Chicago prepares for an influx of National Guard troops and immigration agents

CHICAGO (AP) — Chicago community leaders forged ahead Wednesday with preparations for the influx of National Guard troops and immigration agents the city is expecting, advising residents about their rights and organizing protests with fresh urgency.

Details about the operation are scant, but President Donald Trump has amped up the rhetoric about crime in the nation’s third-largest city, saying an immigration crackdown and National Guard deployment are planned despite the objections of local leaders and a federal court ruling that a similar deployment in Los Angeles was illegal.

The preparations seem familiar in the Democratic stronghold that’s often found itself in Trump’s crosshairs.

Still, leaders of schools, churches and community groups — particularly in the city’s immigrant enclaves and Black and Latino neighborhoods — say there’s increased gravity and coordination in preparing for the expected troop deployment and its accompanying deluge of attention.

Here’s how Chicago is preparing.

Even without knowing what will unfold, Chicago’s energetic activist networks circulated “emergency protest” schedules, vowing to demonstrate within hours of federal intervention.

Organizers from immigrant rights groups, unions, clergy and anti-violence organizations said they’re working together more than ever.

“We have a stronger broader movement preparing to mobilize,” said Lawrence Benito, head of the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights. “People still have to go about their lives. We’re making sure folks are prepared and we’re ready to respond.”

Immigrant communities have been on high alert since Trump took office for the second time in January and kicked off a nationwide immigration enforcement operation in Chicago.

Activists say they’ve already offered countless know-your-rights training sessions and have added hours for a hotline where people can report immigration arrests. Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson recently signed an executive order reiterating the city’s longtime sanctuary policies, which bar local police from coordinating with federal immigration agents.

Trump signaled this week that he’s ready to order federal authorities to mobilize and combat crime in Chicago despite the objections of Johnson and Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker. Trump hasn't given a timeline for the Chicago operation, and he muddied the outlook again on Wednesday by suggesting New Orleans as the next possible location.

Trump's administration indicated that it would soon expand immigration operations in Chicago, and the Department of Homeland Security requested limited logistical support at the Naval Station Great Lakes outside the city.

The administration deployed the National Guard to Los Angeles over the summer and as part of his unprecedented law enforcement takeover in Washington, D.C., where he has direct legal control. His administration plans to appeal the California deployment ruling.

Trump has often singled out Chicago and other Democrat-led cities. Recently, his administration started playing up the city’s daily crime log, including using shootings over Labor Day weekend as justification for sending in troops.

“I want to go into Chicago and I have this incompetent governor,” Trump said Wednesday.

He and Pritzker have traded barbs for days about the issue. Pritzker, a two-term governor and frequent Trump critic, has been floated as a possible 2028 presidential contender.

“I can’t live in a fantasy land where I pretend Trump is not tearing this country apart for personal greed and power,” Pritzker posted Wednesday on X. At an event later in the day, he told reporters his office had not received any additional information from the federal government.

There has been little outward support for Trump’s plans in Chicago, with only a handful of Republicans and conservative leaders saying they’d welcome the intervention.

Johnson and Pritzker have repeatedly pointed to the city's drop in crime, and asked for more federal funding for prevention programs instead.

Echoing a trend in other major U.S. cities, Chicago’s violent crime has dropped significantly overall, though it remains a persistent issue in parts of the city.

Chicago is home to a large and thriving Mexican community, and the threat of the troop deployment and immigration crackdown has put a damper on Mexican Independence Day celebrations planned over the next two weeks.

Organizers acknowledged the threat of immigration arrests might keep some people at home, but they’re boosting security measures and inviting more allies. It’s a similar tactic that activists tried for annual May Day protests, when fears about public gatherings were also high.

Teresa Fraga, who is organizing an event in the city’s heavily Mexican Pilsen neighborhood, said the event has hired more security, lawyers and neighborhood patrols.

“It’s a dark cloud that is hanging over our heads,” she said. “But we are planning a safe event.”

