Texas National Guard arrives in the Chicago area

The Texas National Guard has arrived in the Chicago area despite the repeated objections of Illinois officials, who have rejected President Donald Trump’s pledge to deploy the military domestically in response to increasingly heated immigration crackdown protests here and in other Democratic-run cities across the country.

Tribune journalists saw several military members, dressed in camouflage and carrying long guns, on federal property in the far southwest suburbs Tuesday morning. Soldiers, who had “T” patches on their arms identical to the ones shown in a picture tweeted by Texas Gov. Greg Abbott on Monday, could be seen walking in and out of mobile sleeping units on the site.

On Monday, a defense contractor told the Tribune that he was setting up sleepers, showers and a dining hall for 250 people at the makeshift base. The contractor, who was working at the site but declined to give his name, said he was unsure how long the troops intended to stay.

The Department of Defense did not immediate respond to requests for comment.

FBI Director Kash Patel posted on social media that he was headed to Chicago on Tuesday morning.

“Chicago will be saved,” Patel wrote on X, “and this FBI will continue to crush violent crime there, and all around the country. Heading to the Windy City now.”

Illinois officials, however, strongly object to the national guard’s deployment for immigration enforcement, as well as the performative actions taken by the Trump Administration during Operation Midway Blitz.

“Let me be clear: Donald Trump is using our service members as political props – and as pawns in his illegal effort to militarize our nation’s cities,” Gov. J.B. Pritzker said Monday during a news conference.

The Illinois Attorney General’s office filed a lawsuit Monday attempting to block the Trump administration from mobilizing National Guard troops here, arguing that “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.”

But a federal judge in Chicago declined to issue an immediate order blocking Trump’s move to activate Guard members and gave the Trump administration until Wednesday at midnight to respond to the lawsuit, which asks that the federalization and deployment of National Guard troops be declared unconstitutional and that the court block Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth from deploying troops to Illinois.

Judge April Perry, a Biden administration appointee, said she could not issue a temporary restraining order to halt the deployment of troops into Illinois without first reading the lengthy court filings.

“The deployment of federalized National Guard, including from another state, infringes on Illinois’s sovereignty and right to self-governance,” stated the filing, which also names as defendants Hegseth, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and Army Secretary Daniel Driscoll as defendants. “It will cause only more unrest, including harming social fabric and community relations and increasing the mistrust of police. It also creates economic harm, depressing business activities and tourism that not only hurt Illinoisans but also hurt Illinois’s tax revenue.”

The Department of Homeland Security did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The Department of Defense declined to comment on “active litigation” and a White House spokeswoman said Trump has used “his lawful authority to protect federal officers and assets.”

Trump has federalized up to 300 Illinois Guard members and Republican Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas agreed to also send troops here from his state – military forces federal officials say are paramount to keep federal officials safe amid escalating protests against the administration’s surge of immigration enforcement, dubbed “Operation Midway Blitz.”

Abbott said in social media post Sunday that he “fully authorized the President to call up 400 members of the Texas National Guard to ensure safety for federal officials.”

“You can either fully enforce protection for federal employees or get out of the way and let Texas Guard do it,” he said.

Federal memos have indicated that the deployments would last at least 60 days.

Mayor Brandon Johnson on Monday urged Chicagoans to stand together in the face of the deployment.

“In the coming days and weeks, we may be pushed, if not forced, to take even more dramatic action if this administration continues to escalate and provoke our people,” Johnson said.

When asked to elaborate, the mayor added, “Everything. Everything, whatever is necessary to ensure that we’re protecting people.”

Trump has long derided Illinois and Chicago sanctuary laws that restrict local law enforcement from cooperating with federal authorities in enforcing civil immigration matters. A federal judge in Chicago earlier this month dismissed a lawsuit from the Trump administration challenging those policies.

But the Chicago area and nation have faced a surge in violence and unrest surrounding ramped up federal immigration enforcement in recent weeks.

Federal agents fatally shot Silverio Villegas-González last month as he fled in his car during an attempted arrest. DHS officials immediately claimed an agent had been dragged by the man’s car. But in body camera footage later obtained by the Tribune and other news organizations, the agent referred to his own injuries as “nothing major” moments after he shot and killed the man.

