Trump administration asks military base near Chicago for support on immigration operations

The Naval Station Great Lakes is pictured, Jan. 24, 2020, in Ill. (Joe Lewnard/Daily Herald via AP, File)

CHICAGO -- The Trump administration asked a military base outside of 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.

Although details of the administration’s plans for Chicago are scarce, city leaders said Thursday that they are preparing for multiple possible scenarios, from troops assisting in immigration arrests to patrolling in the streets.

“We don’t want to raise any fears,” Police Superintendent Larry Snelling told reporters. “We don’t want to create any speculation around what’s going on.”

Chicago leaders want more communication

City leaders said Thursday that the White House hadn’t contacted them about its plans, and a spokesman for the Illinois National Guard said the base hadn’t received requests regarding a Chicago mobilization.

Mogle, the base spokesman, said no decisions had been made on the request, and that the base hadn’t received an official request to support a National Guard deployment. The Chicago Sun-Times first reported on the request to the navy base.

DHS did not confirm whether it had asked to use the base. But it said in a statement Thursday that it was working to make “our streets and cities safe again.”

Mayor Brandon Johnson and Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker have pushed back against a possible 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.

City leaders said workers were circulating know-your-rights cards in neighbourhoods with heavy immigrant populations, which offer tips on what to do in case of an encounter with an immigration agent. Other workers were checking in on Chicago’s homeless encampments and providing information about shelters since Trump has pushed to move homeless people far from Washington.

Snelling asked for more communication on plans involving law enforcement.

“To make sure that we’re not stoking fears through neighborhoods and we don’t have people running scared and it doesn’t create chaos on our streets, we’re willing to have those conversations,” Snelling said.

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.”

Former President Joe Biden’s transportation secretary, Pete Buttigieg, a former U.S. Naval Reserve intelligence officer who trained at Great Lakes, said in a post on X that he never imagined the station could be used “for surveillance and enforcement activity on American soil. Our military was not set up to cater to the whims of a would-be American dictator.”

The politics of a deployment

Pritzker, a potential 2028 Democratic presidential contender, has spent days showcasing parts of the city where crime has fallen and said there is no emergency in Chicago requiring military intervention. He told The Associated Press that the presence of troops could worsen the situation.

Speaking to reporters Thursday, he suggested that it’s a political ploy, not a law enforcement strategy, that Trump will pull out during next year’s elections.

“This is a part of his plan to do something really nefarious, which is to interfere with elections in 2026,” Pritzker said. “He wants to have troops on the ground to stop people from voting, to intimidate people from going to the voting booth.”

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, who has zeroed-in on Democrat-led cities, 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.

In recent days, the administration has been pointing out recent shootings in the city, including at Thursday’s White House press briefing when press secretary Karoline Leavitt listed crime statistics.

“This is JB Pritzker’s legacy, by the way,” she said.

Crime in Chicago

Violent crime has dropped significantly in Chicago in recent years, but it remains a persistent 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 per cent 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.

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By John O’connor And Sophia Tareen

Associated Press writers Christine Fernando in Chicago and Chris Megerian and Rebecca Santana, both in Washington, contributed to this story. O’Connor reported from Springfield, Illinois.