President Donald Trump’s decision to deploy National Guard troops in Illinois comes under legal fire Thursday, as a federal court takes up the case just a day after soldiers began guarding federal sites across the Chicago area.
U.S. District Judge April Perry is set to hear arguments Thursday over a bid to halt the deployment of National Guard troops from Illinois and Texas. Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker and local leaders have voiced strong opposition to the move.
A contingent of the 200 Texas National Guard troops deployed to Illinois began operations in the Chicago area on Wednesday, a U.S. Northern Command spokesperson told The Associated Press. Speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss nonpublic operational details, the official declined to specify the troops’ exact locations.
The troops, joined by roughly 300 from Illinois, arrived this week at a U.S. Army Reserve Center in Elwood, southwest of Chicago. All 500 service members are under U.S. Northern Command and have been activated for a 60-day period.
According to U.S. Northern Command, the National Guard troops are in Chicago to safeguard Immigration and Customs Enforcement buildings, other federal facilities, and law enforcement personnel.
On Monday, Chicago and the state of Illinois filed a lawsuit to block the deployments, labeling them unnecessary and unlawful. Meanwhile, Trump has depicted the city as a lawless “hellhole” rife with crime, despite recent statistics showing a significant drop in criminal activity.
In court filings, the city and state argue that protests at a temporary ICE detention center in the Chicago suburb of Broadview have “never come close to stopping federal immigration enforcement.”
“The President is using the Broadview protests as a pretext,” they wrote. “The impending federal troop deployment in Illinois is the latest episode in a broader campaign by the President’s administration to target jurisdictions the President dislikes.”
On Wednesday, the Republican president said Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson and Governor J.B. Pritzker, both Democrats, should face jail time for allegedly failing to protect federal agents during immigration enforcement operations.
Also on Thursday, a panel of judges on the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals was set to hear arguments over whether Trump had the authority to take command of 200 Oregon National Guard troops. The president had intended to deploy them in Portland, where mostly small nightly protests have occurred outside an ICE facility. State and city officials insist the troops are neither wanted nor necessary.
On Sunday, U.S. District Judge Karin J. Immergut issued a temporary restraining order preventing Guard troops from being deployed to Portland. Just hours earlier, Trump had mobilized California troops for the city after Immergut blocked him from using Oregon’s Guard.
The administration has not yet appealed the ruling to the 9th Circuit Court.
Immergut, whom Trump appointed during his first term, dismissed the president’s claims that troops were needed to safeguard Portland and immigration facilities, noting that “it had been months since there was any sustained level of violent or disruptive protest activity in the city.”
The nearly 150-year-old Posse Comitatus Act restricts the military’s involvement in enforcing domestic laws. Yet Trump has indicated he would be willing to invoke the Insurrection Act, which permits a president to deploy active-duty troops to states unable to quell an insurrection or defying federal law.
Trump previously deployed troops to Los Angeles and Washington, and this week a small contingent began assisting law enforcement in Memphis, Tennessee.
Those troops are part of the Memphis Safe Task Force, a coalition of roughly a dozen federal law enforcement agencies mobilized by Trump to combat crime in the city. Unlike leaders in other states, Tennessee Republican Governor Bill Lee has expressed support for using the National Guard.
