WASHINGTON — Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said Sunday that immigration operations will soon be expanded in Chicago, confirming plans for a stepped-up presence of federal agents in the nation’s third-largest city as President Trump continues to lash out at Illinois’ Democratic leadership.
Noem’s comments came a day after Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson struck back against what he called the “out-of-control” plan to surge federal officers into the city. The Chicago Police Department will be barred from helping federal authorities with civil immigration enforcement or any related patrols, traffic stops and checkpoints during the surge, according to an executive order Johnson signed Saturday.
The Homeland Security Department last week requested limited logistical support from officials at the Naval Station Great Lakes to support the agency’s anticipated operations. The military installation is about 35 miles north of Chicago.
“We’ve already had ongoing operations with ICE in Chicago … but we do intend to add more resources to those operations,” Noem said during a Sunday appearance CBS News’ ”Face the Nation.”
Noem declined to provide further details about the planned surge of federal officers. It comes after the Trump administration deployed National Guard troops to Washington, saying they were needed to target crime, immigration and homelessness, and two months after it sent troops to Los Angeles.
Trump lashed out against Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker in a social media posting Saturday, warning him that he must straighten out Chicago’s crime problems quickly “or we’re coming.” The Republican president has also been critical of Johnson.
Johnson and Pritzker, both Democrats, have denounced the expected federal mobilization, noting that crime has fallen in Chicago. They are planning to sue if Trump moves forward with the plan.
In his order signed Saturday, Johnson directed all city departments to guard the constitutional rights of Chicago residents “amidst the possibility of imminent militarized immigration or National Guard deployment by the federal government.”
Asked during a news conference about federal agents who are presumably “taking orders,” Johnson replied: “Yeah, and I don’t take orders from the federal government.”
Johnson also blocked Chicago police from wearing face coverings to hide their identities, as most federal immigration officers have done since Trump launched his crackdown.
The federal surge into Chicago could start as early as Friday and last about 30 days, according to two U.S. officials who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss plans that had not been made public.
Pritzker, in an interview aired Sunday on “Face the Nation,” said that Trump’s expected plans to mobilize federal forces in the city may be part of a plan to “stop the elections in 2026 or, frankly, take control of those elections.”
Noem said it was a Trump “prerogative” whether to deploy National Guard troops to Chicago as he did in Los Angeles in June in the midst of protests there against immigration raids.
“I do know that L.A. wouldn’t be standing today if President Trump hadn’t taken action,” Noem said. “That city would have burned if left to devices of the mayor and governor of that state.”
Unlike the recent federal takeover of policing in Washington, the Chicago operation is not expected to rely on the National Guard or military and is focused exclusively on immigration, rather than being cast as part of a broad campaign against crime, Trump administration officials have said.
Chicago is home to a large immigrant population, and both the city and the state of Illinois have some of the country’s strongest rules against cooperating with federal immigration enforcement efforts. That has often put the city and state at odds with the Trump administration’s mass deportation agenda.
Johnson’s order builds on the city’s longtime stance, that neither Chicago nor Illinois officials have sought or been consulted on the federal presence and they stand against Trump’s mobilization plan.
During his news conference Saturday, Johnson accused the president of “behaving outside the bounds of the Constitution” and seeking a federal presence in Democratic cities as retribution against his political rivals.
“He is reckless and out of control,” Johnson said. “He’s the biggest threat to our democracy that we’ve experienced in the history of our country.”
In response, the White House contended that the potential flood of federal agents was about “cracking down on crime.”
“If these Democrats focused on fixing crime in their own cities instead of doing publicity stunts to criticize the President, their communities would be much safer,” White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson said in an email Saturday.
Critics have noted that Trump, while espousing a tough-on-crime push, is the only felon ever to occupy the White House.
Madhani and Beck write for the Associated Press and reported from Washington and Chicago, respectively.