The White House is comparing New Delhi with Chicago as it advocates for federal action in the Illinois city. Spokesperson Karoline Leavitt pointed out that in 2024, the murder rate in Chicago was almost 15 times that of India's capital.
Official statistics place Chicago with a homicide rate of 25.5 per 100,000 inhabitants while Delhi has a rate of only 1.48.
Earlier this year, in an effort to defend President Donald Trump's move to send National Guard soldiers and federal law enforcers to Washington, the administration put out a chart that compared rates of homicides in 11 global capitals in 2024. In the list, Washington topped the score with 27.64 killings per 100,000 population. Delhi, on the other hand, was ranked ninth, ahead of just London and Madrid, while Islamabad had the fourth-worst rate of 9.2.
With Washington already under National Guard deployment, Trump has now set his sights on Chicago. "Chicago is a mess" and citizens are "screaming" for assistance, the President explained last week. "So, I think Chicago will be our next federal deployment, and then we'll assist with New York," he said.
The U.S. National Guard, equivalent to India's Territorial Army, is organized at state level but under state and federal command. Apart from internal deployment, its soldiers may also be deployed outside, as during the Iraq and Afghan wars.
Though, the U.S. Constitution does not permit measures such as India's President's Rule, and federalizing states involves a legally intricate process. Trump's proposal for deploying troops in Chicago has already found itself fiercely resisted by Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker and Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson. Any effort to initiate federal control of local policing is likely to meet with strong legal challenges in court.
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