By Brett Wilkins
Defying objections from state and local leaders, Texas Army National Guard troops sent on orders from President Donald Trump began arriving in Chicagoland Tuesday, sparking widespread outrage and vows to resist.
Hundreds of federalized troops arrived at a military facility in suburban Joliet, Block Club Chicago reported. The Trump administration also announced plans over the weekend to federalize the Illinois National Guard and call up hundreds more troops for a mission to ostensibly support the president’s anti-immigrant crackdown.
Officials including US Sen. Dick Durbin (Ill.), Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker, and Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson—all Democrats—have condemned the deployment.
“No officials from the federal government called me directly to discuss or coordinate,” Pritzker said in a statement ahead of the deployment. “We must now start calling this what it is: Trump’s invasion. It started with federal agents, it will soon include deploying federalized members of the Illinois National Guard against our wishes, and it will now involve sending in another state’s military troops.”
Johnson—who on Monday signed an executive order establishing “ICE-free zones,” barring US Immigration and Customs Enforcement personnel from using city-owned facilities—addressed the deployment during a Tuesday press conference.
”As far as what we are hearing, the National Guard—first of all, it’s illegal, unconstitutional, it’s dangerous, it’s wrong,“ the progressive leader of the nation’s third-largest city told reporters. ”This is not about deportation. This is not about safety for this president.“
Illinois and the city of Chicago on Monday filed a pair of lawsuits seeking to block Trump’s invasion. US District Judge April Perry subsequently refused to block the deployment, instead ordering the US Department of Justice to respond to the lawsuit within 48 hours. Perry set a Thursday hearing on the matter before she issues a ruling on the plaintiffs’ request for a temporary restraining order to block the deployment.
Trump’s Illinois deployment followed his federal invasion of cities including Los Angeles, California; Washington, DC; and Portland, Oregon. Judges have ruled that the LA and Portland deployments are illegal.
On Monday, Trump said he was open to invoking the Insurrection Act to put down future civil unrest in US cities, drawing sharp condemnation from legal experts and other critics, some of whom accused the president of trying to foment disorder he could cite to justify even more authoritarianism.
Officials and activists in Illinois vowed to continue resisting Trump’s actions.
”Illinois will not let the Trump administration continue on their authoritarian march without resisting,“ Pritzker said Tuesday. ”We will use every lever at our disposal to stop this power grab because military troops should not be used against American communities.“
This article was originally published in Common Dreams under Creative Commons 3.0 license. Read the original article. Contact: editor@commondreams.org
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