Worries are also high in many of the city’s Black neighborhoods, where organizations have been busy advising residents about what their rights are should they interact with law enforcement.

Dozens of Black churches plan to take part in “Resistance Sunday” this weekend, to disseminate information about legal rights during traffic stops and other encounters.

“We need resources, not troops,” said the Rev. Marshall Hatch, a prominent civil rights activist. “We’re not interested in this charade of troops.”

Johnson and other Black mayors have called Trump’s targeting of Democratic cities racist. And Trump has often used racist narratives about urban crime when talking about the unprecedented deployment of troops in the nation's capital.

“The president’s threats to send federal troops to Chicago are a clear blatant attack on the Black community and the immigrant community,” the Chicago Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression said in a statement.

Chicago’s public school system suggested that families create phone trees to quickly share information and organize walk-to-school groups to “provide safety in numbers.”

“We know that the potential of increased federal presence is creating anxiety and fear about safety at school and safety within the broad community,” Chicago Public Schools wrote in a letter to parents.

Members of the Chicago Teachers Union planned to distribute materials at schools this week with tips on legal rights and creating a buddy system on the school commute.

President Donald Trump speaks during an event about the relocation of U.S. Space Command headquarters from Colorado to Alabama in the Oval Office of the White House, Tuesday, Sept. 2, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein)

Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker speaks at a news conference after meeting with community violence intervention (CVI) leaders at an emergency response training to prepare for federal deployments in Chicago, Wednesday, Sept. 3, 2025. (AP Photo/Nam Y. Huh)

Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson speaks during a press conference Tuesday, Sept. 2, 2025, in Chicago. (AP Photo/Kiichiro Sato)

Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker speaks during a press conference Tuesday, Sept. 2, 2025, in Chicago. (AP Photo/Kiichiro Sato)

Federal immigration agents deployed to Minneapolis have used aggressive crowd-control tactics that have become a dominant concern in the aftermath of the deadly shooting of a woman in her car last week.

They have pointed rifles at demonstrators and deployed chemical irritants early in confrontations. They have broken vehicle windows and pulled occupants from cars. They have scuffled with protesters and shoved them to the ground.

The government says the actions are necessary to protect officers from violent attacks. The encounters in turn have riled up protesters even more, especially as videos of the incidents are shared widely on social media.

What is unfolding in Minneapolis reflects a broader shift in how the federal government is asserting its authority during protests, relying on immigration agents and investigators to perform crowd-management roles traditionally handled by local police who often have more training in public order tactics and de-escalating large crowds.

Experts warn the approach runs counter to de-escalation standards and risks turning volatile demonstrations into deadly encounters.

The confrontations come amid a major immigration enforcement surge ordered by the Trump administration in early December, which sent more than 2,000 officers from across the Department of Homeland Security into the Minneapolis-St. Paul area. Many of the officers involved are typically tasked with arrests, deportations and criminal investigations, not managing volatile public demonstrations.

Tensions escalated after the fatal shooting of Renee Good, a 37-year-old woman killed by an immigration agent last week, an incident federal officials have defended as self-defense after they say Good weaponized her vehicle.

The killing has intensified protests and scrutiny of the federal response.

On Monday, the American Civil Liberties Union of Minnesota asked a federal judge to intervene, filing a lawsuit on behalf of six residents seeking an emergency injunction to limit how federal agents operate during protests, including restrictions on the use of chemical agents, the pointing of firearms at non-threatening individuals and interference with lawful video recording.

“There’s so much about what’s happening now that is not a traditional approach to immigration apprehensions,” said former Immigration and Customs Enforcement Director Sarah Saldaña.

Saldaña, who left the post at the beginning of 2017 as President Donald Trump's first term began, said she can't speak to how the agency currently trains its officers. When she was director, she said officers received training on how to interact with people who might be observing an apprehension or filming officers, but agents rarely had to deal with crowds or protests.

