CHICAGO — A federal judge on Thursday temporarily blocked President Donald Trump from deploying 500 National Guard troops to Chicago as the administration’s immigration enforcement actions have intensified — along with protests against them.
U.S. District Judge April Perry noted the ongoing protests outside a local immigration processing center have never exceeded 200 demonstrators. She said the demonstrations fall far short of the high legal bar needed to be characterized as a “rebellion” that would allow the administration to take control of the Illinois National Guard and deploy troops from Texas and California to Chicago.
“I have seen no credible evidence that there is a danger of rebellion in the state of Illinois,” the judge said as she issued her oral ruling late Thursday afternoon.
While Perry acknowledged protesters have assaulted immigration agents and damaged federal property — namely vehicles belonging to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and U.S. Border Patrol — the judge said there was far more evidence that the feds actually escalated or even caused clashes with activists.
More than a dozen protestors have been arrested in recent weeks outside an ICE processing center in the suburb of Broadview, approximately 13 miles directly west of Thursday’s hearing in Chicago’s Dirksen Federal Courthouse.
The ICE facility has been the epicenter of protests against the Trump administration’s ramped-up immigration enforcement actions in the last month. The Department of Homeland Security claims “Operation Midway Blitz” in Chicago and its suburbs has resulted in the arrests of more than 1,000 people.
Read more: Court scrutiny of ICE mounts as judge rules warrantless arrests violated order
National Guard would add ‘fuel to the fire’
DHS claims the federal troop deployment is necessary to protect the facility, along with federal immigration agents working in and around it.
But the judge agreed with arguments put forth by the state and city of Chicago in its lawsuit that deploying the National Guard was more likely to lead to civil unrest than be a force for peacekeeping, as guardsmen are “not trained in de-escalation.” Throughout nearly three hours of arguments in her courtroom, she continually pushed back on U.S. Department of Justice lawyers’ claims that Chicago-area immigration protests had grown out of control due to violent agitators.
Perry noted that for 19 years, weekly prayer vigils outside the Broadview facility occurred without incident. But she said most of the evidence pointed to federal agents — not protesters — as the catalysts for violence. She recounted recent incidents in which agents used chemical agents and nonlethal rounds against crowds “as small as 10 people.”
Deploying the guard “will only add fuel to the fire that the defendants themselves have started,” she said.
The judge will publish a written decision on Friday. But after giving her a verbal ruling Thursday, she agreed to use the widest possible wording to prevent the Trump administration from deploying troops from other states while her 14-day temporary restraining order remains in place.
For now, the feds won’t be able to order troops to perform their “federal protective missions” anywhere in Illinois.
That includes members of the Texas National Guard, who made their first appearance Thursday morning at the Broadview facility.
Read more: Judge won’t block federal troop deployment to Chicago — for now | Illinois sues to block Trump’s National Guard deployment to Chicago
Texas Guard is already here
The Trump administration dispatched National Guard troops to Illinois from Texas earlier this week, even after the judge on Monday urged them to wait for Thursday’s hearing. Fourteen members of California’s National Guard were also sent to the Chicago area in order to train Illinois troops. Eric Wells, a top lawyer for Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul, argued the move was a harbinger of “wanton tyranny.”
“I can only say that what I think what we heard from the United States Department of Justice was startling, unbounded, limitless and not in accord with our system of ordered liberty of federalism, of a constitutional structure that has protected this nation and allowed it to prosper for hundreds of years,” Wells said as he began his final arguments.
Raoul sat front-row throughout Thursday’s arguments in the courtroom and grew emotional while answering reporter questions after Perry’s ruling. He called the attorneys who worked on the case “true American heroes.”
“This is an important decision not just for the state of Illinois but for the entire country,” he said. “The question of state sovereignty was addressed in this decision. The question of whether or not the president of the United States should have unfettered authority to militarize our cities was answered today.”
Capitol News Illinois is a nonprofit, nonpartisan news service that distributes state government coverage to hundreds of news outlets statewide. It is funded primarily by the Illinois Press Foundation and the Robert R. McCormick Foundation.
