(WASHINGTON) — President Donald Trump says he’d consider declaring an “insurrection” inside the United States, accusing Democratic governors and mayors of preventing the federal government from enforcing immigration laws and turning their cities in “war zones.”

“Chicago’s a great city where there’s a lot of crime,” Trump told reporters on Tuesday. “And if the governor can’t do the job, we’ll do the job. It’s all very simple.”

Invoking the Insurrection Act would unfurl extraordinary presidential powers to use military force in American cities in a manner not used since the Civil Rights Movement.

It also would potentially pit troops from a southern Republican-run state against northern Democratic-run cities and states. 

Some 200 National Guard troops from Texas were preparing to deploy to Chicago this week, administration officials told a federal judge this week who agreed not to block the deployments for now.  

“That escalates the situation quite a bit,” Katherine Kuzminski, director of studies at the Center for a New American Security, said of the deployment of Texas troops to Chicago.

“It creates a tinderbox,” she said.

Under the law, the president can use military troops to protect federal buildings and federal employees. But they can only conduct domestic law enforcement if they remain under control of the state’s governors.

A major exception to those constraints is the Insurrection Act, which Trump said he’d be open to invoking if people were getting killed and if Democrats running states like Illinois and Oregon “were holding us up.”

Signed into law in 1807 by President Thomas Jefferson, that law allows the president to deploy military troops inside the U.S. to act as law enforcement and quell an “insurrection” that threatens a state or its residents.  

“If I had to enact it, I do,” Trump said. “If people were being killed, and courts were holding us up, or governors or mayors were holding us up, sure I’d do that.”

In an interview on Newsmax, Trump said he wouldn’t invoke the law if he didn’t have to. At the same time, he told the outlet what is happening is “pure insurrection.”

Illinois Democratic Gov. JB Pritzker has called allegations of civil unrest in his state “complete bs” and pushed back on the arrival of Texan troops as an “unconstitutional invasion of Illinois by the federal government.”

If Trump declares an insurrection in Illinois, it would mark the first time a president has invoked the law without a governor’s consent since Lyndon Johnson did so to protect civil rights activists in 1965 in Alabama. 

Since then, the law has been invoked at a governor’s behest, including in 1992 during riots in California following the acquittal of police officers accused of beating motorist Rodney King. 

On Monday, both Texas GOP Gov. Greg Abbott and senior Trump aide Stephen Miller echoed Trump’s accusations that Chicago was a “war zone” and blamed Democratic politicians as refusing to enforce federal laws.

“We have local states refusing to enforce the law, and we have chaos,” Abbott said in an interview on Fox News with host Sean Hannity. 

Miller, who has led Trump’s push for mass deportations inside the United States, directly accused local officials of trying to undermine the federal government.

“There is an effort to delegitimize the core function of the federal government of enforcing our immigration laws and our sovereignty,” he said in an interview on CNN on Monday.

“It is domestic terrorism. It is insurrection,” Miller added. 

Kuzminski with the Center for a New American Security said the president has broad authority to invoke the Insurrection Act. But after Democratic-led states inevitably sue in court, a judge would likely press Trump to provide evidence that an insurrection has occurred.

In the case of Illinois, it’s possible the Trump administration would point to the “rebellion” as coming from Pritzker and other Democratic politicians themselves.

Pritzker said at a news conference on Monday that he believes invoking the Insurrection Act is part of Trump’s plan.

“The Trump administration is following a playbook — cause chaos, create fear and confusion, make it seem like peaceful protesters are a mob by firing gas pellets and tear gas canisters at night,” Pritzker told reporters.

“Why? To create the pretext for invoking the Insurrection Act so that he can send military troops to our city,” he added.

Kuzminski said there’s a reason why a federal government should move cautiously when thinking about unleashing military might in American cities.

“We are proud of the fact that we train the world’s most lethal fighting force,” Kuzminski said. “And that’s why we have such firm boundaries on their use in law enforcement.” 

ABC News’ Katherine Faulders and Peter Charalambous contributed to this report.  

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