Trump to send federal agents to Chicago; no word on any coming to NC

DHS is slated to send about 150 Homeland Security Investigations agents to Chicago to help local law enforcement deal with a spike in crime, according to an official with direct knowledge of the plans who spoke on condition of anonymity because the official wasn't authorized to speak publicly.

The agents, which are generally used to conduct investigations into human trafficking, drugs and weapons smuggling, were expected to stay in Chicago at least two months, according to the official. It's not clear exactly how they will back up local law enforcement or when they will arrive, but they will make arrests for federal crimes, not local ones.

It's possible they may be deployed to other locations as well.

A spokesman for Homeland Security said the department does not comment on “allegedly leaked operations.”

Officials in Raleigh and Durham, which have both seen Black Lives Matter protests in recent weeks, said they have not had any contact from the federal government about any agents being deployed to the Triangle.

"Durham does not need or want federal agents in our city," Mayor Steve Schewel said in an email to WRAL News. "Deployment of these agents in selected cities around the country has resulted in escalating violence and violations of civil liberties. This is un-American, and the Durham community is absolutely opposed to it."

"While we have not heard reports of this happening in North Carolina, the governor would have serious concerns about any federal attempts to supersede local law enforcement," Ford Porter, a spokesman for Gov. Roy Cooper, said in an email.

In a tweet Sunday, Trump blamed local leaders for violence in Chicago and other cities.

“The Radical Left Democrats, who totally control Biden, will destroy our Country as we know it. Unimaginably bad things would happen to America,” Trump tweeted, referring to his likely Democratic opponent, Joe Biden. “Look at Portland, where the pols are just fine with 50 days of anarchy. We sent in help. Look at New York, Chicago, Philadelphia. NO!”

The move is Trump's latest effort to use an agency — created after the Sept. 11 attacks to protect the country from terrorists threats — to supplement local law enforcement in ways that have alarmed critics. Trump has already deployed agents to Portland under the mantle of protecting federal buildings from protesters, drawing intense criticism from local leaders who say they have only exacerbated tensions.

Homeland Security agents have also been deployed to the U.S.-Mexico border along with national guard troops during the crisis there.

But with the border largely shuttered because of the coronavirus and the number of illegal crossings plummeting, Trump has now turned the department onto what he sees as a threat within the U.S. and one that similarly plays to his base: Violence following police reform protests that have rocked the nation since the death of George Floyd in the custody of Minneapolis police.

In June, federal authorities in riot gear used rubber bullets and tear gas to disperse crowds from Lafayette Square so the president could walk across the plaza and shoot a photo with a Bible outside a church. That land is federal property. But Portland and Chicago are not, though agents are supposed to be guarding federal buildings and other federal property.

In Chicago, the president of the local police officer’s union wrote Trump a letter asking “for help from the federal government” to help combat gun violence. The city has seen 414 homicides this year, compared with 275 during the same period last year, and a spate of shootings in recent weeks as cities around the country have seen an uptick in violence.

But Chicago's Mayor Lori Lightfoot has said she does not want want Trump to send agents to Chicago.

In Kansas City about two weeks ago, the Trump administration sent more than 100 federal law enforcement officers to help quell a rise in violence after the shooting death of a young boy there.

Irving Joyner, a professor at the North Carolina Central University School of Law and a longtime civil rights advocate, called the deployments "very dangerous" and "very suspicious."

"It creates an atmosphere that is going to antagonize people on the ground in these local communities," Joyner said. "You’re leading up to an election, where the president is now putting in military forces into communities with large African-American and Latino populations, where easily a call for martial law can be issued. And that is going to undermine the ability of people to go out and vote and have faith in the democracy that we’re living in and that we celebrate."

Congress needs to step up and vocally oppose "this type of intimidation," he said.

"If people need to take to the streets to voice their displeasure at what is going on, then that should happen," he said. "It is leading us into a very dangerous period in our democracy – one like I’ve not seen in in decades – and we need to do everything in our power to try to bring us back to some normalcy."