By The Associated Press
Illinois has followed California and Oregon in filing lawsuits to stop President Donald Trump from sending in hundreds of National Guard troops to Democrat-led big cities.
The lawsuit filed Monday by Illinois and Chicago alleges Trump’s authorization Saturday to deploy 300 troops to the Windy City is “unlawful and dangerous.”
Trump continues to flex federal power and claims the troops are needed to protect federal buildings during immigration enforcement efforts.
But a federal judge Sunday told Trump he couldn’t send troops to Oregon — hours after that state’s governor said 101 California National Guard members already had arrived Saturday with more on the way and headed to Portland.
Sending the National Guard to states despite their governor’s objections is not a new idea in Trump’s inner circle.
Stephen Miller, the White House deputy chief of staff, said in November 2023 that a second Trump administration would order the Guard in sympathetic Republican-led states to Democrat-run states that refuse to cooperate with his drive for mass deportations.
“The Alabama National Guard is going to arrest illegal aliens in Alabama and the Virginia National Guard in Virginia. And if you’re going to go into an unfriendly state like Maryland, well, there would just be Virginia doing the arrest in Maryland, right, very close, very nearby,” Miller said at the time on “The Charlie Kirk Show.”
Here’s a snapshot of where things stand with federal law enforcement activity in Portland, Chicago and elsewhere:
Trump’s efforts meet pushback
The lawsuit filed by Illinois and Chicago comes after Illinois Democratic Gov. JB Pritzker said some 300 of the state’s guard troops were to be federalized and deployed to the nation’s third-largest city, along with 400 others from Texas.
The ACLU of Illinois also filed suit Monday against Trump, DHS, ICE, Border Patrol and several of these agencies’ national and local leaders, accusing them of unleashing a campaign of violence and intimidation against peaceful protesters and journalists during weeks of protests outside an ICE detention facility in Broadview, Illinois.
At the facility, about 12 miles west of Chicago, federal agents have repeatedly fired tear gas, pepper balls and other projectiles toward crowds in response and at least seven people have faced federal charges after being arrested in those clashes.
Filed by a coalition of news outlets, media associations and protesters—including the Illinois Press Association, Block Club Chicago and the Chicago Headline Club—the lawsuit alleges federal agents used “indiscriminate” and “violent force,” including tear gas, rubber bullets, pepper balls and flash grenades, interfering with First Amendment rights, including freedom of speech and press.
“Never in modern times has the federal government undermined bedrock constitutional protections on this scale, or usurped states’ police power by directing federal agents to carry out an illegal mission against the people for the government’s own benefit,” the complaint says.
Latest federal deployments target Portland, Chicago
White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson confirmed that the president authorized using the Illinois National Guard members, citing what she called “ongoing violent riots and lawlessness” that local leaders have not quelled.
Trump has characterized both Portland and Chicago as cities rife with crime and unrest, calling the former a “war zone” and suggesting apocalyptic force was needed to quell problems in the latter. Since the start of his second term, he has sent or talked about sending troops to 10 cities, including Baltimore, Maryland; Memphis, Tennessee; the District of Columbia; New Orleans; and the California cities of Oakland, San Francisco and Los Angeles.
Oregon Gov. Tina Kotek talked to Trump in late September and said the deployment was unnecessary. She refused to call up any Oregon National Guard troops, so Trump did so himself in an order to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. That prompted the lawsuit from city and state officials.
In Chicago, alarms raised about racial profiling
On Monday, Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson signed an executive order barring federal agents from using city-owned property as staging areas. It applies to parking lots, garages and vacant lots.
“We will not tolerate ICE agents violating our residents’ constitutional rights nor will we allow the federal government to disregard our local authority,” Johnson said in a statement.
The sight of armed, camouflaged and masked Border Patrol agents making arrests near famous downtown landmarks has amplified concerns about racial profiling. Many Chicagoans were already uneasy after an immigration crackdown began earlier this month. Agents have targeted immigrant-heavy and largely Latino areas.
The Department of Homeland Security acknowledged that federal agents shot a woman Saturday morning on the southwest side of Chicago. A statement from the department said it happened after Border Patrol agents patrolling the area “were rammed by vehicles and boxed in by 10 cars.”
“The officers exited their trapped vehicle, when a suspect tried to run them over, forcing the officers to fire defensively,” the statement said.
No law enforcement officers were seriously injured, DHS spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin said.
The woman who was shot was a U.S. citizen and was armed with a semiautomatic weapon, according to McLaughlin.
The woman was in fair condition at a hospital, according to fire officials.
Deployment in Portland blocked by judge
About 400 protesters marched Saturday from a park to a Portland ICE detention facility. Federal agents used chemical crowd control munitions, including tear gas canisters and less-lethal guns that sprayed pepper balls, the Oregonian reported.
At least six people were arrested as the group reached the facility.
Trump-appointed U.S. District Judge Karin Immergut later issued her first ruling temporarily blocking the deployment on Saturday afternoon, saying the relatively small protests the city has seen did not justify the use of federalized forces and allowing that the deployment could harm Oregon’s state sovereignty.
The Trump administration responded with another attempt to send in National Guard troops from California and Texas, prompting Kotek and California Gov. Gavin Newsom, also a Democrat, to go back to court Sunday. Immergut granted the request, blocking any National Guard troops from being sent to Oregon for 14 days.
Efforts in Memphis and Louisiana
On Wednesday, Hegseth, Bondi and Miller rallied members of a federal law enforcement task force that began operating in Memphis as part of Trump’s crime-fighting plan. Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee, a Republican, has supported the effort.
On Sept. 30, Republican Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry asked for a guard deployment to New Orleans and other cities to help fight crime.
He said there has been “elevated violent crime rates” in Shreveport, Baton Rouge and New Orleans, as well as shortages in local law enforcement.
Appellate court weighs California deployment
Trump deployed guard soldiers and active duty Marines in Los Angeles during the summer over the objections of Gov. Newsom, who sued and won a temporary block after a federal judge found the president’s use of the guard was likely unlawful.
The Trump administration appealed, and the block was put on hold by a three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. The appellate case is still underway, but the panel has indicated that it believes the administration is likely to prevail.
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