The Trump administration asked a military base outside Chicago for support on immigration operations this week, offering a clue of what an expanded law enforcement crackdown might look like in the nation’s third-largest city.
The Department of Homeland Security asked Naval Station Great Lakes for “limited support in the form of facilities, infrastructure, and other logistical needs to support DHS operations,” Matt Mogle, spokesperson for the base 35 miles (56 kilometers) north of Chicago, said Wednesday.
The request came weeks after the Republican administration deployed National Guard troops to Washington, D.C., to target crime, immigration and homelessness, and two months after it sent troops to Los Angeles.
Details about the administration’s plans for Chicago remain scarce.
Mogle said no decisions have been made on the request, and that the base hasn’t received an official request to support a National Guard deployment. The Chicago Sun-Times first reported on the request to the Navy base.
The Illinois National Guard had not received any requests regarding a Chicago mobilization as of Thursday, said Major Dutch Grove, a Guard spokesman.
Mayor Brandon Johnson and Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker have pushed back against a mobilization, saying crime has fallen in Chicago and that the city doesn’t want or need the military’s help. They are planning to sue.
Many Chicagoans are on edge about the rumored deployment. Former President Barack Obama, who is from Chicago, weighed in Thursday, posting on X: “The erosion of basic principles like due process and the expanding use of our military on domestic soil puts the liberties of all Americans at risk, and should concern Democrats and Republicans alike.”
Pritzker, a potential 2028 Democratic presidential contender, has spent days showcasing parts of the city where crime has fallen. He told The Associated Press that the presence of troops could worsen the situation.
“What he’s trying to do is try to inflame something that will cause a problem that he can then point at,” the two-term governor said, referring to President Donald Trump.
Trump has often singled out Chicago, likening it to a war zone and “hellhole.” Chicago’s long-held status as a so-called sanctuary city has irked the Trump administration, which used Chicago to kick off a nationwide crackdown on immigration weeks after Trump’s second inauguration.
Pritzker and Trump have traded barbs over the issue for days.
“The people are desperate for me to STOP THE CRIME, something the Democrats aren’t capable of doing,” Trump posted Thursday on his Truth Social network.
Violent crime has dropped significantly in Chicago in recent years, but it remains a problem in parts of the city.
Chicago had a homicide rate of 21.7 per 100,000 residents in 2024, according to analysis of federal data by the Rochester Institute of Technology. Seven other major U.S. cities — St. Louis, New Orleans, Detroit, Washington, D.C., Atlanta, Indianapolis and Richmond, Virginia — had higher rates than Chicago.
Still, Chicago reported 573 homicides in 2024, the most of any U.S. city that year. At the same time, violent crime dropped significantly in the first half of this year, representing the steepest decline in over a decade, according to city data. In the first six months of 2025, total violent crime dropped by more than 22% compared with the first half of 2024.
In Illinois there are roughly 10,000 members of the Illinois Army National Guard and 3,000 Air National Guard. They routinely mobilize at armories around the state, including nearly a dozen in Chicago and its suburbs. But they are state-owed property and if the federal government mobilizes the Guard without the governor’s blessing, the armories aren’t available for use.
