Communities are on edge as the long-discussed arrival of federal law enforcement and Ice agents in Chicago is reportedly set to begin in the coming days, marking the potential start of a contentious period of federal policing in the Democratic-led midwestern city.

Donald Trump reaffirmed his commitment to sending federal troops to the city as an effort to curb violence and homelessness on Tuesday, calling it a “hellhole” and saying that, though troops would be headed to Chicago regardless, the city’s mayor, Brandon Johnson, and the Illinois governor, JB Pritzker, should be calling him personally to ask for his help.

If that were to happen, Chicago would become the second US city to receive national guard troops after Trump declared a national crime emergency and deployed about 800 troops to Washington DC in August, having previously sent the national guard to Los Angeles in June.

“We’re going in,” Trump said about Chicago. “I didn’t say when, [but] we’re going in.”

The statement came in the wake of Chicago’s Labor Day weekend, during which nearly 60 people were shot and at least eight killed, which some experts have said could be used by the Trump administration as further justification for sending troops. Though the shootings marked the city’s deadliest weekend this summer, the overall number of violent crimes has continued to drop in recent years and has remained at its lowest levels in the last four decades. Murders committed from June to August totaled 123, the city’s lowest number in 60 years, according to a WBEZ-Chicago analysis.

Both Johnson and Pritzker have routinely rejected the popular rightwing political view of Chicago being overly crime-ridden and in need of federal help. And this week, local leadership began preparing the Chicago populace for federal troops, which are expected to descend upon the city as early as this weekend, according to the New York Times. At the end of August, Johnson passed the Protecting Chicago initiative, an executive order with sweeping measures aimed at limiting Trump’s influence on local law enforcement.

Though the president floated the idea of sending troops to states such as Louisiana first, reports suggest Chicago is still primed to be the next city to receive the national guard, whether local leaders agree with the actions or not.

An advance team of at least 30 agents is currently undergoing crowd control and flash grenade training at Naval Station Great Lakes north of Chicago, and 230 agents, most of whom work for Customs and Border Protection, are being sent to Chicago from Los Angeles, sources told the Chicago Sun-Times. During a news conference on Tuesday, Pritzker expressed concern that Ice agents will target Mexican Independence Day events this month. The El Grito Chicago Mexican Independence Day festival, scheduled for this weekend in downtown Chicago’s Grant Park, was postponed on Thursday due to concerns about Ice operations.

Among residents who are chafing at the prospect of federal troops coming to Chicago is Edwin Eisendrath, a former member of the Chicago city council who served in the Department of Housing and Urban Development under Bill Clinton and was the CEO of the Chicago Sun-Times from 2017 to 2019. Eisendrath, who currently hosts a progressive political radio show from Chicago’s Lincoln Square neighborhood on the city’s North Side, believes if the goal is to lower crime in Chicago, deploying the national guard won’t work.

To him, there is a “historic lack of trust in the police” among Chicagoans that will make any actions taken in the name of Trump’s purported intent to lower crime ineffective, especially without taking steps to remove guns and other weapons brought over from neighboring red states with looser gun laws, or funding violence-prevention programming.

That, coupled with Chicago’s history in labor and organizing, may mean different results from what Trump is expecting.