Six months after she blocked President Donald Trump's efforts to deploy National Guard troops into Chicago, a federal judge Monday confirmed that the orders triggering the deployment are no longer in effect and dismissed the lawsuit that challenged them.
U.S. District Judge April Perry ruled that the case is "moot," meaning there's no meaningful action left for her to take. But she warned that there are still "fail safes" built into the legal system, especially if it turns out there were "misrepresentations" from the Trump administration.
"The court cannot provide ongoing protection against hypothetical unlawful acts committed by the federal government," Perry said.
The judge's ruling comes despite a Dec. 31 social media post by Trump, commenting on his administration's plans for Chicago, in which he promised "we will come back, perhaps in a much different and stronger form, when crime begins to soar again — Only a question of time!"
Perry told the courtroom, "I honestly don't know what to make of those particular social media messages."
Given that the president's comments were "about general crime control, which is not at all what this deployment was supposed to be about," Perry said the president's commentary was "not helpful enough" to find any exception in the law that would allow her to keep the case alive.
Attorney General Kwame Raoul later reacted to the ruling by saying American people "should not live under threat of military occupation simply because they live in a jurisdiction that has fallen out of a president's political favor."
"I am pleased that today, the court has declared the Trump administration's unlawful orders defunct and said it is absolutely clear that the administration cannot use the Illinois orders to federalize or deploy National Guard troops in Illinois," Raoul said.
Perry's ruling brings to an end a historic lawsuit filed in the heat of the aggressive deportation campaign known as Operation Midway Blitz. The case eventually led to a rare defeat for the Trump administration before the U.S. Supreme Court.
That's despite a White House spokesperson's claim that the president "exercised his lawful authority to protect federal officers and assets" amid "ongoing violent riots and lawlessness."
Federal prosecutors in Chicago have yet to convict anyone of violence directed toward federal agents during Midway Blitz. One man pleaded guilty last week to concealing information about a crime, and in doing so he admitted he drove his Ford F-250 into the rear passenger side of a federal vehicle.
The events in that case took place one day before Trump triggered deployment of the National Guard into Chicago.
Perry ruled Oct. 9 that the Trump administration's "perception of events" around Chicago were "simply unreliable." She found "no credible evidence that there is danger of rebellion in the state of Illinois," nor that Trump was "unable … to execute the laws of the United States."
The judge blocked deployment, and the Supreme Court eventually sided against Trump, as well.
Perry on Monday focused on whether deployment orders from Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth remained in effect. Justice Department lawyer Stephen Tagert told the judge they'd effectively been undone through an oral order by Hegseth on Dec. 31.
Much of Monday's hearing revolved around whether Perry could view a record that documented Hegseth's Dec. 31 order. Tagert said he was not authorized to immediately make it public, but might be able to obtain that clearance eventually. However, an attorney for the state of Illinois said he'd already obtained a copy through Gov. JB Pritzker's office.
The lawyers eventually met with Perry in chambers. Then, she publicly read portions of the record documenting Hegseth's order. Bottom line, she said, Hegseth's oral order "killed" a previous extension of troop deployment through the middle of this month.
That, combined with the Supreme Court's ruling in December, all meant that it "cannot reasonably be expected" that the Trump administration would try again to deploy troops under the orders issued last October. And she said she can't rule on hypothetical scenarios.
"Things in Chicago are calm," Perry said. "They have been calm for many, many months."
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