By Nandita Bose
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump established a Memphis Safe Task Force on Monday modeled after the recent federal law enforcement surge in the nation's capital, as part of a broader initiative he says is needed to combat urban violence.
He said he plans to take similar action in Chicago next.
The initiative will deploy a broad coalition of federal agencies - including the FBI, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the Department of Homeland Security and U.S. Marshals
- alongside the National Guard and local law enforcement. Attorney General Pam Bondi will lead the operation, Trump said.
"Memphis had the highest violent crime rate, the highest property crime rate and the third-highest murder rate of any city in the nation," Trump said.
A spokesperson for the City of Memphis did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Trump's decision to deploy federal law enforcement and National Guard troops to Washington and Memphis has drawn sharp criticism from Democratic leaders and civil rights advocates, who say the move is more political theater than public safety strategy.
Trump and Republican leaders are aggressively positioning crime as a centerpiece of their political strategy, aiming to galvanize voters around a message of law and order.
With federal deployments to Memphis and Washington, D.C., and promises of expanded crackdowns in cities like Chicago, the administration is casting violent crime as a national emergency and attempting to frame Democrats as weak on public safety.
Trump issued a memorandum to establish the task force and vowed to take similar action soon in the city of Chicago and elsewhere.
"We think Chicago is going to be next, and we'll get to St. Louis, and New Orleans we want to get into, too," Trump said.
(Reporting By Nandita Bose and Jarrett Renshaw; Editing by Chris Reese and Edmund Klamann)
