President Donald Trump’s deployment of National Guard troops to Illinois faces legal scrutiny Thursday in a pivotal court hearing that will be held a day after a small number of National Guard troops began protecting federal property in… Chicago area.
US District Judge April Perry is scheduled to hear arguments on a request to block the deployment of Illinois and Texas Guard members. Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker and local officials strongly oppose the use of the Guard.
An “element” of 200 Texas Guard troops sent to Illinois began operating in the Chicago area on Wednesday, according to a spokesman for U.S. Northern Command, who spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity in order to discuss details of the operations that have not been made public. The spokesman did not say where the forces were sent specifically.
and troops, along with about 300 soldiers from Illinois. Arrived this week At the U.S. Army Reserve Center in Elwood, southwest of Chicago. All 500 soldiers are under Northern Command and have been activated for 60 days.
Guard members are in the city to protect U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement buildings, other federal facilities and law enforcement personnel, according to Northern Command. Trump previously sent troops to Los Angeles and Washington, and a small number this week began assisting law enforcement in Memphis.
These troopers are part of the Safe Memphis Task Force, a group of about a dozen federal law enforcement agencies ordered by Trump to combat crime in the city. Republican Tennessee Governor Bill Lee supports the use of the Guard.
She is approximately 150 years old Posse Comitatus Law Limits the role of the army in enforcing local laws. However, Trump has said he would be willing to invoke the Insurrection Act, which allows the president to send military forces to states that cannot quell insurrection or that defy federal law.
Chicago and Illinois have sued to stop the deployments, calling them unnecessary and illegal. Meanwhile, Trump has portrayed Chicago as a “hell” of lawless crime, even though statistics show a significant decline in crime rates recently.
The Republican president said Wednesday that Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson and Pritzker, both Democrats, He should be imprisoned For failing to protect federal agents during immigration enforcement sweeps.
In a court filing, the city and state say protests at an ICE temporary detention facility in the Chicago suburb of Broadview “came nowhere close to stopping the enforcement of federal immigration laws.”
“The President is using the Broadview protests as an excuse,” they wrote. “The impending deployment of federal troops to Illinois is the latest episode in a broader campaign by the President’s administration to target jurisdictions that the President does not like.”
Also Thursday, a panel of judges on the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals was scheduled to hear arguments on whether Trump has the authority to control 200 Oregon National Guard soldiers. The president had planned to deploy them in Portland, where there were mostly small, nightly protests outside the Immigration and Customs Enforcement building. State and city leaders insist that troops are neither needed nor wanted there.
U.S. District Judge Karen J. Immergut on Sunday awarded the cases to Oregon and California Temporary restraining order Ban the deployment of Guard forces in Portland. Trump had mobilized California troops for Portland just hours after he first banned Immergut from using the Oregon Guard.
The Department has not yet appealed this order to the Ninth Circuit.
Emmergut, who was appointed by Trump during his first term, rejected the president’s assertions that troops were needed to protect Portland and immigration facilities, saying: “It has been months since there has been any sustained level of violent or disruptive protest activity in the city.”
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Associated Press writers Gene Johnson in Seattle and Konstantin Torobin in Washington contributed to this report.