Chicago on Edge amid Violence, Protests, and Arrivals of Federal Agents

Trump announced the plan Wednesday, saying he would send agents to Chicago and Albuquerque to help combat rising crime.

Acting Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf and Attorney General Bill Barr both said the mission in Portland — to protect federal property — differs from the focus in Kansas City, Chicago and Albuquerque.

Barr said the number of agents being deployed to Chicago is “comparable” to the Kansas City surge of more than 200.

Trump painted Democrat-led cities as out of control and lashed out at the “radical left.” Criminal justice experts say the increase in violence in some cities defies easy explanation.

“In recent weeks, there has been a radical movement to defend, dismantle and dissolve our police department,” Trump said, blaming the movement for “a shocking explosion of shootings, killings, murders and heinous crimes of violence.”

Lightfoot has repeatedly said she does not support protesters' calls to pull money from police in favor of social services.

If the federal agents do as they have done in Portland, one prominent minister on the city’s West Side said the situation will turn the city into a “magnet” for the same kind of people who infiltrated the statue protest, put on dark clothes and distributed and threw projectiles at police from behind umbrellas.

“It’s going to be like that, but on steroids,” the Rev. Marshall Hatch warned. “Chicago is one of those epicenters where you already have an unsettled social situation and racial situation. And you’re going to find out that Chicago is a lot more volatile in the middle of a long hot summer than Portland is.”

He fears such a chaotic scene is exactly what the president wants as he seeks reelection.

Chicago might offer Trump an opportunity "to somehow scare the middle class into thinking he’s the only one standing between them and the barbarians,” Hatch said.

Pfleger said federal agents could help stem violence if they stick to helping detectives make arrests and increase the city's homicide clearance rate, which the department said this month is under 40%.

They could also help stem the flow of illegal guns pouring into the city from Indiana, Mississippi and elsewhere.

“A big reason why there are so many murders in the city is that you have a really good chance of getting away with murder here,” Pfleger said.

Nor, he said, was it lost on people that nobody had been arrested for the shooting outside the church despite Police Superintendent David Brown’s contention that two squad cars were on the street and a tactical unit nearby.

“Everybody’s saying on the street, ‘We have to protect ourselves because the police aren’t going to protect us'" Pfleger said. “That’s the mentality.”