“Bury your excuse” reads the basketball-themed canvas print hanging from the door of Matthew Mitchell’s office in Englewood on Chicago’s southside. Inside, the late-afternoon sun cuts through the blinds as Mitchell, Teamwork Englewood’s director of re-entry services for formerly incarcerated, is ending a call with fellow non-profits about President Donald Trump’s talk of deploying the national guard to Chicago.
“They’re going to lock up everyone’s fathers and sons again, thinking they’ve solved something, and the next generation is going to be even meaner,” says Mitchell. “That’s all we’ve ever done in this country is address crime with punitive measures. It’s just been war, war, war.”
Mitchell says the “war on drugs” in the 1980s and 1990s and civil rights-era repression decades earlier has “devastated” black communities such as Englewood. The neighbourhood on the south of the city has long carried one of the highest crime rates in Chicago, though crime decreased here last year.
That trend is reflective of the broader picture in the city. The number of murders has dropped significantly since 2020, when Chicago’s murder rate surged.
RM Block
Yet Trump has insisted crime is one of the reasons for why the national guard should be sent to Chicago. The reserve force is usually deployed in emergencies and has rarely been sent into major US cities without a governor’s request or approval, neither of which is forthcoming from Democratic governor of Illinois JB Pritzker.
Mitchell completed two master’s degrees post-incarceration and now works on innovative re-entry programmes for people returning to Englewood after release from prison. During the conversation, he beckons passersby into his office to hear their views. Several doubt the Trump administration’s rhetoric.
“He’s like a magician. He shows you one thing while he’s doing another,” Mitchell says. While he acknowledges crime should be addressed, Mitchell believes it would be “problematic” to send in the national guard. “If they become aggressive, then all hell is going to break out.”
Illinois state senator Willie Preston, who represents parts of Englewood and is running in a Democratic primary for Congress, grew up in the neighbourhood. He says he was involved in gangs before becoming a carpenter and later entering politics.
“It’s not a deployment, it’s an invasion of Chicago,” Preston tells The Irish Times. “The military is trained to kill, not to de-escalate. So there’s no reason for us to believe that the military could result in reducing crime.”
He argues that increasing the number of police officers and tackling crime in other ways would be more effective.
“We have to hold people accountable but we also have to make sure that we’re investing in young people to make sure that we give them an economic alternative,” he says.
Trump has also pointed to immigration as justification for sending federal troops to Chicago.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), the US government’s immigration agency, launched intensified operations in Chicago earlier this week as part of “Operation Midway Blitz”. But local law enforcement support for ICE is restricted in the city because Illinois is among 17 US states that have enacted so-called sanctuary laws limiting such local-federal co-operation on immigration matters.
Illinois officials have signalled they will immediately challenge any national guard deployment in court.
Claire Doutre, an associate attorney at McEntee Law Group in Chicago, says the atmosphere alone is taking a toll.
“The damage being done right now is tremendous,” she says. “In a way it feels like we’re going back in time. Unfortunately, we’re undoing so much hard-earned progress that we’ve made.”
Doutre has been involved with recent “know your rights” campaigns and has noted an uptick in US citizens seeking advice amid the turbulence, an unusual development for an immigration law practice.
While opposition to the national guard is prevalent across the city, some support the idea. Three miles north of Englewood is Canaryville, a historically Irish, working-class area where American flags hang from the fronts of many houses.
Ann (52), a fourth-generation Canaryville resident, is walking her dog in the area just after sunset. She says it would be “fantastic” to see the national guard deployed and believes it will “definitely” happen.
“We need to keep the city clean and safe,” she says, adding: “Something’s got to give.”
Raised a Democrat and now identifying as a Republican, Ann, who does not want to give her surname, says she does not fully support Trump. With four children, the first of whom was born when she was 16, Ann says she feels unheard.
“I live my life one paycheck to paycheck at a time,” she says. “It’s hard to feel sorry for people when I can sit back and feel sorry for myself, and I don’t.”
Not far from Ann, Pat Devine Reed (84) sits on the front steps of her house after tending to the range of plants in her garden. The light noise of aircraft overhead can be heard as they approach Chicago Midway International Airport.
“It hurts me, just as far as human beings go. It angers me that we are still engaged in this kind of enforced confrontation of one group of people against another,” she says, shaking her head. “Everyone would be much better if we all worked together co-operatively to build each other up.”
