State of Illinois launches legal action against Trump over troop deployment

Authorities in Illinois have taken legal action to stop the Trump administration from sending National Guard troops onto the streets of Chicago.

Both the Democratic-led state and the city of Chicago filed the lawsuits on Monday, just hours after a federal judge blocked troop deployment in Portland, Oregon, on Sunday.

JB Pritzker, Democratic Governor of Illinois, said about 300 of the state National Guard were due to be sent to the nation’s third-largest city, along with 400 from Texas.

The National Guard are state-based forces which answer to the governor, except when called into federal service.

Pritzker described the potential deployment as “Trump’s invasion” and called on Texas Governor Greg Abbott, a Republican, to block it.

But Abbott said the crackdown was needed to protect federal workers in the city as part of the President’s increased immigration enforcement.

White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson confirmed over the weekend that Trump had authorised the use of Illinois National Guard members, citing what she claeimd were “ongoing violent riots and lawlessness” which local leaders had not quelled.

The Illinois state lawsuit alleges: “These advances in President Trump’s long-declared ‘war’ on Chicago and Illinois are unlawful and dangerous.

“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 favour.”

It has accused the Trump administration of violating the Posse Comitatus Act, a federal law which limits the use of the military for domestic enforcement, and the US Constitution’s 10th Amendment by usurping Pritzker’s role as the commander-in-chief of the National Guard in Illinois.

And it said the deployment was on a “flimsy pretext”, which alleged that an Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in a suburb of Chicago needed protecting from protests outside the building.

The US Government has said the Texas National Guard troops are already in transit to Illinois.

In a separate move, Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson said he had signed an executive order barring federal immigration agents and others from using city-owned property, such as car parks, as staging areas for enforcement operations.

Trump has portrayed Democrat-led cities as war-ravaged and lawless, as he tightens his grip on illegal immigration.

Officials in both Portland and Chicago have disputed this and said military intervention is neither needed nor helpful as it is inflaming the situation.

Protesters in Chicago have frequently rallied near an immigration facility outside the city and 13 arrests were reported on Friday near the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) processing facility in Broadview.

On Saturday, the Department of Homeland Security acknowledged federal agents shot a woman on Chicago’s south-west side after Border Patrol agents in the area “were rammed by vehicles and boxed in by 10 cars”.

In Portland, US District Judge Karin Immergut granted a temporary restraining order on Sunday sought by Oregon and California to block the deployment of guard troops from those states to the city.

There have been protests outside the Portland ICE facility.

Since the start of his second term, Trump has sent or talked about sending troops to 10 cities and districts including: Baltimore, Memphis, District of Columbia, New Orleans, Oakland, San Francisco and Los Angeles.

In September, a federal judge said the administration “wilfully” broke federal law by deploying guard troops to Los Angeles over protests about immigration raids.

But that ruling is on hold while the Trump administration appeals against it.