Officials in Illinois braced Tuesday for the possible arrival of the National Guard while a legal challenge to President Donald Trump’s plan to send hundreds of troops to the Chicago area simmers and critics vigorously pan the deployment as an assault on the city.
Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker, a Democrat, has said some 300 of the state’s guard troops were to be federalized and sent to Chicago, along with 400 from Texas.
Pritzker accused Trump of using troops as “political props” and “pawns.” Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson told reporters that the administration isn’t sharing much information with the city.
“That is what is so difficult about this moment: You have an administration that is refusing to cooperate with a local authority,” Johnson said Tuesday.
Texas Republican Gov. Greg Abbott on Monday posted a picture on social media showing Texas National Guard members boarding a plane, but he didn’t specify where they were going.
A federal judge gave the Trump administration two days to respond to a lawsuit filed Monday by Illinois and Chicago challenging the plan. A hearing is scheduled for Thursday. The lawsuit says, “these advances in President Trump’s long-declared ‘War’ on Chicago and Illinois are unlawful and dangerous.”
Trump’s bid to deploy the military on U.S. soil over local opposition has triggered a conflict with blue state governors. In Oregon, a judge over the weekend blocked the Guard’s deployment to Portland.
The Trump administration has portrayed the cities as war-ravaged and lawless amid its crackdown on illegal immigration. Officials in Illinois and Oregon, however, say military intervention isn’t needed and that federal involvement is inflaming the situation.
Trump has said he would be willing to invoke the Insurrection Act if necessary. It allows the president to dispatch active duty military in states that are unable to put down an insurrection or are defying federal law.
“If I had to enact it — I’d do that,” Trump said Monday. “If people were being killed, and courts were holding us up, or governors or mayors were holding us up.”
The sight of armed Border Patrol agents making arrests near famous landmarks has amplified concerns from Chicagoans already uneasy after an immigration crackdown that began last month. Agents have targeted immigrant-heavy and largely Latino areas.
The Chicago mayor signed an executive order Monday barring federal immigration agents and others from using city-owned property, such as parking lots, garages and vacant lots, as staging areas for enforcement operations.
Separately, the American Civil Liberties Union of Illinois is also suing the federal government, accusing it of unleashing a campaign of violence against peaceful protesters and journalists during weeks of demonstrations outside a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement building in suburban Broadview.
Department of Homeland Security spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin said in response to the lawsuit that the First Amendment doesn’t protect “rioting.”
In Oregon, the Portland ICE facility has been the site of nightly protests for months, peaking in June when local police declared a riot, with smaller clashes occurring since then. In recent weeks, the protests typically drew a couple dozen people — until the deployment was announced. Over the weekend, larger crowds gathered outside the facility, and federal agents fired tear gas.
Most violent crime around the U.S. has declined in recent years. In Portland, homicides from January through June decreased by 51% to 17 this year compared with the same period in 2024, data shows. In Chicago, homicides were down 31% to 278 through August, police data shows.
Since starting his second term, Trump has sent or talked about sending troops to 10 cities, including Baltimore; Memphis, Tennessee; the District of Columbia; New Orleans; and the California cities of Oakland, San Francisco and Los Angeles.
A federal judge in September said the administration “willfully” broke federal law by deploying guard troops to Los Angeles over protests about immigration raids.
