WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump on Wednesday suggested he could deploy federal troops to New Orleans in his latest threat to use the federal government to crack down on crime in a Democrat-run city.
“We’re going to be going to maybe Louisiana, and you have New Orleans, which has a crime problem," Trump told reporters in the Oval Office. "We’ll straighten that out in about two weeks. It’ll take us two weeks, easier than D.C."
Last month, Trump deployed thousands of National Guard members to Washington, D.C., and surged federal law enforcement, including the FBI and border patrol agents, there. He has also repeatedly threatened to send National Guard troops to Chicago and Baltimore.
Trump said Wednesday that Gov. Jeff Landry, R-La., “wants us to come in and straighten out a very nice section of this country that’s become quite, you know, quite tough, quite bad.”
In a post to X, Landry shared a clip of Trump's comments and welcomed the move.
"We will take President @realDonaldTrump’s help from New Orleans to Shreveport!" he said.
In a joint statement, New Orleans Mayor LaToya Cantrell's office and the New Orleans Police Department touted the city's ongoing collaboration with the federal government.
"We have consistently worked with our federal partners, including collaborations with the Louisiana State Police," the statement read. "This collaborative approach has been instrumental in our ongoing success in reducing crime."
City data indicates that the overall crime rate in New Orleans is down 21.5% compared to last year.
Trump has said his decision to deploy the National Guard to cities is part of a move to fight crime, but critics have argued that it is an overreach.
“It’s ridiculous to consider sending the National Guard into another American city that hasn’t asked for it. Guardsmen are not trained law enforcement. They can’t solve crimes, they can’t interview witnesses and they aren’t trained to constitutionally police," New Orleans City Council President JP Morrell said in a statement.
He said the police department "is doing a great job with the existing resources they have. Marching troops into New Orleans is an unnecessary show of force in effort to create a solution to a problem that doesn’t exist.”
In a statement, Rep. Troy Carter, D-La., whose district includes New Orleans, said, “Militarizing the streets of New Orleans is not a solution. Period.”
“If the President wants to provide federal resources to the City, I will work with him to provide funding to recruit and better train police officers, better fund our district attorney, fix the infrastructure at Orleans Parish Prison and fund the very programs he has cut that get at the root cause of crime: systemic poverty,” said Carter.
Last week, the president threatened in a post to Truth Social to "send in the 'troops'" to Baltimore. Maryland Gov. Wes Moore criticized the threat, arguing that Trump "would rather attack his country’s largest cities from behind a desk than walk the streets with the people he represents."
Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker, also a Democrat, accused Trump of wanting "to use the military to occupy a U.S. city, punish his dissidents and score political points."
At the time Trump announced the National Guard’s deployment to D.C., violent crime in the capital had decreased 26% compared to last year, according to police data. In Chicago, police data indicate that shootings are down 35% compared to the same period last year.
Earlier this year, Trump deployed members of the National Guard and Marines to Los Angeles in response to protests against his immigration policies. The Trump administration hit a roadblock on Tuesday when a judge ruled that the White House, in doing so, had violated a law that limited the ability of the military to be used for law enforcement purposes.
