Officials accuse US President Donald Trump of ‘unlawful and unconstitutional’ use of National Guard in latest effort to stop deployment.
Illinois has become the latest US state to launch legal action in hopes of blocking United States President Donald Trump from deploying the National Guard.
The lawsuit filed on Monday by Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul and officials from the city of Chicago came just hours after a federal judge in Oregon temporarily blocked Trump from sending the National Guard to the state’s largest city, Portland. The White House has said that it is appealing that decision.
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Trump has sought to expand the use of the US military during his second term, including to aid in domestic immigration and law enforcement. That has come amid a wider effort to portray Democrat-run cities as violence-ridden and lawless.
In a post on X, Illinois Governor JB Pritzker decried Trump’s latest plan, which would involve federalising 300 of the state’s National Guard troops and deploying another 400 from Texas, as “unlawful and unconstitutional”.
Attorney General Raoul said US citizens “should not live under the threat of occupation by the United States military, particularly for the reason that their city or state leadership has fallen out of a president’s favor “.
Since taking office in January, Trump has already deployed National Guard troops to Los Angeles in the state of California and the federal district of Washington, DC, and has floated sending troops to at least eight other major cities.
In September, a federal judge ruled that the Trump administration “wilfully ” broke federal law by deploying guard troops to Los Angeles amid protests over immigration raids.
In the Oregon case, Judge Karin Immergut temporarily blocked Trump’s plan to deploy 200 National Guard troops from neighbouring California, saying anti-immigration enforcement protests there “did not pose a danger of rebellion”.
Immergut also chided the Trump administration for appearing to disregard an order she had issued just a day earlier.
“Aren’t defendants simply circumventing my order?” she asked on Sunday. “Why is this appropriate?”
Under US law, the US military cannot be used for domestic law enforcement unless the president deems the situation an insurrection and invokes the Insurrection Act. However, the National Guard can be used in a support capacity for federal law enforcement agents in some instances.
Despite the legal setbacks, Trump has remained defiant.
Speaking to US military commanders last week, Trump referred to “civil disturbances” as the “enemy within”. He further vowed to straighten out US cities “one by one”.
In one particularly remarkable statement, Trump said: “We should use some of these dangerous cities as training grounds for our military”.
Beyond the National Guard, the Trump administration has surged federal law enforcement and immigration agents to cities across the country.
In Chicago, protesters have frequently rallied near an immigration facility outside of the city, where authorities arrested 13 people on Friday.
On Saturday, the Department of Homeland Security said that federal agents shot a woman in Chicago’s southwest.
A department statement said the shooting happened after Border Patrol agents monitoring the area “were rammed by vehicles and boxed in by 10 cars”. The woman, who survived the shooting, was taken into federal custody soon afterwards.
