Lawyers for the Trump administration argued in a filing late Wednesday that escalating violence against immigration officials during the ongoing “Operation Midway Blitz” enforcement actions justify the deployment of National Guard troops to protect against “a danger of a rebellion against federal authority” that impedes “the ability of federal officials to enforce federal law.”
The Trump administration’s response to the state’s legal push for an emergency restraining order against the deployment sets up a landmark day in federal court. U.S. District Judge April Perry was scheduled to hear arguments in the case beginning at 11 a.m. Thursday at the Dirksen U.S. Courthouse, where an overflow courtroom has been set up to accommodate the expected crush of national media.
In their 59-page filing, the Justice Department cited the recent protests at the Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in Broadview, charges against people accused of ramming Border Patrol vehicles on the city’s Southwest Side that led to a woman being shot by agents, and a case brought against an alleged Chicago gang member accusing him of putting a $10,000 bounty on the head of Gregory Bovino, the Border Patrol boss in charge of the Chicago operation.
“The violent actions and threats by large numbers of protestors, directed at those enforcing of federal immigration laws and at federal property, constitute at least a danger of a rebellion against federal authority and significantly impede the ability of federal officials to enforce federal law,” the Justice Department said in the filing.
In requesting the emergency restraining order, Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul’s office asked the federal court on Monday to find the federalization and deployment of National Guard troops unconstitutional and to block Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth from deploying troops to the state over the objections of Gov. JB Pritzker.
“The Trump administration’s illegal actions already have subjected and are subjecting Illinois to serious and irreparable harm. The deployment of federalized National Guard, including from another state, infringes on Illinois’s sovereignty and right to self-governance,” the AG filing stated.
At an initial hearing on the court case Monday, Perry, a Biden-era appointee whose previous nomination for U.S. attorney was blocked by then-Sen JD Vance for overtly political reasons, said she was “very troubled” by the Trump administration’s inability to answer questions, such as where in Illinois the Guard members would be sent. But she said she was not able to rule on the state’s request to temporarily block the deployment without first reading the voluminous court filings.
The court proceedings Thursday are expected to be lengthy, with dozens of groups from all sides, from California Gov. Gavin Newsom to national law enforcement groups, asking to weigh in. It’s unclear if Perry will rule on the issue Thursday or hand down a written opinion at a later date, but all stakeholders know that time is of the essence.
The Defense Department has moved in recent days to federalize 300 members of the Illinois National Guard, despite Pritzker’s opposition, as well as 400 Guard members from Texas. Approximately half of the Guard members from Texas ultimately are expected to be sent to Illinois, with the support of Texas Republican Gov. Greg Abbott.
Absent a legal order blocking their deployment, like the ones a federal judge in Oregon issued over the weekend barring the federalization of Guard troops from that state or any other, it wasn’t clear what more Illinois officials could do to shield the state from the incursion. Pritzker has long said that the law would be on the state’s side in deterring such a deployment, but the troops began arriving after Perry declined to immediately intervene.
National Guard members were first seen in the area Tuesday on federal property in Elwood, near Joliet. There were reports that Guard protection had begun at other federal sites late Wednesday, but there were no immediate signs of troops arriving in Broadview.
Raoul said during a news conference Monday his office moved as swiftly as possible to bring the state’s case against Trump. Pritzker, meanwhile, has continued his full-throated opposition to Trump’s proposed use of military troops in the state.
“There is no invasion here. There is no insurrection here. Local and state law enforcement are on the job and managing what they need to,” Pritzker said Monday. “Donald Trump is using our service members as political props and as pawns in his illegal effort to militarize our nation’s cities.”
Speaking to reporters in the Oval Office on Monday, Trump suggested he could invoke the Insurrection Act if needed to sidestep court orders or uncooperative officials.
“If I had to enact it, I’d do it, if people were being killed and courts were holding us up, or governors or mayors were holding us up,” he said.
A White House spokeswoman repeated that Trump was exercising “his lawful authority to protect federal officers and assets.”
Given Trump’s weekslong flirtation with sending troops to Chicago and his shifting rationale, which at first was ostensibly about combating violent crime in the city but has since turned to protecting immigration enforcement operations amid the administration’s “Operation Midway Blitz,” “the manufactured nature of the crisis is clear,” the state argued in its filing.
“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,” the Illinois attorney general’s office wrote.
