Politics
Judge Declines to Immediately Block National Guard From Illinois Deployment After Pritzker, Johnson File Suit
Gov. JB Pritzker addresses the news media on Monday, Oct. 6, 2025, as Mayor Brandon Johnson looks on. (WTTW News)
Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker and Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson asked a federal judge Monday morning to block President Donald Trump from deploying 400 members of the Texas National Guard to Chicago alongside 300 members of the Illinois National Guard.
Military officials mobilized 2,000 members of the Texas National Guard Sunday to protect federal property at “locations where violent demonstrations against these functions are occurring or are likely to occur” in “Illinois, Oregon and other locations throughout the United States,” records show.
The lawsuit filed by Illinois and Chicago officials calls the looming deployment a politically motivated and unconstitutional federal overreach.
“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,” according to the lawsuit.
Pritzker accused agents with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security of “inciting violence” as a pretext to deploy armed military personnel to Chicago.
“The president has decided to declare war on a great American city,” Pritzker said Monday, using a news conference to detail what he called a litany of egregious offenses committed by federal officials in the past four weeks, including the detention of Ald. Jessie Fuentes (26th Ward) on Friday.
As Pritzker spoke, U.S. District Court Judge April Perry, who was appointed by former President Joe Biden, held the first hearing in the lawsuit.
Lawyers for the Trump administration said the troops from Texas could hit the streets of Chicago as soon as Tuesday.
Perry declined to immediately issue a restraining order, as requested by the state and city, but scheduled a full hearing on Thursday.
“We must now start calling this what it is: Trump’s Invasion,” Pritzker said late Sunday. “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.”
Perry was first tapped to serve as the U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Illinois. Her confirmation to that post was blocked by former U.S. Sen. JD Vance, who is now vice president.
Pritzker warned Sept. 2 that Trump was planning to order the Texas National Guard to Chicago.
It would be unprecedented for a governor to send National Guard troops into another state over the objections of that state’s elected officials at the request of the president.
Although Texas Gov. Greg Abbott denied a month ago he had any plans to allow the Texas National Guard to be deployed to Chicago, he confirmed the deployment in a post on the social media network known as X.
“I fully authorized the president to call up 400 members of the Texas National Guard to ensure safety for federal officials,” Abbott said. “You can either fully enforce protection for federal employees or get out of the way and let Texas Guard do it. No Guard can match the training, skill, and expertise of the Texas National Guard. They defend our country with pride.”
Military officials told Illinois National Guard leaders Sunday that as many as 300 members would be called into service under federal leadership for a two-month period, records show.
No riots have been reported in Chicago, even as protesters have been tear-gassed and shot with pepper pellets by federal agents outside an ICE processing facility in west suburban Broadview.
Federal officials have only a “flimsy pretext” to deploy military officials to Chicago, according the lawsuit. Deploying National Guard troops to Chicago “will cause only more unrest, including harming social fabric and community relations and increasing the mistrust of police.”
The lawsuit accuses Trump and members of his administration of ordering troops to Chicago as part of a campaign that dates back to 2013 to denigrate Chicago, home to former President Barack Obama, a longtime political rival of the president.
The lawsuit includes a long list of social media posts from the president, including his Sept. 6 post that included “an image of the Chicago skyline in flames, stating ‘Chicago about to find out why it’s called the Department of WAR,’ including a depiction of himself in the image of the fictitious warmonger character Lt. Col. Kilgore from the 1979 film ‘Apocalypse Now,’ titling the post ‘Chipocalypse Now.’”
Federal prosecutors charged two Chicagoans, including a woman shot by federal agents, with ramming a vehicle driven by an U.S. Customs and Border Protection agent in Brighton Park on Saturday morning, sparking a heated confrontation between residents of the Southwest Side neighborhood and federal agents.
Community organizations have been working to identify the location of federal agents in Chicago neighborhoods to warn undocumented immigrants of their presence. Groups have distributed whistles and created text and phone networks to sound the alarm.
Federal agents have been repeatedly heckled and confronted by Chicagoans objecting to the Trump administration’s aggressive immigration enforcement operation dubbed “Operation Midway Blitz.”
