President Donald Trump on Tuesday told reporters that he’d made up his mind about sending federal officers into Chicago to assist local police in dealing with crime, but declined to say when those forces would arrive.
Answering a question about speculation surrounding his repeated overtures targeting the Windy City, Trump said, “We’re going in.”
“I didn’t say when, but we’re going in,” he added.
Earlier on Tuesday, Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker reported that he had a conversation with an official in the Trump administration who confirmed that federal immigration agents are preparing to enter the state.
“[They said] they will begin operations here sometime in the coming week,” Pritzker said in an interview with NBC 5 Chicago. “That — literally after two weeks of all this talk about troops on the ground — that’s the first time we’ve heard from the federal government on this.”
It remains unclear whether Trump plans to activate National Guard troops to accompany the immigration agents to Chicago.
“We don’t know if the National Guard is coming or not coming. We know ICE is coming. And ICE has the responsibility to enforce immigration laws. They shouldn’t do it the way they were doing it in Los Angeles,” Pritzker continued. “But they have that responsibility, and they should do it in the proper way, not the way Tom Homan is having them do it, or Kristi Noem.”
Buoyed by what he sees as the success of his federal takeover of the D.C. Metropolitan Police Department nearly three weeks ago, Trump is turning his eyes to other Democratic-run cities across the country — and Chicago appears to be the next target.
On Tuesday, Trump said Chicago, the city with the country’s highest homicide rate in 2024, was a “hellhole.”
In the first half of 2025, however, the Council on Criminal Justice reported Chicago’s homicide rate was 33% lower than it was for the same period in 2024. In June 2025, there were 36 reported homicides, a 65% reduction from a July 2021 peak.
Still, the White House doubled down on Trump’s rhetoric in a statement following the press conference.
“Despite pleas from residents, members of the city council, and even MSNBC, Pritzker is too blinded by Trump Derangement Syndrome to act in the best interest of his constituents and end the bloodshed,” the White House wrote in a statement addressed to Pritzker.