Kash Patel has claimed that there are over 100,000 gang members in the city of Chicago. He shared the figure while speaking with Fox News on Tuesday after visiting the city, where the Donald Trump administration is preparing to deploy soldiers from the Illinois and Texas National Guards.
“When I was there today … we learned that the Chicago city streets have 110,000 gang members. That’s right. You heard me right," Patel, who serves as the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, said on the network, as caught by Newsweek. "They had 1,200 shootings this year alone, 360 homicides. When politicians choose to side with those metrics and not with their citizenry—thank God we have President Trump and this Department of Justice and this FBI going in there and crushing violent crime.”
National Guard In Chicago
As for the National Guard, approximately 500 troops landed at the Army Reserve center, about an hour southwest of Chicago, earlier this week, according to NBC News. The move has proven extremely controversial with numerous politicians, including Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker, labeling it unconstitutional.
The troops are reportedly there to protect U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents as they conduct sweeps of the city. Further speaking about the move on Fox News, Kash Patel added: “President Trump sent us into these cities quietly to set the stage, to set up for the National Guard, to see the success that we saw in Washington, D.C., in Memphis. The FBI’s been leading the charge in every single one of these streets because we know how to gather ground-level intelligence, and we know how to put handcuffs on the bad guys, and we know we have the backing of this administration. And most importantly, the agents of the FBI know that they have the backing of the American people and their government.”
