President Donald Trump posted a meme on social media Saturday saying that Chicago “will find out why it’s called the Department of WAR,” as the metropolis’s officers brace for an immigration crackdown.
“I love the smell of deportations in the morning … Chicago about to find out why it’s called the Department of WAR,” the submit reads. Trump signed an govt order Friday to rebrand the Pentagon as the “Department of War.”
The submit consists of what seems to be an artificially generated picture of the president carrying a hat and sun shades, with the Chicago skyline in the background, accompanied by textual content studying “Chipocalypse Now.”
Democratic Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker on Saturday called Trump’s submit “not normal.”
“The President of the United States is threatening to go to war with an American city. This is not a joke. This is not normal,” Pritzker wrote on X. “Donald Trump isn’t a strongman, he’s a scared man. Illinois won’t be intimidated by a wannabe dictator.”
It comes as Trump has ramped up his rhetoric towards the nation’s third most-populous metropolis. NCS previously reported the Trump administration’s plans to conduct a serious immigration enforcement operation in Chicago, and that officers there have been bracing for it to start as early as Friday.
In latest days, personnel from Immigration and Border Protection in addition to Customs and Border Protection have begun trickling into the metropolis, White House officers advised NCS.
The Trump administration has additionally reserved the proper to name in the National Guard if there’s a response to the operation that warrants it, the officers stated. The Chicago operation is being modeled off of the same operation carried out in Los Angeles in June. A choose dominated this week that the June deployment broke federal regulation prohibiting the army from regulation enforcement exercise on US soil usually; the Trump administration has appealed.
White House officers have made clear the Chicago immigration crackdown is distinct from the concept the president has floated to make use of federal regulation enforcement and National Guard troops to hold out a broader crime crackdown in the metropolis, just like the operation in Washington, DC.
When requested by a reporter Tuesday about sending National Guard troops into the metropolis, Trump stated, “We’re going,” including, “I didn’t say when. We’re going in.”
Democratic officers who symbolize Chicago and Illinois additionally condemned Trump’s submit Saturday.
“The President’s threats are beneath the honor of our nation, but the reality is that he wants to occupy our city and break our Constitution,” wrote Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson on social media. “We must defend our democracy from this authoritarianism by protecting each other and protecting Chicago from Donald Trump.”
Illinois Sen. Tammy Duckworth described Trump’s submit on X as “Stolen valor at its worst,” writing, “Take off that Cavalry hat, you draft dodger. You didn’t earn the right to wear it.”
NCS’s Alayna Treene contributed to this report.