There will be no Halloween moratorium by ICE agents in their Chicagoland hunt for undocumented immigrants.
While the daily foray into metro Chicago neighborhoods will continue, trick-or-treating or now, there will not be National Guard soldiers involved, as Noem and the Trump administration have so far been unable to convince the U.S. Supreme Court there is an emergency here.
If the Supreme Court had enough votes to authorize President Trump’s emergency motion for National Guard troopers, experts say that would have happened. But the president didn’t achieve what he wanted, which would have brought the military on Chicago streets.
“We’re absolutely not willing to pause any work that we will do to keep communities safe…” said Noem during an appearance Thursday in Gary, Indiana.
The Homeland Security secretary pledged no Halloween hiatus for ICE agents and other federal officers in their pursuit of undocumented immigrants.
Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker had asked Noam to order a holiday truce so trick-or-treaters wouldn’t have to dodge tear gas canisters as occurred recently in Chicago.
“The fact that Gov. Pritzker is asking for that…is shameful, and I think unfortunate that he doesn’t recognize how important the work is that we do to make sure we’re bringing criminals to justice and getting them off our streets especially-when we’re going to send all our kiddoes’ out,” Noem said.
Halloween will be long gone by the time U.S. Supreme Court justices decide what to do with President Donald Trump’s emergency request for a ruling on whether its legal for him to deploy national guard troopers to Chicago.
On Wednesday the high court did not find an urgency to rule immediately and so won’t resolve the dispute until Nov. 17 at earliest.
Constitutional law expert and Syracuse University law school professor emeritus William Banks says that if there had been enough votes immediately for the court to rule in Trump’s favor, it would likely have occurred.
“It probably would have happened because this is on the so-called emergency docket of the Supreme Court,” Banks told NBC Chicago. “It shows at least some members of the court are hesitating in their willingness to recognize the government’s authority to enter Chicago with military force.”
Banks notes that if there aren’t enough votes on the court right now to hand Trump a victory, then there may not be be next month. “
It’s going to be incumbent on the Trump administration lawyers to make arguments that i think they’re going to be difficult to make that the statutes that they’re relying on to deploy these forces allow the deployment as they’ve configured it,” Banks said.
The Supreme Court has asked for a definition of “regular forces” to determine whether a president has authority to send those forces into Chicago where The White House contends “criminal aliens” contribute to a war zone.
“These criminals have been wreaking havoc on Illinois and Chicagoans,” said Ted Dabrowski, a Republican candidate for governor in Illinois. “How many more people have to die, be robbed, be assaulted, be hurt by illegal immigrants?”
If the Supreme Court rules against Trump it would require two Republican- appointed justices to switch from the partisan majority. But with no immediate ruling in the case, some observers believe a Trump loss may be possible. Such a victory for the mayor and governor might be short-lived though, because it would likely trigger the last hope for a White House urban military deployment: President Trump invoking the Insurrection Act…that allows the use of all military means just on his say-so.