Nearly a month into President Donald Trump’s Chicago area deportation campaign, the White House confirmed Saturday it has “authorized” the deployment of National Guard troops to Illinois over opposition from Gov. JB Pritzker, who earlier had called that possibility “absolutely outrageous and un-American.”
“Amidst ongoing violent riots and lawlessness, that local leaders like Pritzker have refused to step in to quell, President Trump has authorized 300 national guardsmen to protect federal officers and assets,” White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson said in a statement issued late Saturday afternoon.
“President Trump will not turn a blind eye to the lawlessness plaguing American cities,” Jackson said.
Pritzker’s administration did not have any immediate comment to the White House statement, which did not make clear where the National Guard units were coming from, where they would be deployed or when they would begin appearing here.
The Chicago Sun-Times reached out to the White House to clarify those questions, but that inquiry went unanswered Saturday afternoon.
The White House statement came after Pritzker posted details on his social media feeds about an ultimatum from the White House, dictating to him, “Call up your troops, or we will.”
“In the coming hours, the Trump Administration intends to federalize 300 members of the Illinois National Guard,” Pritzker said in the statement. “It is absolutely outrageous and un-American to demand a Governor send military troops within our own borders and against our will.”
The request to the Illinois National Guard came after Pritzker said this week the Department of Homeland Security sought to deploy 100 military troops to Illinois “for the protection of ICE personnel and facilities.”
Trump’s justification for troops
Trump has threatened to send troops to Chicago for weeks, after launching an aggressive immigration enforcement operation. Trump cited as his justification the city’s crime rate — which has seen a decline in both violent crime and murder rates. But DHS and U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi have amplified their messaging that ICE agents are under attack.
On Saturday morning, a woman was shot by U.S. Border Patrol agents in the city’s Brighton Park neighborhood on the Southwest Side, marking the second shooting of a civilian since the start of the administration’s operation.
Democratic U.S. Sen. Tammy Duckworth slammed Trump for signaling plans to federalize Illinois National Guard troops and deploy them here.
“Donald Trump federalizing the Illinois National Guard is a dangerous, un-American, and unconstitutional abuse of our military, intended to instill fear and threaten American civil rights,” Duckworth said. “Our military men and women signed up to defend the Constitution and our rights, not be used as political props or to silence dissent. Illinois does not want or need troops in our cities. Full stop.”
It remains to be seen what course Pritzker and Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul will take to legally challenge Trump’s move to deploy National Guard troops in the state without Pritzker’s approval.
Illinois’ legal options
The law Trump used to deploy troops in California and Oregon allows the president to call into federal service members of the National Guard of any state if there is an invasion or rebellion — or if the president is “unable with the regular forces to execute the laws of the United States.”
During oral arguments in federal court on the Oregon deployment, state officials sought an order blocking Trump’s authorization of National Guard troops there. On Saturday, a federal judge issued a ruling granting Oregon and the city of Portland their request to pause the Trump administration’s planned deployment of the National Guard in that state.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s had mixed success suing Trump over the deployment in his state. U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer sided with Newsom in early September, accusing Trump of a “serious violation of the Posse Comitatus Act.”
The Posse Comitatus Act prohibits federal troops from engaging in civilian law enforcement except when authorized by law.
Breyer, who is based in San Francisco, also rejected Trump’s claim of a “constitutional exception,” in which the White House argued that “the president has inherent constitutional authority to protect federal property, federal personnel, and federal functions.”
However, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled earlier that courts must be “highly deferential” to the president on the matter — a ruling cited during Friday’s arguments in Oregon. The 9th Circuit also put Breyer’s September ruling on hold to preserve the status quo while considering a fuller record generated by a bench trial in August.
The appellate court is now unlikely to rule before the end of the year. Meanwhile, it’s been nearly four months since Trump deployed troops to California.
Oregon sued Trump Sunday over the deployment there, and it argued that “if the relatively small, contained, and largely sedated protests near Portland’s ICE facility in recent weeks can justify military intervention, then the President’s authority to federalize a state’s National Guard” under the law in question “would be virtually unlimited.”
The American Civil Liberties Union condemned the Trump administration’s authorization of National Guard troops in Illinois as “the latest attempt by the Trump administration to scare the millions of people living in American cities.”
“We see the president’s strategy for what it is — placing National Guard troops in legal and ethical jeopardy in an attempt to create conflict, sow fear in our communities, and intimidate people from exercising their constitutional rights,” said Hina Shamsi, director of the ACLU’s National Security Project. “But we can’t let this president normalize military and armed federal policing in our country and must remember that no matter what uniform they wear, federal agents and troops are bound by the Constitution and must be held accountable if they violate our rights.”
In the weeks since the Trump administration’s ramp-up in immigration enforcement, ICE agents have raided an apartment building in Chicago’s South Shore neighborhood, pulling men, women and children from their apartments and detaining them for hours overnight. At demonstrations outside ICE’s Broadview facility, protesters have been tear-gassed and shot with pepper pellets.
In his statement early Saturday, Pritzker called the deployment of National Guard troops a “manufactured performance,” not a serious effort to protect public safety.
“For Donald Trump, this has never been about safety,” Pritzker said. “This is about control.”