In September, a gunman opened fire from a nearby roof onto the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in Dallas in September. Two detainees were killed and the gunman fatally shot himself after the attack. No ICE agents were shot, according to authorities. Trump has blamed the shooting on the “radical left.”

Locally, a woman was shot by an immigration agent Saturday after she allegedly rammed his vehicle on Chicago’s Southwest Side. She was charged with forcibly assaulting, impeding and interfering with a federal law enforcement officer, which carries a sentence of up to 20 years in prison.

An ICE facility in west suburban Broadview has been the site of multiple tumultuous anti-immigration enforcement demonstrations, with federal agents hurling tear gas and baton rounds at protesters.

In a Sept. 26 memo to the Defense Department, Homeland Security requested 100 troops to help protect the ICE facilities in Illinois from “coordinated assault by violent groups.”

“The violence and dehumanization of these men and women who are simply enforcing the law must stop,” said Tricia McLaughlin, a spokesperson for Homeland Security Secretary Noem, in a statement.

Illinois officials, however, have accused the Trump administration of spurring conflict and confrontation through its unnecessarily aggressive tactics.

“They are using Gestapo tactics in Chicago, and this is what Trump wants to do, right?” U.S. Sen. Tammy Duckworth said. “He wants to intimidate the people of Chicago. That’s not going to happen.”

The state’s lawsuit argues that there’s no emergency here and that the federalization of troops violate the Posse Comitatus Act, which bars the use of military troops for civilian law enforcement.

“Far from lawless riots, the Broadview protests have been small, primarily peaceful, and unfortunately escalated by DHS’s own conduct, seemingly for the goal of using them as a pretext for the Chicago troop deployment that was announced by Trump long ago,” the state claimed in its filing.

The National Guard’s arrival comes a few days after a federal judge twice blocked the federalized guard from deploying in Oregon. A month ago, a federal judge in California declared guard deployments there in violation of federal law, though that decision was reversed on appeal.

These cases offer a glimpse at what Chicago might experience as the national guard descends on the nation’s third-largest city – and what legal issues might arise in the burgeoning court battle between Republican federal authorities seeking domestic military expansion and the local Democrats who are staunchly opposed.

Declaring Portland “war-ravaged” amid nightly protests over immigration enforcement, Trump had activated 200 Oregon National Guard troops to protect federal buildings in the Portland area in September, authorizing “full force, if necessary,” according to his Truth Social account.

U.S. District Judge Karin Immergut, a Trump appointee from his first term, temporarily blocked that deployment on Oct. 4, noting that the protests in Portland overall were “small and uneventful.”

While a president generally is allowed a great deal of deference to federalize National Guard forces when local law enforcement aren’t able to enforce the law, Immergut determined that Trump’s assessment of the situation in Portland “was simply untethered” to the reality there.

“‘A great level of deference’ is not equivalent to ignoring the facts on the ground,” Immergut wrote in her opinion.

The judge found that deployment could undermine the sovereignty of the state of Oregon as well as the constitutional balance of power between state and federal government. Despite Immergut’s ruling, Defense Secretary Hegseth hours later ordered members of the California and Texas National Guard to deploy to Portland.

In an emergency telephone call hearing on Sunday night, Immergut blocked the Trump administration from sending National Guard units from any state to Oregon. During the call, the judge seemed to be in disbelief that Trump would mobilize troops to Oregon from other states seemingly in defiance of her order that came down just a few hours ago in the first case.

“Aren’t defendants simply circumventing my order?” she said during the call. “Why is this appropriate?”

Oregon and California officials praised the ruling, vowing to continue to stand up to the president.

California Attorney General Rob Bonta said Trump’s move to deploy the National Guard of one state to another “is well outside of the norms or practices” of any president, but he said the judge’s “rebuke of the President’s illegal actions is a step in the right direction.”

The Trump administration is appealing that decision to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, arguing that the order “threatens to inflict irreparable harm by exposing federal property and officials to a threat of violence and exposing lawful federal immigration enforcement efforts to interference and obstruction.”

