(Washington) of the national guards will be “perhaps” deployed by Friday in Memphis, a democratic city in the republican state of Tennessee, said the local police chief on Tuesday during a meeting of the municipal council.
“Some members of the National Guard are already in Memphis (…), but perhaps on October 10, in a few days, we will see the first group of national guards arriving in town,” said Cerelyn Davis.
President Donald Trump had signed the order of deployment of the National Guard in Memphis on September 15, as part of his fight against “crime” which targets major American cities led by democratic opponents.
This operation “will include the National Guard, the FBI” and other federal agencies, said Donald Trump. A total of 700 men are supposed to be deployed.
During a hearing in the Senate on Tuesday, the Secretary of Justice, Pam Bondi assured her that “the National Guard (would be) where she must be to ensure the safety of the Americans”.
Last Saturday, Memphis demonstrators paraded in the street to protest against these expected deployments. “Fight poverty, not the poor,” they demanded in particular.
Pending this possible deployment in Memphis, some 200 national guards from Texas arrived near Chicago. They could be deployed in town on Wednesday, according to a military official quoted anonymously by the daily New York Times.
The American president described the big city in the north of the country as a “war zone” and wants to apply the same solution to it as other democratic cities: soldiers on the streets, very rare in the United States.
The Republican President authorized last weekend the deployment of 700 national guards in Chicago, causing an showdown with local officials from the Democratic Party.
They challenged the legality of the order before the courts, accusing the billionaire of “punishing his political enemies” on the pretext of security.
“The Americans, wherever they live, should not live under the threat of an occupation by the military forces of the United States, and even less because their city or their state fell into disgrace with the president,” said the authorities of Chicago and the State of Illinois in their appeal.
Since the start of his second term, Trump has sent or spoke to send troops to 10 cities including Baltimore, Washington, New Orleans and the Californian cities of Oakland, San Francisco and Los Angeles.
On Sunday, a federal judge temporarily blocked the deployment of national guards in Portland, Oregon. She argued that there was no “insurrection in Portland or a threat to national security”, contrary to what the Trump administration maintains.