Pritzker told CNN on Sunday that federal officials are responsible for much of the violence plaguing Chicago.
“They want mayhem on the ground,” Pritzker said. “They want to create the war zone so that they can send in even more troops.”
The lawsuit accuses federal officials of using “unprecedented, brute force tactics for civil immigration enforcement; federal agents have repeatedly shot chemical munitions at groups that included media and legal observers outside the Broadview facility; and dozens of masked, armed federal agents have paraded through downtown Chicago in a show of force and control. The community’s horror at these tactics and their significant consequences have resulted in entirely foreseeable protests.”
Johnson blasted the conduct of federal agents in Chicago over the weekend, saying their tactics were designed to “undermine our democracy.”
Johnson signed an executive order Monday morning designed to prohibit federal agents from using city property during enforcement actions and allow private property owners to deny entry to federal agents without a warrant. Those prohibitions are already in place under state law and city ordinance, and local officials do not have the ability to place additional restrictions on federal agents, making Johnson’s action symbolic.
“I know Chicagoans were disturbed by the images and the videos that they have seen on the news and social media,” Johnson said. “There are many who are scared and shocked by what they are seeing. The truth is that we are at a tipping point. This administration is trying to divide us and pit people, groups against one another.”
Johnson and Pritzker were particularly critical of the conduct of federal agents who raided a South Shore apartment building on Tuesday. Approximately 300 federal agents conducted the late-night raid, with some landing on the building from Blackhawk helicopters, according to a video produced by federal officials and posted on social media.
Nearly all of the residents of the building were detained, including four children who are U.S. citizens.
Speaking alongside Johnson, Bright Star pastor Chris Harris Sr. denounced federal agents for jumping out of unmarked vans and detaining four people outside a Bronzeville shelter on Wednesday.
U.S. District Court Judge Karin Immergut, a Trump appointee, ruled late Saturday the president’s claims of daily unrest in Portland were “untethered to facts” and risked violating the U.S. Constitution by imposing military rule.
Immergut blocked federal officials from deploying the Oregon National Guard to Portland for 14 days. After her ruling, federal officials ordered members of the California National Guard to Oregon prompting Immergut to amend her order late Sunday to block federal officials from deploying any National Guard troops to Portland.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom called Trump’s effort to send California National Guard troops to Oregon a “breathtaking abuse of power.”
California National Guard troops have been under the control of federal military officials since June.
In comments from the Oval Office on Monday, President Donald Trump again attacked Chicago’s leaders for not welcoming the National Guard.
When asked by a reporter if he would consider enacting the Insurrection Act, which allows presidents to deploy the U.S. military within the country in response to what is determined to be an insurrection against the government, Trump said he would consider it.
“So far it hasn’t been necessary, but we have an Insurrection Act for a reason. If I had to enact it, I’d do that,” he said. “If people were being killed and courts were holding us up, or governors, or mayors were holding us up, sure I’d do that.”
Pritzker said Saturday that Trump’s renewed threats to send military personnel to Chicago follows “unprecedented escalations of aggression” against Chicagoans on Friday, including the dispersal of chemical agents near a Logan Square elementary school, the decision to detain Fuentes as she objected to the presence of federal agents in a hospital, and the raid of an Austin Walmart.
Chicago, Los Angeles, Washington, D.C., and Portland officials have refused to help carry out Trump’s goal of implementing the “largest domestic deportation operation in American history.”
All four cities are led by Democratic mayors, and three of the mayors are Black.
All four cities are also self-proclaimed sanctuary cities and have refused demands from federal officials that local law enforcement help federal agents deport undocumented immigrants. Trump ordered the Metropolitan Police Department in Washington, D.C., to cooperate with Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers when the federal government took control of the department.
Attempts by the Trump administration to force cities like Chicago and Los Angeles to stop protecting undocumented immigrants by yanking federal funding have been blocked by several federal judges indefinitely.
Contact Heather Cherone: @HeatherCherone | (773) 569-1863 | [email protected]
