SPRINGFIELD — The Pentagon’s internal watchdog will conduct an evaluation “to determine the effectiveness” of President Donald Trump’s deployment of National Guard troops to Chicago and other U.S. cities within the past year — moves the president said he made to either crack down on crime or assist immigration enforcement authorities in their mass deportation efforts, according to a Department of Defense memo.
Launched by the department’s inspector general’s office following requests for such an examination by Democratic U.S. Sen. Dick Dubrin, Illinois’ senior senator, the review is expected to include an examination of the Republican president’s activation last year of National Guard troops to the Chicago area during the federal immigration raids dubbed Operation Midway Blitz. Gov. JB Pritzker objected and fought the deployment in court.
The cost of those deployments has been routinely questioned.
In late January, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimated that deploying 375 Illinois National Guard troops cost $21 million to protect federal property and federal immigration enforcement personnel, a figure that didn’t include many other costs or the roughly 200 Texas National Guard members who were sent to Illinois for 41 days. The Illinois troops sat idle on a state-owned military base some 75 miles southwest of Chicago and never went on any missions, while a contingent of Texas troops was deployed into the Chicago suburbs for only one day.
In early January, the Chicago Tribune estimated the overall cost of Operation Midway Blitz at $59 million, which included National Guard costs.
In the memo detailing the examination, Bryan Clark — an assistant inspector general for evaluations programs, combatant commands, and operations for the Department of Defense — said that the “objective of this evaluation is to determine the effectiveness of the (department’s) planning and execution of these domestic deployments, and to assess any corresponding impact on (the department’s) readiness.”
But the memo doesn’t specify how that effectiveness will be measured or how long the evaluation will take.
“We will examine the effectiveness of these deployments in accomplishing the stated objectives,” Clark said. “We may revise the objective as the evaluation proceeds, and we will also consider suggestions from management for additional or revised objectives.”
Clark also said the inspector general’s office would perform the evaluation at “the offices of active duty and National Guard units with completed or ongoing deployments to U.S. cities” and may identify more locations during the evaluation.
The evaluation follows a request for such a review from Durbin, who was especially critical of Operation Midway Blitz last fall and the Trump administration’s efforts to deploy National Guard troops to supplement immigration enforcement. The IG evaluation was requested for deployments of active duty National Guard troops to Chicago; Los Angeles; Washington, D.C.; Portland, Oregon; and Memphis, Tennessee.
Durbin has argued that the deployments delivered little value. In November, he said the vast majority of people arrested during Operation Midway Blitz had no criminal history.
The Tribune in March found that of the roughly 3,800 people detained and 2,500 deported during Operation Midway Blitz, most had no criminal record.
“Ninety-eight percent of that money was wasted, wasted to create a reign of fear and terror in this Chicago community,” Durbin said at the time. “If you want to help and reduce crime, and we all do, invest in law enforcement that is in the community and effective and it shows results. This moving National Guardsmen from Texas and other states is a waste of money for taxpayers.”
Durbin added that his criticism was not directed at the Guard members themselves. “They’re wonderful people. I work with them all the time. And they responded as they were required to do under law,” Durbin said. “But when it came to actual results to justify the money spent, I’m sorry, it just wasn’t there.”
The conservative majority of the U.S. Supreme Court denied the Trump administration’s request to continue the deployments at the end of last year. In January, the Illinois Guard troops were returned to Pritzker’s command.
