CNN
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Members of the Texas National Guard have been deployed to the Chicago metropolitan area, an official said Wednesday night, as lawyers prepare for critical court hearings over federalized troops 2,000 miles apart amid an ongoing battle between President Donald Trump and Democratic-led cities.
The Trump administration links planned deployments in Chicago and Portland, Oregon, to increasingly tense protests outside Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) facilities, in addition to citing the shooting at an ICE facility in Dallas, where two detainees died. Trump described the incident as an attack against law enforcement.
This Wednesday, the president intensified his criticism against Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson and Democratic Governor JB Pritzker, who over the weekend described the mobilization of the National Guard as “Trump’s invasion.”
“The mayor of Chicago should be in jail for failing to protect ICE agents. Governor Pritzker too!” Trump wrote in Truth Social.
Both officials responded Wednesday morning to criticism in
“I’m not going anywhere,” he added. “I am going to stand strong as mayor of this incredible city.”
Meanwhile, Pritzker wrote in
“Masked agents are already taking people off the street,” the governor added. “Separating children from their parents. Generating fear.”
Trump’s commitment to the military option has been evidenced not only in the courts, but also in the frequent air travel of members of his Government. FBI Director Kash Patel and Assistant Attorney General Todd Blanche made a brief visit to Chicago on Tuesday, at the same time Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem flew to the ICE office in Portland.
Noem visited the ICE facility in Chicago last week, shortly after several Cabinet officials held a news conference in Memphis, Tennessee, highlighting the upcoming deployment of the National Guard there.
If pending court cases challenging the deployments do not go in Trump’s favor, the president said he could overturn them by invoking the Insurrection Act, which allows military deployment to the United States in certain situations; It is the largest legal exception to the Posse Comitatus Law, which generally prohibits the use of the Armed Forces within the country for domestic law enforcement purposes.
“If I had to implement it, I would,” Trump said Monday. “If they were killing people and the courts were slowing us down, or the governors or mayors were slowing us down, of course I would do it.”
Before being sent on a protection mission, National Guard troops receive training in de-escalation, crowd control and current rules for the use of force, the US Northern Command says on its website.
National Guard members are on missions specifically to support federal functions, personnel and property, which may include crowd control and establishing security perimeters, Northern Command said. The military will not arrest protesters, since it is a police activity, he added.
This is how the National Guard deployments are currently:
It is said that nature abhors a vacuum, and the void created by a federal judge’s decision to avoid an immediate ruling on whether to block the president’s deployments to Chicago is quickly filled by hundreds of National Guard troops arriving at local training centers.
The president authorized 300 members of the Illinois National Guard for active duty in Chicago, and Texas Republican Gov. Greg Abbott offered another 400 from his state.
According to a report from Northern Command on Wednesday, 300 members of the Illinois National Guard and 200 from Texas were activated under Title 10 and are already in the Chicago area. Members of the Texas National Guard were at a suburban training center Tuesday. The Northern Command reported that troops receive training in de-escalation and crowd control.
District Court Judge April Perry — appointed to the bench last year by President Biden — told both sides earlier this week that she needed more time to digest the complex legal issues surrounding these deployments.
Both sides have until the end of Wednesday to present their written arguments to Perry, with a hearing scheduled for Thursday morning. The Trump administration presented a response this Wednesday requesting permission to present a longer brief than usual.
A group of 26 former governors from across the country filed a brief in support of the temporary order suspending National Guard deployment to the area, claiming it would “only exacerbate tensions in Chicago.”
“The president’s assertion of having the authority to deploy the military on national territory at his discretion, without cooperation or coordination with state authorities, threatens to upset the delicate balance of state and federal power that underpins our constitutional order,” the document states.
A group of former Army and Navy secretaries and retired four-star admirals and generals also presented a brief warning that, while there are exceptional circumstances that require military intervention, domestic deployments that do not adhere to “long-established boundaries” carry risks, including politicization of the military, diversion of military personnel from their primary war-training missions and protecting communities after disasters, and placing troops in situations for which they are not trained.
Meanwhile, a group of 18 Republican attorneys general filed a brief in support of the Trump administration, saying that not allowing the deployment of the National Guard to assist ICE agents “comes at an immense cost to states.”
Chicago’s mayor said local police trying to maintain order are in a difficult position.
“The president of the United States is literally pitting law enforcement against each other,” Johnson said during a news conference Tuesday.
This Wednesday, he told CNN: “What we are seeing is a complete escalation by these federal agents.”
“We always knew that sending in federal agents was a pretext for the National Guard,” Johnson said. “Their ultimate goal is to send the military to American cities.”
As the legal battle continues, the effects are being felt throughout the city. A soccer match between Argentina and Puerto Rico, originally scheduled for next week in Chicago, was moved to Florida due to rising immigration tensions, a source told The Associated Press on Wednesday.
Portland
The Illinois judge’s deliberative steps contrast with the rapid progress of the similar case in Portland.
Judge Karin Immergut—a Trump appointee who was once part of the Starr investigation into President Bill Clinton—almost immediately blocked Trump’s call for the deployment of the Oregon National Guard on Saturday.
When the White House responded by mobilizing federalized military personnel from the California National Guard in Portland on Sunday, Immergut expanded his ruling to halt all National Guard deployments to Oregon.
The case now moves to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, which the White House has asked to stay Immergut’s order and allow the deployment.
A hearing is scheduled for Thursday before a panel of three judges: two appointed by Trump and one appointed by Clinton, who previously served as a justice on the Oregon Supreme Court.
While the military deployment to Portland has been blocked by a judge, the planned deployment to Memphis is being delayed for practical reasons.
“The Tennessee National Guard should arrive in the next few days or the next week or so,” Democratic Mayor Paul Young told CNN affiliate WATN on Tuesday.
The exact role that the Tennessee National Guard soldiers, deployed to Memphis by Republican Governor Bill Lee, will play has not been revealed.
A large group of federal agents are already in the city as part of the Memphis Security Task Force. The group made 386 arrests in just over a week, according to Justice Department figures released Wednesday, and more than 200 were classified as “warrant arrests” or “administrative arrests.” Two arrests were made in homicide cases.
The mayor’s Democratic political leadership has been at odds with the Trump administration and Republican state leaders over the need for federal intervention, but Young said they are cooperating.
“It was a decision of the governor and the president, and as mayor of the city, it is my job to make sure that everything is well coordinated within our community,” he told WATN.
CNN’s Haley Britzky contributed to this report.
