Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson on Saturday signed an executive order targeting President Donald Trump’s threatened federal takeover of the Windy City’s police to tackle crime and illegal immigration.
Trump earlier this month announced a temporary government takeover of Washington, D.C.’s police force, authorizing hundreds of federal troops to assist understaffed city police in an effort to combat crime in the country’s capital. The president has suggested he could send troops to Chicago as the next city in an anti-crime initiative, sparking outrage from local and state officials.
While Trump has not yet announced a Chicago takeover, Johnson preemptively signed off on an agenda over the weekend designed to resist any such effort. The mayor branded the Protecting Chicago Initiative as the “most sweeping campaign” of any city in the country seeking to press back against Trump’s possible plans to send in the military. The plan seeks to tamp down the extent the Chicago Police Department can cooperate with the National Guard and seeks to protect city residents without legal status from federal removal, among other priorities.
“This order affirms that the Chicago Police Department will not collaborate with military personnel on police patrols or civil immigration enforcement,” Johnson said at a press conference unveiling the initiative. “We will not have our police officers, who are working hard every single day to drive down crime, deputized to do traffic stops and checkpoints for the president. This order affirms that CPD officers will be directed to wear CPD uniforms and refrain from wearing masks so that residents can clearly distinguish them from federal agents.”
“Protecting Chicago will ensure that every Chicagoan knows their rights, that every single family is prepared, and every part of city government is directed to protect the people of Chicago, from federal action,” the mayor added. “This sweeping Executive Order directs our Department of Law to pursue any and every legal mechanism to hold this administration accountable for violating the rights of Chicagoans.”
The mayor also launched a Family Preparedness Campaign in multiple languages to “educate families on how to prepare in the event of a detention by federal agents,” according to the mayor’s office, amid rumors and media leaks of a reported federal operation in the city in the coming weeks targeting illegal immigrants for deportation.
Earlier this week, Vice President JD Vance said the president wants governors and mayors “to ask for help” in combating crime.
“We’re not too far from Chicago,” he said during a visit to Wisconsin on Thursday. “Chicago has had a lot of crime problems. Why is it that you have mayors and governors who are angrier about Donald Trump offering to help them than they are about the fact that their own residents are being carjacked and murdered in the streets? It doesn’t make an ounce of sense.”
Trump’s federal intervention in Washington has drawn criticism from those worried it marks an abuse of presidential powers. It has provoked praise from those celebrating the decline of crime in the District of Columbia, including a twelve-day streak without a homicide, the longest period the city has gone without a murder in years.
“The most significant thing that we are highlighting today is the area of crime that was most troubling for us in 2023,” Washington, D.C., Mayor Muriel Bowser said in remarks earlier this week, noting that since the surge of federal officers, carjackings fell by 87% compared to the same period last year. “We know that when carjackings go down, when the use of guns goes down. When homicide or robbery go down, neighborhoods feel safer and are safer. So this surge has been important to us.”
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On Saturday, Johnson argued that sending the military to get involved in anti-crime operations in the country’s biggest city is un-American.
“We do not want to see tanks in our streets,” he said. “That’s not who we are as a city, and that’s not who we are as a nation. My team and I have spoken with the governor, the county president, and with our federal delegation, and we are in complete alignment. The time for action is now.”