President Donald Trump on Tuesday told U.S. military members in Japan that he may send in more troops than just the National Guard to deal with crime in urban areas.

“We have cities in trouble. We can’t have cities that have trouble,” Trump told troops at the USS George Washington at the Yokosuka Naval Base. “We’re sending in the National Guard, and we need more than the National Guard.”

Trump added: “We’ll send more than the National Guard, because we’re going to have safe cities. We’re not going to have people killed in our cities. And whether people like that or not, that’s what we’re doing.”

In recent months, the president has sent the National Guard to Washington; Memphis, Tennessee; Portland, Oregon; Los Angeles; and Chicago. He has also warned that other cities may see a Guard deployment due to crime and illegal immigration.

The deployments have faced legal pushback, although an appeals court ruled this past week that Trump has the power to deploy National Guard troops to Portland.

A three-judge panel on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit on Oct. 20 voted 2–1 to issue a stay on a federal judge’s ruling that barred the president from deploying the Oregon National Guard to Portland.

“Defendants are likely to succeed on the merits of their appeal, and ... other stay factors weigh in their favor,” the panel wrote in the new order that sided with the Trump administration. “We grant Defendants’ motion for a stay pending appeal.”

A judge on the appeals court panel noted in the order that an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) facility was forced to close between June 13 and July 7 because of multiple attempts to burn down the building.

U.S. District Judge April Perry on Oct. 21 blocked the deployment of Guard troops to Chicago until either the case has been decided in her court or the U.S. Supreme Court intervenes. Perry had already blocked the deployment for two weeks through a temporary restraining order.

Attorneys representing the Trump administration said in court filings on Oct. 28 that they would agree to possibly extending the block on deployment of troops for 30 days while continuing to ask the U.S. Supreme Court to intervene. The Trump administration is pressing for an emergency order from the high court that would allow Guard troops to be deployed.

A panel of Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals judges is also set to hear arguments this week related to Trump’s deployment of National Guard troops to Los Angeles.

In Tennessee, Democratic elected officials earlier this month filed a lawsuit to try to stop the ongoing Guard deployment in Memphis. They said Republican Gov. Bill Lee, acting on a request from Trump, violated the state constitution, which says the Guard can be called up during “rebellion or invasion” but only with the blessing of state lawmakers.

Trump and administration officials have argued that the Guard deployments are necessary to bring down crime and to protect efforts to deport illegal immigrants in various major U.S. cities.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.