Crackdown: Trump’s new blue city targets

Donald Trump signed an order that will send troops to Memphis

“We’ve got to save these cities,” Trump said. “We’re going to take care of all of them, step by step.”

(Image credit: Kevin Dietsch / Getty Images)

published 22 September 2025

In the weeks since President Trump launched his immigration crackdown in Chicago, the city’s Latino neighborhoods have been living in terror, said Adrian Carrasquillo in The Bulwark. Afraid of being snatched by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, many of Chicago’s 200,000 undocumented immigrants are staying home. School attendance is down, community events are being canceled, and stores and restaurants in Little Village—the so-called Mexico of the Midwest— have seen business drop 50%. ICE has avoided major sweeps, but its “roving detention raids” are an effective weapon in the guerra de miedo (“war of fear”), said community activist Imelda Salazar. The fatal shooting of an undocumented Mexican man by ICE last week has only “heightened fears,” said Renee Hickman and Heather Schlitz in Reuters. Silverio Villegas-Gonzalez, 38, had just dropped his children off at school in the suburb of Franklin Park when he was stopped; ICE claims he tried to flee in his car, and dragged and injured an officer who opened fire. “It’s a terrible thing,” one resident said. “They’re trying to hunt people down.”

Trump hasn’t yet followed through on his threats to send the National Guard to Chicago, said Hanna Park in CNN.com, but this week he confirmed his next target for a federal mobilization: Memphis. Trump signed an order establishing a task force that will “crack down on crime” and include Guard troops along with FBI and ICE agents. Trump vowed that Memphis—which had the nation’s highest violent crime rate last year—would see criminality “plummet” within weeks of the deployment. While Memphis’ Democratic mayor and other city officials oppose the plan, Tennessee’s Republican governor, Bill Lee, welcomes the federal incursion. “I’m tired of crime holding the great city of Memphis back,” he said.

Memphis “may just be the start,” said Liz Crampton in Politico. By targeting a blue city in a red state, Trump can sidestep “legal resistance” from Democratic governors opposed to Guard deployments, like Illinois’ JB Pritzker, and also defang critics who say he’s ignoring crime in Republican-run states. “This is politically smart of Trump,” said Rosa Brooks, a Georgetown University law professor. “He can say, ‘Look, I take crime seriously everywhere’”—a popular message with voters. As next targets, Trump has cited St. Louis and New Orleans. “We’ve got to save these cities,” Trump said. “We’re going to take care of all of them, step by step.”