Illinois sues Trump seeking to block deployment of national guard

Illinois is suing the Trump administration on behalf of the state and the city of Chicago after the president ordered national guard troops to deploy in the state against the governor’s wishes.

Illinois attorney general Kwame Raoul filed a lawsuit seeking to stop Donald Trump from calling up the state’s national guard or sending in troops from other states “immediately and permanently”.

“The 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’s favor,” the lawsuit says.

Trump has gone after Democrat-led cities, sending in military to clamp down on protests and aid in his deportation agenda. He has declared war on Chicago, threatening for weeks to send in more troops while immigration agents scoured the city for people to deport, and local residents protested against his crackdown.

Raoul argues that these efforts to send in guard troops against a state’s will infringe upon the state’s sovereignty and self-governance while leading to unrest and harm for the state’s residents.

“It will cause only more unrest, including harming social fabric and community relations and increasing the mistrust of police. It also creates economic harm, depressing business activities and tourism that not only hurt Illinoisians but also hurt Illinois’s tax revenue,” Raoul wrote.

Illinois governor JB Pritzker said the Trump administration had not discussed plans to federalize the state’s national guard or to send in troops from other states.

“We must now start calling this what it is: Trump’s Invasion,” he said in a statement. “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.”

A Trump-appointed judge in Oregon blocked Trump from sending in troops to Portland. California governor Gavin Newsom is also fighting against troops being sent from his state to Oregon. Troops from Texas were going to be sent to Portland and Chicago, with the blessing of Texas’s Republican governor, Greg Abbott.

Trump administration officials have railed against the ruling, saying a judge cannot prevent the president from moving troops. “Today’s judicial ruling is one of the most egregious and thunderous violations of constitutional order we have ever seen — and is yet the latest example of unceasing efforts to nullify the 2024 election by fiat,” Trump adviser Stephen Miller wrote on X.

Chicago mayor Brandon Johnson also signed an executive order to prohibit federal immigration agents from using city-owned property to conduct their operations, which comes after “documented use” of public school parking lots and a city-owned lot as staging sites, Johnson said in a press release.

“We will not tolerate ICE agents violating our residents’ constitutional rights nor will we allow the federal government to disregard our local authority. ICE agents are detaining elected officials, tear-gassing protestors, children, and Chicago police officers, and abusing Chicago residents. We will not stand for that in our city,” Johnson said in a statement.