Trump’s Proposed Military Presence in Chicago Could Cost $1.6M Daily
The proposed initiative by the then-President Donald Trump to impose a U.S. military presence in Chicago could potentially incur a daily financial burden of nearly $1.6 million, as evaluated by a knowledgeable source. The suggestion that the Texas National Guard could be on the brink of deployment in Chicago was forwarded by Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker on a Tuesday. However, the office of Texas Gov. Greg Abbott contradicts this asseveration.
As he contemplated the dispatch of National Guard troops to Chicago, Trump assured, “We’re going in,” albeit he refrained from specifying an exact timeline. As per a thorough analysis, a hypothetical deployment of 3,000 National Guard troops to Chicago is projected to cost taxpayers an estimated daily sum of $1,590,000.
In a notable turn of events, a federal judge presiding on a Tuesday declared that the deployment of troops by Trump in Los Angeles was unlawful. The same warning also highlighted Trump’s seeming aspirations to morph the National Guard into a presidential law enforcement unit. The enforceability of this courtroom decision remains in ambiguous territory.
The notion of troops being dispatched to Chicago under Trump’s command has been a recurring threat for numerous weeks. This followed the imposition of military-level restrictions in Los Angeles earlier in June and in Washington, D.C., the previous month. In effect, Trump had passed an executive order commissioning the Defense Department to further intervene in domestic law enforcement responsibilities.
Judge Breyer revealed that the Department of Defense had, in an organized manner, utilized armed military personnel to undertake police tasks in California, thereby violating Posse Comitatus stipulations. Pritzker promptly criticized the move saying, “This is not about fighting crime. This is about Donald Trump seeking any pretext to send in the military to a city governed by Democrats, located in a Democratic state, in an attempt to bully his political opposition.
Figures derived from the FBI in 2024 clarify that a surfeit of U.S. cities register considerably more homicides than Chicago. Democratic governance of other cities has not exempted them from Trump’s threats of military impositions.
A comparative analysis of costs reveals that accommodating the homeless population of Chicago would entail a daily expenditure of around $383,000. This is a significantly smaller figure, standing at approximately one-fourth of the prospective spending on deploying 3,000 National Guard members to the city of Chicago
However, the actual number of troops being sent could likely exceed initial estimates. This possible increase in count would subsequently lead to a corresponding surge in the expenses associated with the troop deployment.