CHICAGO — Amid growing angst, anxiety and even annoyance over the continued sketchy details surrounding the Trump administration’s threats to deploy forces into Chicago, Gov. JB Pritzker on Wednesday said he expects federal agents to assemble here by the end of the week, and suburban officials have been told to expect about 300 immigration agents to be sent to the area as part of increased operations.

“They haven’t confirmed any of that to us, but what we’re hearing is that they’ll be assembled, ready to go on Friday, and that they will begin actions on Saturday,” Pritzker said, referring to possible additional immigration enforcement in the Chicago area.

Pritzker’s latest comments came after President Donald Trump once again said he wanted the two-term governor to ask him to send in the National Guard to help stem crime in Chicago — a move Pritzker has repeatedly vowed he would not do, arguing it’s unnecessary and an authoritarian move to put troops on the streets of the nation’s third-largest city.

While Trump has said the issue of sending troops to Chicago isn’t political, his campaign team sent out a fundraising email Wednesday stating, “WE’RE GOING INTO CHICAGO” and declaring as “breaking news,” “CHICAGO WILL BE LIBERATED.”

The email sought donations of as little as $15 to “join the MAGA Blitz and say: LIBERATE CHICAGO – SAVE AMERICA – STAND WITH TRUMP!”

“The Radical Left Governors and Mayors of crime ridden cities don’t want to stop the radical crime. I wish they’d just give me a call. I’d gain respect for them,” Trump was quoted in the email from his political team. “This isn’t a political thing; We have the right to do it because I HAVE AN OBLIGATION TO KEEP AMERICA SAFE!”

During his comments in Washington, Trump claimed Chicagoans want him to send the National Guard into the city and that politicians who oppose such a move, including Pritzker, are “out of tune” with their constituents.

As Trump attempted to lure Pritzker into asking for the president’s help, he did find another governor — Louisiana Republican Gov. Jeff Landry — asking for federal assistance, with Trump pivoting to say he might send Guard troops to New Orleans.

The move appeared to be aimed at cutting into the criticism from Democratic governors that the White House was only focusing on blue states.

“We have a great thing going. I could do that with Chicago. We could do that with New York. We could do it with Los Angeles,” Trump said. “So we’re making a determination now, do we go to Chicago, or do we go to a place like New Orleans, where we have a great governor?”

Pritzker, a 2028 presidential aspirant, maintained on Wednesday that he thought the Trump administration was staging the Texas National Guard for deployment in Illinois, even after a report from the Houston Chronicle on Tuesday said Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s office had denied that claim.

“I’m not suggesting that I am absolutely certain of whether or not the Texas National Guard will, in fact, end up in the state of Illinois. What I know is that we’ve been told by people who seem to have the credentials to know,” Pritzker said Wednesday at the Metropolitan Peace Academy on the Lower West Side.

The governor also reiterated that the state “cannot stand in the way” of federal law enforcement.

“It’s not like we’re going to have armed men standing in between,” he said, but rather, the state could combat potential illegal actions in court.

As the politicians spoke with reporters, local law enforcement near the Naval Station Great Lakes in North Chicago, which is expected to act as the nerve center for the federal effort, met with federal authorities who on Wednesday morning briefed them on the roughly 300 agents’ arrival and the potential for the National Guard’s deployment, according to Gregory Jackson, chief of staff for North Chicago Mayor Leon Rockingham Jr. The city’s police chief, Laz Perez, was among those in attendance, Jackson said.

As a result, Rockingham and Waukegan Mayor Sam Cunningham said they are taking steps to ensure the safety of people in their communities, where there is fear of family separation in mixed families where some members are documented and others are not.

“I don’t believe that a time has come in our country where the National Guard and ICE are coming into our community to basically scare the Latino population,” Rockingham said. “I didn’t think our country would ever get to that point.”

The officers will stay in hotels in Waukegan, Gurnee and possibly other area communities. National Guard troops will be used as they were in Los Angeles to protect federal buildings, Jackson said.

Federal buildings in the area include the Navy base, the James A. Lovell Federal Health Care Center and an FBI firing range in North Chicago, as well as a U.S. Social Security Office in Waukegan.

Along with representatives of law enforcement from neighboring communities, Jackson said U.S. Navy personnel and naval police were at the briefing, as well as representatives of ICE, U.S. Customs and Border Patrol and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.

With the naval base in North Chicago becoming a focal point of the federal effort, Illinois U.S. Sens. Dick Durbin and Tammy Duckworth, both Democrats, said they had requested a meeting with the secretary of the Navy about “Trump’s plan to use Naval Station Great Lakes to house ICE officers.”

Durbin, the top Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, also demanded the committee’s chair schedule a hearing on “Trump’s threats to deploy the military to Chicago and other American cities,” according to his office.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth told Fox News on Wednesday that he thought a federal judge’s ruling this week that found the deployment of the National Guard to Los Angeles to be unconstitutional would be overturned.

In June, Trump sent more than 2,000 Guard members to California following protests over stepped-up immigration enforcement actions. But a federal judge in California on Tuesday issued an injunction that prohibits the Trump administration from using federalized National Guard troops and military personnel in that state for law enforcement activities.

Hegseth touted the cooperation the Trump administration has received from Washington Mayor Muriel Bowser as “the right kind of collaboration with state, local, city law enforcement” and called it a “template” for other cities.

But the District of Columbia is not a state. Rather, it is a federal district where Trump has greater latitude than he does in dealing with state governors and state sovereignty.

Hegseth declined to provide a timeline for potential Guard intervention in Chicago, saying that the decision lies with the president.

“Whether it’s Chicago or Baltimore or New Orleans, wherever it is, we will be proud to partner with law enforcement that will partner with us. But, as the president has said, he wants governors to invite us in. And, unfortunately, you have got some governors that aren’t willing to do that in Illinois and Maryland,” Hegseth said.

Pritzker on Wednesday said he thought the president might be floating actions in the more Trump-friendly state of Louisiana in response to Tuesday’s court ruling.

The governor also suggested the administration was pushing for him to call the president in order to help in possible future litigation.

“He’s going to end up in court,” Pritzker said, “and that will be a fact that they will use in court, that the governor called to ask for help, and I’m sorry, I’m not going to provide him with evidence to support his desire to have the court rule in his favor.”

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Steve Sadin is a freelance reporter.

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