Trump, Barr to expand anti-crime surge to several US cities

President Donald Trump and Attorney General William Barr are expected to announce Wednesday that federal agents will surge into several American cities including Chicago to help combat rising crime, expanding the administration's intervention in local enforcement as Trump runs for reelection under a “law and order” mantle.

President Donald Trump and Attorney General William Barr are expected to announce Wednesday that federal agents will surge into several American cities including Chicago to help combat rising crime, expanding the administration's intervention in local enforcement as Trump runs for reelection under a "law and order" mantle. Hundreds of federal agents already have been sent to Kansas City, Missouri, to help quell a record rise in violence after the shooting death of a young boy there. Sending federal agents to help localities is not uncommon. Barr announced a similar surge effort in December for seven cities that had seen spiking violence.

Usually, the Justice Department sends agents under its own umbrella, like agents from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives, or the Drug Enforcement Agency. But this surge effort will include Department of Homeland Security Investigations officers, who generally conduct drug trafficking and child exploitation investigations. Trump and Barr are expected to be joined at the White House announcement Wednesday by Chicago-based U.S. Attorney John Lausch, according to his office, along with the U.S. attorney and the sheriff from Albuquerque, New Mexico.

DHS officers have already been dispatched to Portland, Oregon, and other localities to protect federal property and monuments as Trump has lambasted efforts by protesters to knock down Confederate statutes. Trump has linked the growing violence in the streets with protests over racial injustice. Local authorities have complained the surges have only exacerbated tensions, and criminal justice experts say the efforts defy explanation because of the unprecedented moment America is living through — with a pandemic, historic unemployment, and a mass reckoning over race and how minorities are treated by police. The decision to dispatch federal agents to American cities is playing out at a hyper-politicized moment when Trump is trying to show he is a "law-and-order" president and painting Democratic-led cities as out of control. With less than four months to go before Election Day, Trump has been serving up dire warnings that the violence would worsen if his Democratic rival Joe Biden is elected in November, as he tried to win over voters who could be swayed by that message.

But civil unrest in Portland only escalated after federal agents there were accused of whisking people away in unmarked cars without probable case. The spike in crime has hit hard in some cities with resources already stretched thin from the pandemic. But the move to send in federal forces was initially rejected by leaders in Chicago and New York, another city with a surge in violence.