Hundreds of national guard troops remained in the Chicago area as city and Illinois officials awaited a judge’s decision to stop Donald Trump’s aggressive immigration enforcement operation in the nation’s third-largest city.
It was still unclear where specifically the Trump administration would send the troops who reported to an army training site south-west of Chicago, which was laden with extra fencing and tarps put up to block the public’s view of the facility late on Wednesday evening.
As they arrived this week, trucks marked Emergency Disaster Services pulled in and out, dropping off portable toilets and other supplies. Trailers were set up in rows.
“The federal government has not communicated with us in any way about their troop movements,” the Illinois governor, JB Pritzker, told reporters. “I can’t believe I have to say ‘troop movements’ in an American city, but that is what we’re talking about here.”
Roughly 500 soldiers – 200 from the Texas national guard and 300 from the Illinois national guard – were mobilized to the city for an “initial period of 60 days”, according to statement issued from US Northern Command, part of the defense department, which called the operation a “federal protection mission”.
The guard members are in the city to protect US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) buildings and other federal facilities and law enforcement personnel, according to Northern Command.
A small number of troops have started protecting federal property in the Chicago area, officials told the Associated Press.
Footage of uniformed troops arriving early on Thursday morning at an Ice processing facility in the suburban community of Broadview, which has become a focal point of protests. They carried shields and what appeared to be luggage.
In a statement, the village of Broadview said three vans carrying 45 members of the Texas national guard had arrived at the federal building.
“During their patrols, Broadview police officers observed the vans parked in the rear of 2000 25th Ave and all of the guards were sleeping. We let them sleep undisturbed. We hope that they will extend the same courtesy in the coming days to Broadview residents who deserve a good night’s sleep, too,” the statement said.
While the deployment came as part of a crackdown threatened by Trump, in response to unsubstantiated claims that big cities run by Democrats are overwhelmed with crime, the stated mission says military would be “performing ground activities to protect federal functions, personnel, and property”.
It marks Trump’s fourth deployment of national guard troops on to the streets of a major US city in as many months, following deployments in Los Angeles, Washington DC and Memphis. In all cases except Memphis, it has been against the wishes of state and city leaders.
Trump repeatedly has described Chicago in hostile terms, calling it a “hellhole” of crime, although police statistics show significant drops in most crimes, including homicides.
A judge will also have a role in determining how many boots are on the streets: a court hearing was being held on Thursday after a request by Illinois and Chicago to declare the guard deployment illegal.
The state of Illinois urged April Perry, a federal judge, to order the national guard to stand down, calling the deployment a constitutional crisis. The government “plowed ahead anyway”, attorney Christopher Wells said. “Now, troops are here.”
Wells’ arguments opened an extraordinary hearing where heavy public turnout at the downtown Chicago courthouse caused officials to open an overflow room with a video feed of the hearing.
Eric Hamilton, a justice department lawyer, said the Chicago area was rife with “tragic lawlessness”. He discussed an incident last weekend in which a Border Patrol vehicle was reportedly boxed in and an agent shot a woman in response.
But in a court filing, the city and state lawyers say protests at the Ice building in Broadview have “never come close to stopping federal immigration enforcement”.
“The president is using the Broadview protests as a pretext,” they wrote. “The impending federal troop deployment in Illinois is the latest episode in a broader campaign by the president’s administration to target jurisdictions the president dislikes.”
It’s one of several major court fights on the deployment of federal troops to American cities.
Also Thursday, a federal appeals court heard arguments over whether Trump had the authority to take control of 200 Oregon national guard troops. The president had planned to deploy them in Portland, where there have been mostly small nightly protests outside an Ice building.
US district judge Karin Immergut on Saturday granted a temporary restraining order blocking the Oregon troops’ deployment, and on Sunday blocked the deployment of any national guard troops to the city.
The case at the heart of Sunday’s decision was brought by the states of Oregon and California, whose national troops Trump had sent to Portland. Two dozen other states with a Democratic attorney general or governor signed a court filing in support of the legal challenge by California and Oregon. Twenty others, led by Iowa, backed the Trump administration.
The case centers around the nearly 150-year-old Posse Comitatus Act, which limits the military’s role in enforcing domestic laws. However, Trump has said he would be willing to invoke the Insurrection Act, which allows a president to dispatch active duty military in states that are unable to put down an insurrection or are defying federal law.
“This is about authoritarianism. It’s about stoking fear,” Chicago’s mayor, Brandon Johnson, said. “It’s about breaking the constitution that would give him that much more control over our American cities.”
Trump, meanwhile, sent barbs from Washington, saying on social media that Pritzker and Johnson, both Democrats, “should be in jail” for failing to protect federal agents during immigration enforcement crackdowns.
Asked about Trump’s wish to jail him, Pritzker extended his arms and told MSNBC: “If you come for my people, you come through me. So come and get me.”
Meanwhile, the homeland security secretary, Kristi Noem, said the department was “doubling down” by buying buildings in Chicago – and also Portland – for Ice personnel to operate from.
“We’re purchasing more buildings in Chicago to operate out of. We’re going to not back off,” she said. “In fact, we’re doubling down, and we’re going to be in more parts of Chicago in response to the people there.”
At the same time in Memphis, a small group of troops were helping on Wednesday with the Memphis Safe Task Force, said a state military department spokesperson who did not specify the exact role or number of the guard members. The taskforce is a collection of about a dozen federal law enforcement agencies ordered by Trump to fight crime.
Tennessee’s Republican governor, Bill Lee, who has welcomed the guard, has said previously that he would not expect more than 150 guard members to be sent to the city.
The Associated Press contributed to this report
Source: US Politics - theguardian.com