“This is different. You would hope that the agency would be responsive given the evolution of what’s happening — brought on, mind you, by the aggressive approach that has been taken coming from the top,” she said.

Ian Adams, an assistant professor of criminal justice at the University of South Carolina, said the majority of crowd-management or protest training in policing happens at the local level — usually at larger police departments that have public order units.

“It’s highly unlikely that your typical ICE agent has a great deal of experience with public order tactics or control,” Adams said.

DHS Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said in a written statement that ICE officer candidates receive extensive training over eight weeks in courses that include conflict management and de-escalation. She said many of the candidates are military veterans and about 85% have previous law enforcement experience.

“All ICE candidates are subject to months of rigorous training and selection at the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center, where they are trained in everything from de-escalation tactics to firearms to driving training. Homeland Security Investigations candidates receive more than 100 days of specialized training," she said.

Ed Maguire, a criminology professor at Arizona State University, has written extensively about crowd-management and protest- related law enforcement training. He said while he hasn't seen the current training curriculum for ICE officers, he has reviewed recent training materials for federal officers and called it “horrifying.”

Maguire said what he's seeing in Minneapolis feels like a perfect storm for bad consequences.

“You can't even say this doesn't meet best practices. That's too high a bar. These don't seem to meet generally accepted practices,” he said.

“We’re seeing routinely substandard law enforcement practices that would just never be accepted at the local level,” he added. “Then there seems to be just an absence of standard accountability practices.”

Adams noted that police department practices have "evolved to understand that the sort of 1950s and 1960s instinct to meet every protest with force, has blowback effects that actually make the disorder worse.”

He said police departments now try to open communication with organizers, set boundaries and sometimes even show deference within reason. There's an understanding that inside of a crowd, using unnecessary force can have a domino effect that might cause escalation from protesters and from officers.

Despite training for officers responding to civil unrest dramatically shifting over the last four decades, there is no nationwide standard of best practices. For example, some departments bar officers from spraying pepper spray directly into the face of people exercising Constitutional speech. Others bar the use of tear gas or other chemical agents in residential neighborhoods.

Regardless of the specifics, experts recommend that departments have written policies they review regularly.

“Organizations and agencies aren’t always familiar with what their own policies are,” said Humberto Cardounel, senior director of training and technical assistance at the National Policing Institute.

“They go through it once in basic training then expect (officers) to know how to comport themselves two years later, five years later," he said. "We encourage them to understand and know their training, but also to simulate their training.”

Adams said part of the reason local officers are the best option for performing public order tasks is they have a compact with the community.

“I think at the heart of this is the challenge of calling what ICE is doing even policing,” he said.

"Police agencies have a relationship with their community that extends before and after any incidents. Officers know we will be here no matter what happens, and the community knows regardless of what happens today, these officers will be here tomorrow.”

Saldaña noted that both sides have increased their aggression.

“You cannot put yourself in front of an armed officer, you cannot put your hands on them certainly. That is impeding law enforcement actions,” she said.

“At this point, I’m getting concerned on both sides — the aggression from law enforcement and the increasingly aggressive behavior from protesters.”

Law enforcement officers at the scene of a reported shooting Wednesday, Jan. 14, 2026, in Minneapolis. (AP Photo/Adam Gray)

Federal immigration officers confront protesters outside Bishop Henry Whipple Federal Building, Thursday, Jan. 15, 2026, in Minneapolis. (AP Photo/Adam Gray)

People cover tear gas deployed by federal immigration officers outside Bishop Henry Whipple Federal Building, Thursday, Jan. 15, 2026, in Minneapolis. (AP Photo/Adam Gray)

A man is pushed to the ground as federal immigration officers confront protesters outside Bishop Henry Whipple Federal Building, Thursday, Jan. 15, 2026, in Minneapolis. (AP Photo/John Locher)

A woman covers her face from tear gas as federal immigration officers confront protesters outside Bishop Henry Whipple Federal Building, Thursday, Jan. 15, 2026, in Minneapolis. (AP Photo/Adam Gray)