 murders, meeting a goal set by Johnson a year ago that many observers thought was foolishly optimistic. By comparison, there were 805 murders in Chicago in 2021, as the pandemic raged in the aftermath of the murder of George Floyd by a police officer.

“Trump has shifted from fear-mongering about Chicago to attempting to take credit for our work driving down crime and violence,” Johnson said. “He cannot have it both ways.”

Pritzker was even more blunt.

“Trump is a liar,” Pritzker said. “He cannot steal credit from our violence prevention and law enforcement efforts that have reduced crime for four years straight — long before his masked agents showed up.”

Between Jan. 1 and Aug. 8, the month before Operation Midway Blitz began, the number of homicides had dropped by more than 30% and shootings were down 36%, as compared with the same period a year ago, according to city data. All violent crimes dropped nearly 23% during the first eight months of the year, data shows.

The drop in homicides and all violent crime remains unchanged after two months of aggressive raids across the city that have been met with fierce resistance and intense confrontations between residents and agents, according to city data.

Johnson trumpeted a report from Axios on Wednesday that found the drop in homicides in Chicago is double the national average.

Johnson called it a “slap in the face to the men and women of our Chicago Police Department” for the Trump administration to claim credit for the lowest murder rate in Chicago since the 1960s. Johnson claimed credit for that fact on Sept. 3, days before Operation Midway Blitz began, and after the most violent months of the year.

Johnson has promised to transform CPD into an agency better prepared to take a more holistic approach to public safety that focuses on what he and other progressive officials call the “root causes of crime” — mental illness, poverty and disinvestment. The mayor frequently credits the drop in crime to violence prevention efforts that seek to stop crimes from being committed.

“It’s also an insult to the Community Violence Intervention workers who put themselves in harm’s way to de-escalate conflicts on the most challenging blocks in Chicago, and to the countless community organizations that have been doing the steady work to reduce violence in their neighborhoods for decades,” Johnson said in a statement Wednesday.

Johnson said federal officials were engaged in a “coordinated effort” to “declare victory” in Chicago before Bovino’s departure.

Two federal judges in the Northern District of Illinois have found that federal agents have presented unreliable testimony about their actions and the actions of Chicagoans in response to Trump’s mass deportation effort. A third found that federal officials allowed people to be held in “unacceptable” conditions in a facility in west suburban Broadview.

U.S. District Court Judge Sara Ellis found that Bovino lied about firing tear gas at protesters in Little Village and tackling a man outside the Broadview ICE facility.

Despite the significant citywide drop in crime, Johnson said the decline has stalled in the two police districts where federal agents have carried out some of the most aggressive raids. The number of 911 calls “have dropped precipitously” since the arrival of Bovino and the more than 200 agents he commands, Johnson said.

In the Deering (9th) Police District, which includes Brighton Park, where federal agents tear gassed a crowd of residents on Oct. 4, and the Ogden (10th) Police District, which includes Little Village, where federal agents tear gassed a crowd on Oct. 23 after shooting a woman five times they accused of ramming a border patrol vehicle, homicides are down by just 7.7% “suggesting that (Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Border Patrol) activity is counterproductive to reducing homicides,” according to the mayor’s office.

In those two police districts, shootings are down 32.9% so far this year, as compared with 2024, “significantly below the citywide average over the same period of time,” according to the mayor’s office.

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

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