Illinois sues the Trump administration over National Guard deployment to Chicago
Illinois filed a lawsuit Monday in an attempt to block the Trump administration from deploying federalized National Guard troops on the streets of Chicago, but the judge assigned to the case indicated she wouldn't take any action until Thursday at the earliest. Attorneys for the state had urged U.S. District Judge April Perry to issue a ruling immediately after lawyers for the Justice Department acknowledged that members of the state National Guard and members of the Texas National Guard could be activated in the city as soon as Tuesday. The judge said she needed time to go through the government's response to the suit and scheduled a hearing for Thursday, and she declined to sign the state's temporary restraining order in the meantime. The suit alleges the administration's efforts to send the National Guard into the state are illegal and unconstitutional.“The American people, regardless of where they reside, should not live under the threat of occupation by the United States military, particularly not simply because their city or state leadership has fallen out of a president’s favor,” the Illinois attorney general's office wrote in the filing, which names President Donald Trump, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Army Secretary Daniel Driscoll as defendants.“The Trump administration’s illegal actions already have subjected and are subjecting Illinois to serious and irreparable harm,” the suit says.The White House maintained Trump's actions are lawful.“Amidst ongoing violent riots and lawlessness, that local leaders like [Illinois Gov. JB] Pritzker have refused to step in to quell, President Trump has exercised his lawful authority to protect federal officers and assets. President Trump will not turn a blind eye to the lawlessness plaguing American cities,” White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson said in a statement.Representatives for the Justice Department, Army and Department of Homeland Security didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment. The Defense Department declined to comment.A federal judge in Oregon issued two separate orders over the weekend temporarily blocking the Trump administration from sending federalized National Guard members from California — or any other state — to Portland, Oregon. Portland and Chicago are part of a wave of Democrat-run cities and states that Trump has targeted with federal troops.“This country has a longstanding and foundational tradition of resistance to government overreach, especially in the form of military intrusion into civil affairs,” U.S. District Judge Karin Immergut, a Trump appointee, wrote in one of her rulings.The suit brought on behalf of Illinois and the city of Chicago makes similar arguments about federal overreach.“The Federalization Order’s deployment of federalized military forces to protect federal personal and property from 'violent demonstrations' that 'are occurring or are likely to occur' represents the exact type of intrusion on State power that is at the heart of the Tenth Amendment," it says.“The deployment of federalized National Guard, including from another state, infringes on Illinois’s sovereignty and right to self-governance. It will cause only more unrest, including harming social fabric and community relations and increasing the mistrust of police. It also creates economic harm, depressing business activities and tourism that not only hurt Illinoisians but also hurt Illinois’s tax revenue,” the suit says.The city and the state want a judge to declare the administration’s federalization and deployment of the National Guard of the United States or any state National Guard or the deployment of the U.S. military in Illinois as "unconstitutional and/or unlawful." Trump had been threatening to send the National Guard into Chicago for months, and he gave the green light to do so over the weekend. The suit denies there’s any emergency in the city or that there is a need for federal troops. "The supposed current emergency is belied by the fact that Trump’s Chicago troop deployment threats began more than ten years ago," the suit says, pointing to a 2013 tweet in which Trump wrote, "we need our troops on the streets of Chicago, not in Syria.” He has since worked to "demonize cities where Democrats had been elected as leaders" and provoked unrest in the state by surging federal law enforcement to target undocumented immigrants and protesters outside an immigration detention facility in the suburb of Broadview, the suit says."Among other things, Trump and Noem have sent a surge of SWAT-tactic trained federal agents to Illinois to use unprecedented, brute force tactics for civil immigration enforcement; federal agents have repeatedly shot chemical munitions at groups that included media and legal observers outside the Broadview facility; and dozens of masked, armed federal agents have paraded through downtown Chicago in a show of force and control," the suit says. "The community’s horror at these tactics and their significant consequences have resulted in entirely foreseeable protests," it adds.The suit also points to Trump's remarks to a gathering of military leaders last week, which it described as his pitching "his plan to use American soldiers to punish his political enemies.""He told them that they must prioritize 'defending the homeland' against the 'invasion from within' in American cities run by 'radical-left Democrats,' specifically including Chicago. He stated his intention to use our neighborhoods 'as training grounds for our military," the suit says. Pritzker said in an interview Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Union” that federal authorities “are the ones that are making it a war zone" in Chicago. Trump has threatened to send the National Guard into other prominent Democratic-run cities against their wishes, as well, including New York, Baltimore and New Orleans. The rate of serious crimes has dropped dramatically in those cities and in Chicago in recent years. Statistics from the Chicago Police Department show the murder rate through the end of September was down 29% compared with the same period last year. Overall crime is down 13%, according to the police department. Trump previously deployed National Guard troops to Los Angeles and Washington, D.C. In early September, a federal judge in California ruled that his deployment of Marines and National Guard members there was illegal. D.C.'s Democratic attorney general has also sued to challenge the deployment of troops in the capital.
