CHICAGO — After weeks of threatening to do so, President Donald Trump is taking command of 300 Illinois National Guard troops and sending them to Chicago over Gov. JB Pritzker’s objections, the governor announced Saturday.
“This morning, the Trump Administration’s Department of War gave me an ultimatum: call up your troops, or we will,” Pritzker said in a statement. “It is absolutely outrageous and un-American to demand a Governor send military troops within our own borders and against our will.”
The promised deployment comes as federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, activity has ramped up in Chicago and its suburbs as part of “Operation Midway Blitz,” which has so far resulted in more than 800 arrests according to the Department of Homeland Security.
There have also been two shootings, including one Saturday on the city’s Southwest Side.
Though the Trump administration insists ICE is targeting undocumented immigrants with criminal backgrounds, reports have mounted of agents arresting those with no history of illegal activity, detaining children along with their parents and even handcuffing U.S. citizens. Immigrant and civil rights groups have alleged ICE is arresting people without warrants in violation of a federal consent decree.
The wave of raids and arrests has spurred large protests in recent weeks, especially outside of an ICE processing center in Broadview, a suburb eight miles west of Chicago. The demonstrations have spurred clashes between immigration agents and activists, leading to the arrests of several protestors last weekend on charges of resisting and assaulting officers. Agents have sprayed chemical agents and fired nonlethal rounds into the crowds outside the facility.
On Monday, Pritzker announced DHS was seeking 100 Illinois National Guard troops to protect ICE facilities and immigration agents in Illinois, warning the Trump administration would use any confrontation resulting from its Chicago-area immigration crackdown as a “pretext” for a military deployment.
On Saturday, the governor called the administration’s National Guard activation a ”manufactured performance” and not about protecting public safety.
“I want to be clear: there is no need for military troops on the ground in the State of Illinois,“ Pritzker said, pointing to the Illinois State Police’s announcement this week that it had joined forces with Broadview Police and the Cook County Sheriff’s Office to form a “Unified Command” to coordinate law enforcement activity outside the ICE facility.
One of ISP’s first acts in Broadview was designating demonstration areas, also known as “free speech zones.” Pritzker on Saturday said the combined efforts of state and local law enforcement protected “people’s ability to peacefully exercise their constitutional rights.”
The Unified Command reported the arrests of at least five protesters on Friday, and five more on Saturday night, as of 8 p.m. The area was quiet Saturday afternoon with only about a dozen protesters gathered, at times outnumbered by members of the media.
“I will not call up our National Guard to further Trump’s acts of aggression against our people,” the governor said in his statement.
But shortly before Pritzker’s announcement about the National Guard deployment Saturday, a U.S. Border Patrol agent shot a woman in an altercation between immigration agents and protesters on Chicago’s Southwest Side.
According to reporting from the Chicago Sun-Times, the woman was alleged to have been driving one of 10 cars that “rammed” and “boxed in” nearly three dozen immigration agents in the city’s Brighton Park neighborhood. Agents fired “defensive shots” when they saw the woman was allegedly “armed with a semi-automatic weapon,” according to the paper. She was taken to a nearby hospital for treatment.The woman was one of two people charged by federal prosecutors in the Northern District of Illinois with using their vehicles to “assault, impede, and interfere with the work of federal agents in Chicago.”
Trump and Pritzker have spent weeks trading barbs over the president’s threats to deploy National Guard troops to Chicago, with the governor alleging Trump’s apparent backing off from the idea last month was a sign of dementia.
The governor has already vowed legal action against the Trump administration if and when the president activated the National Guard. After the president sent 1,400 National Guard troops to Los Angeles this summer — the first time since the 1960s that the feds deployed the National Guard without a governor’s consent — a federal judge last month ruled the move violated the Posse Comitatus Act, which limits the power of the federal government to use military force for domestic matters. But the ruling only applies to California.
The National Guard’s presence in Los Angeles has dwindled to roughly 250, but there are still a couple thousand troops on assignment in Washington, D.C., where the federal government has more power over law enforcement. Since their August deployment to the nation’s capital, guardsmen have been reportedly picking up garbage, as they are only authorized to assist with arrests if asked by local law enforcement.
Trump has also threatened to federalize the National Guard in Portland, Oregon, though troops had not yet been sent as of Saturday evening. Tennessee’s Republican governor has welcomed the president’s recent suggestion that he’d deploy guardsmen to Memphis, but that has also yet to happen.
Chicago, Los Angeles, Portland, Washington, D.C. and Shelby County, Tennessee, where Memphis is situated, have all adopted so-called “sanctuary city” policies wherein local law enforcement are barred from assisting in federal immigration enforcement. Trump has targeted cities and states that have adopted such laws, and last week a federal judge in Rhode Island ruled the administration cannot withhold emergency funding from Illinois and other states based on those states’ refusal to participate in immigration enforcement.
But this week, Attorney General Kwame Raoul said he learned of another attempt by the White House to divert disaster relief funding from Illinois with four days remaining in the fiscal year “without any notice or explanation.”
Meanwhile, DHS Secretary Kristi Noem visited Illinois again on Friday. Noem has traveled to the Chicago area and Springfield several times this year, including last month when she oversaw an early morning raid in Elgin, where at least one U.S. citizen was arrested.
“Secretary Noem should no longer be able to step foot inside the State of Illinois without any form of public accountability,” Pritzker said in a statement.
On Friday, Noem appeared with Gregory Bovino, commander-at-large of the U.S. Border Patrol, at the Broadview ICE facility with a camera crew, according to Chicago’s ABC 7.
Late Friday, Pritzker also said he’s making state resources available to people affected by a Sept. 30 raid on a South Shore apartment building.
In Chicago’s Logan Square neighborhood, masked federal agents deployed a chemical irritant outside of a grocery store as people and cars lined up to block their advancement, according to the Chicago Sun-Times.
State Rep. Eva-Dina Delgado, D-Chicago, condemned the action, which happened around the corner from an elementary school in her district. Chicago Ald. Jessie Fuentes also alleges she was handcuffed by immigration agents while questioning them at a Humboldt Park medical center.
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