Topline
The state of Illinois on Monday joined fellow blue states Oregon and California in suing the Trump administration over its attempt to deploy hundreds of National Guard troops to Chicago and Portland, Oregon, over the weekend—a move that was temporarily blocked in Oregon.
Federal agents are seen at the ICE facility in Broadview, Illinois.
TNS
Key Facts
Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker said 400 members of the Texas National Guard were en route to Chicago on Sunday evening—a deployment Texas Gov. Greg Abbott said he authorized.
Illinois and the city of Chicago filed suit against President Donald Trump, Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, Secretary of the Army Danilel Driscoll and their respective departments Monday morning, seeking to block the deployment, which Pritzker called “Trump’s invasion.”
The lawsuit, filed in federal court in Illinois on Monday, comes hours after a judge in Portland issued an emergency order stopping Trump’s deployment of troops to Oregon.
Later on Monday morning, Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson signed an executive order banning federal agents from using city-owned property for immigration enforcement actions, describing them as “ICE-free zones” after a controversial raid on an apartment building that led to U.S. citizens being detained.
Crucial Quote
“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 lawsuit filed by Illinois and Chicago reads. The complaint asserts there is no “insurrection” or “rebellion” in Illinois, and federal agents already stationed there are able to enforce federal law in the state unassisted.
What Are The Arguments Against Troop Deployment?
In the suit against the Trump administration, Illinois said troops were not needed to control protests against federal immigration enforcement agents’ presence in the state. Illinois said the Trump administration’s evidence for needing a full deployment was “based on a flimsy pretext: protests outside a two-story ICE processing facility in Broadview, a suburb of Chicago with less than 8,000 residents.” This echoed the decision from District Court Judge Karin Immergut to pause the Oregon National Guard deployment in Portland. Over the weekend, Immergut found the administration’s claim that Portland was “war ravaged” not connected to how the protests were unfolding at an Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in the Oregon city. Citing local law enforcement, Immergut said protests had remained small at the ICE facility and were fully under control by local authorities, writing “nothing in the record suggests that anything of this sort was occurring ‘every night’ outside the Portland ICE building or in the City of Portland.” In June, Trump deployed roughly 4,000 National Guard troops and 700 Marines to Los Angeles to quell protests against the actions of ICE agents that at times turned violent, marking the first time a president had mobilized National Guard troops to a state against its governor’s wishes in decades.
Key Background
Trump has frequently singled out Chicago as a target for an eventual deployment of the National Guard. In September, Trump posted an AI-generated image referencing the Vietnam War film “Apocalypse Now,” with text that reads “I love the smell of deportations in the morning … Chicago about to find out why it’s called the Department of WAR.” Administration officials, including border czar Tom Homan, insisted the post was taken out of context, but also promised increased pressure to deport undocumented migrants in the Windy City. In recent weeks, federal law enforcement activity has escalated. Last week, federal agents raided an apartment building in Chicago’s South Shore neighborhood, leading to 37 arrests of undocumented immigrants. U.S. citizens and children were also detained during the late-night raid, Reuters confirmed. Speaking to CNN’s “State of the Union” program on Sunday, Pritzker said that included zip-tying children and locking elderly people in a U-Hau vehicle. “They are the ones that are making it a war zone,” Pritzker told host Jake Tapper.