Washington: US President Donald Trump has announced that his administration is pulling the National Guard from Chicago, Los Angeles and Portland, a few days after the US Supreme Court ruled against the administration.
“We are removing the National Guard from Chicago, Los Angeles, and Portland, despite the fact that crime has been greatly reduced by having these great Patriots in those cities, and only by that fact. Portland, Los Angeles, and Chicago were gone if it weren’t for the Federal Government stepping in,” Trump said on his social media platform Truth Social on Wednesday (local time).
“We will come back, perhaps in a much different and stronger form, when crime begins to soar again,” Trump said, calling Democrat mayors and governors of those areas “greatly incompetent.”
The announcement came just a few days after the Supreme Court blocked Trump’s plan to send the National Guard to Chicago to protect US Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s agents, reports Xinhua news agency.
Trump has argued that it’s necessary to deploy the National Guard to these Democrat-ruled places due to surging crime, while Democrats have questioned the political motivations behind such moves.
The court denied the Trump administration’s request in a 6-3 vote.
“At this preliminary stage, the government has failed to identify a source of authority that would allow the military to execute the laws in Illinois,” the court said in an order published on its website.
The dispute dates back to October 4, when Trump called 300 members of the Illinois National Guard into active federal service in Illinois, particularly in and around Chicago. The following day, members of the Texas National Guard were also federalised and sent to Chicago, according to the court.
On October 9, the US District Court for the Northern District of Illinois issued a temporary restraining order barring the federalisation and deployment of the National Guard in Illinois.
The decision was upheld on October 16 by the US Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, which allowed the administration to federalise the National Guard but not to deploy its members.
The Trump administration then appealed to the Supreme Court.
(IANS)