In September, a federal judge ruled the Trump administration violated federal law by sending National Guard troops and Marines to the Los Angeles area in response to protests over immigration raids in early June.

“There were indeed protests in Los Angeles, and some individuals engaged in violence,” U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer in San Francisco, a Clinton administration appointee, said in his ruling. “Yet there was no rebellion, nor was civilian law enforcement unable to respond to the protests and enforce the law.”

The judge’s order describes the Trump administration using armed soldiers whose identity was often obscured by protective gear and military vehicles to set up perimeters and traffic blockades, “demonstrating a military presence in and around Los Angeles.”

The ruling also raised questions about the training and instructions troops received on the scope of their law enforcement authority. The troops wore green or multi-camouflage uniforms, which made it difficult for even high-ranking military authorities to distinguish between them and ICE officers, who sometimes also wore camouflage apparel, according to the order.

The decision found that the Trump administration infringed on California’s police power, “the quintessential power that the Constitution reserves to the state.”

“Once again, a rogue judge is trying to usurp the authority of the Commander-in-Chief to protect American cities from violence and destruction,” said White House spokeswoman Anna Kelly in a statement.

But the White House appealed and the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals – which has a Democratic majority – temporarily froze that order, determining that “it was likely that the President lawfully exercised his statutory authority.”

The decision cited rampant protester violence in California as evidence of interference with federal agents’ ability to enforce laws, including demonstrators “pinning down” Federal Protective Services officers by hurling “concrete chunks, bottles of liquid and other objects” as well as using “large rolling dumpsters as a battering ram” to try and breach a federal building parking garage. Demonstrators threw objects, including Molotov cocktails, at deputies and burned vehicles, the order said.

“Protesters also damaged federal buildings and caused the closure of at least one federal building,” the opinion said. “And a federal van was attacked by protesters who smashed in the van’s windows. The federal government’s interest in preventing incidents like these is significant.”

In California, Trump’s ordered deployment of some 4,000 National Guard troops and 700 Marines appeared to be the first time in decades that a state’s national guard was mobilized domestically without the request of its governor, marking an expansion of federal authority and escalation against demonstrators challenging Trump’s recent immigration blitz.

The president has also mobilized military troops during an unprecedented takeover of law enforcement in Washington D.C., while assuming federal control of the Washington Metropolitan Police Department.

American governance generally bars military enforcement of domestic law in order to prevent military forces from encroaching on local law enforcement or investigating local crimes. The Posse Comitatus Act, a nearly 150-year-old law, restricts the role of the military in domestic policing, though the president and Congress can suspend it under certain circumstances.

The Insurrection Act of 1807 permits the president to deploy military forces inside the United States to quell rebellion, invasion or domestic violence. On Monday, Trump said he would be open to invoking the Insurrection Act “if necessary.”

A lack of legal rulings on the Posse Comitatus Act means much of its scope is determined by executive branch policy and military regulations, said Steve Vladeck, a law professor at Georgetown University.

“There is no authoritative precedent on exactly where these lines are, and so that’s why over the years the military’s own interpretation has been so important,” Vladeck said.

In the case of deployment in Oregon, Immergut drew upon the nation’s “longstanding and foundational tradition of resistance to government overreach, especially in the form of military intrusion into civil affairs.”

“This historical tradition boils down to a simple proposition: this is a nation of Constitutional law, not martial law,” the order said.

Trump has vowed to launch National Guard deployments in other Democratic-run cities, including New York, Baltimore and Memphis.

As for Illinois, Pritzker disputed Trump’s narrative that ramped up federal immigration enforcement is critical to public safety.

“Over the last couple of weeks, it has been made abundantly clear that Trump’s invasion force is not going after the worst of the worst,” he said at Monday’s news conference. “They are harassing and detaining people based on the color of their skin. Tamale vendors, delivery people, people looking for work at Home Depot, and even families just out and about enjoying themselves on a sunny day.”

Alicia Fabbre is a freelance reporter for the Chicago Tribune

Associated Press contributed