Lawyers for the Trump administration argued in a filing late Wednesday that escalating violence against immigration officials during the ongoing \u201cOperation Midway Blitz\u201d enforcement actions justify the deployment of National Guard troops to protect against \u201ca danger of a rebellion against federal authority\u201d that impedes \u201cthe ability of federal officials to enforce federal law.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Trump administration\u2019s response to the state\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n
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\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe 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,\u201d the Justice Department said in the filing.<\/p>\n
In requesting the emergency restraining order, Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Trump administration\u2019s 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\u2019s sovereignty and right to self-governance,\u201d the AG filing stated. <\/p>\n
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 \u201cvery troubled\u201d by the Trump administration\u2019s 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\u2019s request to temporarily block the deployment without first reading the voluminous court filings.<\/p>\n
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.\u00a0It\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n
The Defense Department has moved in recent days to federalize 300 members of the Illinois National Guard, despite Pritzker\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n
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\u2019t 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\u2019s side in deterring such a deployment, but the troops began arriving after Perry declined to immediately intervene.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
Raoul said during a news conference Monday his office moved as swiftly as possible to bring the state\u2019s case against Trump. Pritzker, meanwhile, has continued his full-throated opposition to Trump\u2019s proposed use of military troops in the state.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere is no invasion here. There is no insurrection here. Local and state law enforcement are on the job and managing what they need to,\u201d Pritzker said Monday. \u201cDonald Trump is using our service members as political props and as pawns in his illegal effort to militarize our nation\u2019s cities.\u201d<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf I had to enact it, I\u2019d do it, if people were being killed and courts were holding us up, or governors or mayors were holding us up,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
A White House spokeswoman repeated that Trump was exercising \u201chis lawful authority to protect federal officers and assets.\u201d<\/p>\n
Given\u00a0Trump\u2019s\u00a0weekslong\u00a0flirtation\u00a0with 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\u2019s \u201cOperation Midway Blitz,\u201d \u201cthe manufactured nature of the crisis is clear,\u201d the state argued in its filing.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe 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\u2019s favor,\u201d the Illinois attorney general\u2019s office wrote.<\/p>\n
The state\u2019s filing noted Trump\u2019s long history of \u201cthreatening and derogatory statements toward\u201d Illinois and Chicago, as well as city and state leaders, dating to even before he entered the 2016 presidential race.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe supposed current emergency is belied by the fact that Trump\u2019s Chicago troop deployment threats began more than ten years ago,\u201d the state argued. \u201cIn a social media post from 2013 Trump writes \u2018we need our troops on the streets of Chicago, not in Syria.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
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\u00a0the gathered generals that he\u2019d told Hegseth, \u201cWe should use some of these dangerous cities as training grounds for our military National Guard, but military, because we\u2019re going into Chicago very soon.\u201d<\/p>\n
In arguing its case, the attorney general\u2019s office pointed to\u00a0recent court decisions\u00a0in federal court in Oregon, where a judge Trump appointed to the bench has issued two orders blocking the federalization of that state\u2019s Guard and subsequently the deployment of Guard members from neighboring California or any other state.<\/p>\n
In his memo, Hegseth informed Texas officials that Trump had \u201cauthorized me to coordinate with you on the mobilization of up to 400 members of the Texas National Guard\u201d under Title 10, which allows state Guard troops to be placed under federal command\u00a0under orders \u201cissued through the governor.\u201d<\/p>\n
In a\u00a0social media post\u00a0Sunday night, Abbott, who has clashed repeatedly with Pritzker over the past several years, wrote: \u201cYou can either fully enforce protection for federal employees or get out of the way and let Texas Guard do it.\u201d<\/p>\n
At the heart of the conflict over deploying troops to Illinois is the Trump administration\u2019s assertion that an emergency exists, warranting such action.<\/p>\n
The move also comes against the backdrop of Trump\u2019s 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\u00a0dismissed a lawsuit from the administration\u00a0challenging those policies.<\/p>\n
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 \u201ccoordinated assault by violent groups.\u201d<\/p>\n
In his weekend memo calling up Texas Guard members, Hegseth wrote, \u201cOn 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.\u201d<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
In the lawsuit and public comments, Illinois officials have blamed federal authorities for instigating conflicts, including through the use of \u201cabusive tactics\u201d against protesters and others in Broadview.<\/p>\n
\u201cFar from lawless riots, the Broadview protests have been small, primarily peaceful, and unfortunately escalated by DHS\u2019s own conduct, seemingly for the goal of using them as a pretext for the Chicago troop deployment that was announced by Trump long ago,\u201d the state argued in its filing.<\/p>\n
The state lawsuit also turned the Trump administration\u2019s braggadocio to undermine its argument that troops are necessary, citing statements touting the successes of recent immigration enforcement activities and a \u201cconfident show of force\u201d on Sept. 28, during which \u201cdozens of DHS agents dressed in tactical gear and carrying semi-automatic rifles walked the streets of downtown,\u201d as evidence that no emergency exists that would require the deployment of federalized troops.<\/p>\n
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\u2019s congressional delegation sent a letter to Trump that urged the president to reverse course.<\/p>\n
A picture of what a potential deployment in Illinois could look like became clearer Monday through court records and information from local officials.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
Of those, 300 would be Illinois National Guard members, while the rest would be Texas National Guard members \u201cpulled off of border guard duty,\u201d Scudder recounted Boyd saying.<\/p>\n
In its filing late Wednesday, the Trump lawyers said federal officials \u201cundoubtedly have a substantial, tangible interest in protecting their property and personnel from harm,\u201d and that the temporary restraining order should be denied.<\/p>\n
\u201cPlaintiffs ask the court to second-guess the President\u2019s 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\u2019s way,\u201d the filing stated. \u201cBut responsibility, and accountability, for those decisions should rest with the political branches of the federal government, not this court.\u201d<\/p>\n
Tribune reporter Tess Kenny contributed to this story.<\/p>\n
jmeisner@chicagotribune.com<\/p>\n
dpetrella@chicagotribune.com<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Lawyers for the Trump administration argued in a filing late Wednesday that escalating violence against immigration officials during…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":288536,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5124],"tags":[960,5386,1818,409,1370,50],"class_list":{"0":"post-288535","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-chicago","8":"tag-chicago","9":"tag-il","10":"tag-illinois","11":"tag-immigration","12":"tag-latest-headlines","13":"tag-news"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115342753483868212","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/288535","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=288535"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/288535\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/288536"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=288535"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=288535"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=288535"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}