Military members could soon be patrolling city streets in Chicago, as per potential plans from the Trump Administration that Chicago and Illinois leaders have denounced.

According to the Washington Post, the Pentagon has been planning for weeks to deploy military troops in Chicago, as part of President Trump’s plan to crack down on crime, homelessness, and undocumented immigration, similar to his approach in Washington, D.C.

The Washington Post’s report said the Pentagon’s plans include mobilizing at least a few thousand National Guard troops as early as September, and officials have also discussed the use of active-duty troops.

The National Guard has been deployed in Chicago before, but only under the circumstances of a crisis or a concern about one.

In 1968, the National Guard was deployed in Chicago twice — first for the riots largely on Chicago’s West Side following the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in April, then for the Democratic National Convention in late August.

In explaining the latter deployment, then-Mayor Richard J. Daley invoked the assassinations of presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy that past June, and of the candidate’s brother, President John F. Kennedy, nearly five years earlier to highlight the perceived threat.

“It’s unfortunate that the television industry didn’t have the information I had two weeks ago — those reports of intelligence on my desk that certain people planned to assassinate the three contenders for the presidency, that several people planned to assassinate many of the leaders, including myself,” Mayor Daley Sr. said in an interview with CBS News’ Walter Cronkite during the 1968 convention at the old International Amphitheatre on South Halsted Street. “All of this talk of assassination and it happening in our city, I didn’t want what happened in Dallas or what happened in California to happen in Chicago, so I took the necessary precautions.”

At the time, Chicago was preparing for 200,000 demonstrators. An estimated 5,000 showed up.

At the end of May in 2020, following the murder of George Floyd at the hands of police in Minneapolis, former Mayor Lori Lightfoot asked for the National Guard — as protests and civil unrest across the city became too much for the Chicago Police Department to handle alone.

Lightfoot said at the time it was not a decision to which she came lightly — nor was it something she did without speaking to top Chicago Police Department brass.

“This wasn’t an easy decision. I did it at the request of and in consultation with Supt. [David] Brown,” Lightfoot said at the time. “But it’s surely the right decision in this moment.”

Last year, Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker also asked for the help from the Illinois National Guard ahead of the Democratic National Convention — which returned for the second time since the chaos of 1968. Pritzker made it a point to say the National Guard would support the CPD, and the guard did not actively police or patrol.

Following its deployment in Washington, D.C., the National Guard has been seen in tourist hot spots in the nation’s capital. But it remains unclear exactly what the National Guard would be doing should they be deployed to Chicago.

“We would understand if there was some reason, some intelligence to suspect something is coming — there was going to be an influx of people into the city; there was going to be protests, or protests that might get out of hand — something that could use extra hands of people that were trained to help move things around and help with logistics support,” said political expert Stephen Maynard Caliendo of North Central College. “Of course, none of that is in play with respect what President Trump is trying today.”