The state’s filing noted Trump’s long history of “threatening and derogatory statements toward” Illinois and Chicago, as well as city and state leaders, dating to even before he entered the 2016 presidential race.
“The supposed current emergency is belied by the fact that Trump’s Chicago troop deployment threats began more than ten years ago,” the state argued. “In a social media post from 2013 Trump writes ‘we need our troops on the streets of Chicago, not in Syria.’”
The animus toward Illinois and Chicago carried through his first term in the White House and his time out of office into his second term, the state argued, culminating in a Sept. 30 address to top military brass at the Pentagon in which Trump informed the gathered generals that he’d told Hegseth, “We should use some of these dangerous cities as training grounds for our military National Guard, but military, because we’re going into Chicago very soon.”
In arguing its case, the attorney general’s office pointed to recent court decisions in federal court in Oregon, where a judge Trump appointed to the bench has issued two orders blocking the federalization of that state’s Guard and subsequently the deployment of Guard members from neighboring California or any other state.
In his memo, Hegseth informed Texas officials that Trump had “authorized me to coordinate with you on the mobilization of up to 400 members of the Texas National Guard” under Title 10, which allows state Guard troops to be placed under federal command under orders “issued through the governor.”
In a social media post Sunday night, Abbott, who has clashed repeatedly with Pritzker over the past several years, wrote: “You can either fully enforce protection for federal employees or get out of the way and let Texas Guard do it.”
At the heart of the conflict over deploying troops to Illinois is the Trump administration’s assertion that an emergency exists, warranting such action.
The move also comes against the backdrop of Trump’s long-running criticism of Illinois and Chicago laws that prohibit law enforcement from cooperating with federal authorities in enforcing civil immigration matters. Earlier this year, a federal judge in Chicago dismissed a lawsuit from the administration challenging those policies.
Recently, the administration has pointed to incidents, including heated protests outside its U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement processing facility in west suburban Broadview, to justify its use of troops. 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.”
In his weekend memo calling up Texas Guard members, Hegseth wrote, “On October 4, 2025, the President determined that violent incidents, as well as the credible threat of continued violence, are impeding the execution of the laws of the United States in Illinois, Oregon, and other locations throughout the United States.”
But in its court filing Monday, the state reiterated the position Pritzker, Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson and other Democratic leaders have taken since Trump raised the specter of a deployment in late summer, arguing that no such emergency exists and that using military personnel as the administration has proposed would violate the Posse Comitatus Act, which prohibits the use of federal troops for civilian law enforcement.
In the lawsuit and public comments, Illinois officials have blamed federal authorities for instigating conflicts, including through the use of “abusive tactics” against protesters and others in Broadview.
“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 argued in its filing.
The state lawsuit also turned the Trump administration’s braggadocio to undermine its argument that troops are necessary, citing statements touting the successes of recent immigration enforcement activities and a “confident show of force” on Sept. 28, during which “dozens of DHS agents dressed in tactical gear and carrying semi-automatic rifles walked the streets of downtown,” as evidence that no emergency exists that would require the deployment of federalized troops.
In a show of unity, U.S. Sens. Dick Durbin and Tammy Duckworth, a veteran wounded in combat in Iraq, and all 14 Democratic members of the state’s congressional delegation sent a letter to Trump that urged the president to reverse course.
A picture of what a potential deployment in Illinois could look like became clearer Monday through court records and information from local officials.
Exhibits filed in the Illinois lawsuit showed Maj. Gen. Rodney Boyd, commander of the Illinois National Guard, stated on Sunday evening that he believed federal officials intended to deploy a total of 500 National Guard members to Illinois, according to a statement filed along with the lawsuit by Deputy Gov. Bria Scudder, a top Pritzker aide.
Of those, 300 would be Illinois National Guard members, while the rest would be Texas National Guard members “pulled off of border guard duty,” Scudder recounted Boyd saying.
In its filing late Wednesday, the Trump lawyers said federal officials “undoubtedly have a substantial, tangible interest in protecting their property and personnel from harm,” and that the temporary restraining order should be denied.
“Plaintiffs ask the court to second-guess the President’s judgment of the current situation in Illinois and exercise supervisory authority over his deployment of federalized Guardsmen, with the potential of putting federal officers (and others) in harm’s way,” the filing stated. “But responsibility, and accountability, for those decisions should rest with the political branches of the federal government, not this court.”
Tribune reporter Tess Kenny contributed to this story.
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