As White House moves to militarize more cities, Hakeem Jeffries says president is ‘playing’ with Americans’ lives
As White House moves to militarize more cities, Hakeem Jeffries says president is ‘playing’ with Americans’ lives
Donald Trump has “manufactured a crisis” to justify the notion of sending federalized national guard troops into Chicago next, over the heads of local leaders, a leading Democrat said on Sunday, as the White House advanced plans to militarize more US cities.
Hakeem Jeffries, the House minority leader and a New York Democratic congressman, accused the US president of “playing games with the lives of Americans” with his unprecedented domestic deployment of the military, which has escalated to include the arming of troops currently patrolling Washington, DC – after sending troops into Los Angeles in June.
Late on Friday, Pentagon officials confirmed to Fox News that up to 1,700 men and women of the national guard were poised to mobilize in 19 mostly Republican states to support Trump’s anti-immigration crackdown by assisting the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency (Ice) with “logistical support and clerical functions”.
Jeffries said he supported a statement issued by the Democratic governor of Illinois, JB Pritzker, that Trump was “abusing his power” in talking about sending the national guard to Chicago, and distracting from the pain he said the president was causing American families.
The national guard is normally under the authority of the individual states, deployed at the request of the state governor and only federalized – or deployed by the federal government – in a national emergency and at the request of a governor.
