Victims of gun violence speak out against Trump’s threat to send National Guard to Chicago

CHICAGO (WGN) — Victims of gun violence and their families gathered on Tuesday to speak out against the president’s potential plan to mobilize the National Guard in Chicago, just a day after local and state leaders denounced the proposal.

On Monday, Illinois leaders, including Gov. JB Pritzker and Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson, slammed a potential National Guard deployment in Chicago, proposed as part of the Trump administration’s plan to increase safety in U.S. cities.

“Mr. President, do not come to Chicago. You are neither wanted here nor needed here,” Pritzker said.

During an Oval Office press conference on Friday, Trump spoke about his recent attempt to crack down on crime in Washington DC by deploying National Guard troops to the nation’s capital. He eventually signaled his willingness to deploy troops to Chicago next.

A report from the Washington Post says the Pentagon has been planning a military deployment to Chicago for weeks, and thousands of National Guard members could be in the city as soon as September.

“This is exactly the type of overreach our country’s founders warned against and is the reason they established a federal system with a separation of powers built on checks and balances,” Pritzker said.

Pritzker says he nor Johnson have received any communication from the White House on the threat.

“No one from the White House or Executive Branch has reached out to me or the mayor. No one has reached out to our staff. No effort has been made to coordinate or ask for our assistance in identifying any actions that might be helpful to us. Local law enforcement has not been contacted,” Pritzker said. “We found out what Donald Trump is planning the same way all of you did — we read a story in the Washington Post.”

On Monday, Trump signed off on an executive order for additional National Guard units, which means troops could be headed to Chicago.

“Chicago is a disaster and the governor of Illinois should say, ‘president, would you do us the honor of cleaning up our city? We need help.’ They need help, they need help. We may wait, we may or may not. We may just go in and do it, which is probably what we should do. The problem is, it’s not nice when you go in and do it and when someone else is standing there saying, as we give great results, saying ‘we don’t want the military,’” Trump said.

But in Monday’s press conference, Pritzker stressed that he feels there is no emergency to warrant the president sending troops to the city. He claimed Trump is attempting to manufacture a crisis.

“If this was really about fighting crime and making the streets safe, what possible justification could the White House have for planning such an exceptional action without any conversations or consultations with the governor, the mayor or police? This is not about fighting crime, this is about Donald Trump searching for any justification to deploy the military in a blue city in a blue state to intimidate his political rivals,” Pritzker said.

Both Pritzker and Johnson pointed out that cities like Memphis, Tennessee, and Hattiesburg, Mississippi, have much higher crime rates, saying eight of the top 10 most violent cities in the United States are in red states.

“If we have seen consistent, historic reductions in crime and violence across our city over the past two years, and if we are not even in the top 25 most dangerous cities, why are we being targeted by the Trump administration for a military occupation?” Johnson said.

In the first six months of 2025, Johnson says Chicago has seen a 22% drop in overall violent crime with homicides down 32%. Overall, shootings are down 37% and carjackings are down nearly 50%.

Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul feels there are no legal grounds to send federal troops to Chicago.

“It is a dangerous step towards authoritarianism,” Raoul said. “The Posse Comitatus Act limits the federal government’s ability to use the military for domestic law enforcement. None of the prerequisites for National Guard deployment exist here because there is no emergency here.”

Raoul says since troops have not been deployed yet, there are no plans to preemptively file any type of lawsuit, but he won’t rule anything out.

The Defense Department says it won’t speculate on further military operations outside of Washington, DC.

Amid the chaos unfolding behind the scenes, local victims of gun violence and their families gathered Tuesday for a press conference addressing the plan, which they called “dangerous and misguided.”

During the press conference, survivors and their families joined local leaders in denouncing the mobilization of troops, instead calling for “proven solutions.”

“Real change comes from support for our communities, not an unconstitutional occupation of them,” a spokesperson for One Aim Illinois, the organization hosting the news conference, said in a release.