Mayor Brandon Johnson signed an executive order Saturday afternoon aimed at holding federal law enforcement in the city to municipal rules on policing while also keeping tabs on new deployments and informing citizens of their rights.
The order, the “Protecting Chicago Initiative,” comes after the Chicago Sun-Times first reported that Naval Station Great Lakes near North Chicago was being considered as a possible staging ground for an immigration blitz that could bring more than 200 federal agents to the area from Tuesday to Sept. 30.
On Saturday night, two sources familiar with base operations confirmed to the Sun-Times that the Department of Defense haD secured Naval Station Great Lakes to serve as a command center but not housing for agents.
Johnson said information received by the city set Friday as the arrival date. National Guard troops could also be sent to support the effort.
According to the initiative, the Chicago Police Department would remain a city agency and urges federal law enforcement to abide by city laws on policing. Johnson threatened legal action if they didn’t. This would include barring officers from concealing their identities with masks, making them use active body cameras during engagements, and requiring them to wear identifying information such as badges and uniforms, and also stating CPD will not work with federal or military units in the city.
“I do not take this executive action lightly,” Johnson said. “I would’ve preferred to work more collaboratively to pass legislation … but unfortunately we do not have the luxury of time. We have received credible reports that we have days, not weeks, before our city sees some kind of militarized activity by the federal government.”
President Donald Trump has threatened to send troops to Chicago to get a handle on what he has characterized as rampant crime and lawlessness — a move that Johnson and Gov. JB Pritzker have deemed unnecessary given that crime has fallen significantly.
However, the enforcement of Johnson’s threat of lawsuits against federal officers remains unclear.
Julian Davis Mortenson, a constitutional law scholar at the University of Michigan, said the order was “well thought out” in that it only suggested how federal law enforcement operates while making a legally sound case for protecting CPD from becoming federalized. However, he said that if Johnson makes good on the legal ultimatums for federal officers, he would probably not prevail.
“It’s [legally] important in that it insists state and local law enforcement are independent,” Mortenson said. “Assuming the law enforcement operation is valid and there’s not some limitation to the scope of the federal authority … I don’t think a state government’s suit seeking to impose municipal law on how law enforcement conducts their operations would do very well.”
The city also plans to submit information requests to the Department of Homeland Security, Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection to obtain information about future deployments to the city while also working with consular officers to document federal law enforcement activity. The mayor’s Office for Immigrant and Refugee Rights will also lead city agencies to help ensure Chicagoans know their rights around the impending deployments.
It comes after talks between Illinois leaders and the mayors of other cities that have also been subject to federal deployments, including Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass. Johnson said the city would use “every single tool at our disposal,” which included the courts, to ensure federal law enforcement abides by the executive order.
“This executive order makes it emphatically clear this president is not going to come in and deputize our police department,” Johnson said. “We do not want to see tanks in our streets. We do not want families ripped apart. … And I don’t take orders from the federal government.”
In a statement to the Sun-Times, the White House called Johnson’s order a “publicity stunt” and praised D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser, who recently said she “greatly appreciates” the surge in federal law enforcement in the city, which includes thousands of National Guard troops.
However, White House officials have distinctly said the operation in Chicago would mirror Los Angeles more than D.C., which saw thousands of National Guard troops and hundreds of active-duty Marines — some of whom are stationed there through November — activated to quell protests against immigration raids.
“If these Democrats focused on fixing crime in their own cities instead of doing publicity stunts to criticize the president, their communities would be much safer,” wrote White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson. “[Democrats] should listen to fellow Democrat Mayor Muriel Bowser who recently celebrated the Trump administration’s success in driving down violent crime in Washington DC.”
The White House says that more than 1,200 people have been arrested and 135 firearms seized since the Washington surge began Aug. 7. The city’s police department says crime rates have plunged in the district, including a 60% drop in carjackings, a 56% drop in robberies and a 58% reduction in violent crimes as of Wednesday compared with the same one-week period in 2024.
But judges, defense attorneys and grand jurors are already poking holes in many cases, including due to lack of evidence or use of illegal searches.
Johnson’s order has drawn support from his City Hall allies, including Alds. Andre Vazquez (40th) and Rossana Rodriguez Sanchez (33rd), who attended the signing, though Ald. Ray Lopez (15th) said it “wasn’t worth the paper it was printed on” in a social media post. Lopez did not respond to a request for comment.
An order not worth the paper it’s printed on https://t.co/hP3faSzAbf
— Ald. Raymond Lopez (@RaymondALopez) August 30, 2025
The Chicago Teachers Union also praised the move, saying, “we know that safety does not come from federal forces invading our city.”
Officials, including Lt. Gov Juliana Stratton, have told the Sun-Times they’ve been hard-pressed to come up with solutions without specifics on what the operation would entail.
But Esiah Campos — a Lake County commissioner and second-generation Navy corpsman who finished his training at Naval Station Great Lakes in 2020 — called on state lawmakers Friday to ban law enforcement from using masks statewide and for Lake County mayors to reaffirm their commitment not to assist ICE.
“It hurts to see the base I drilled out of to house ICE and Homeland Security agents to terrorize our people,” Campos said at a Friday morning news conference with other legislators and community groups in North Chicago’s Veterans Memorial Park. “This is not a time for platitudes. Now is a time for action.”
Contributing: AP