A US appeals court on Thursday declined a request by President Donald Trump’s administration to lift a lower court’s block on deployment of the National Guard in Chicago.
Trump has ordered hundreds of National Guard troops to Chicago, claiming they are needed to combat crime and to protect immigration agents and facilities in America’s third-largest city.
The three-judge panel said the administration had not demonstrated that conditions on the ground in the Illinois city justify the deployment of troops.
“Even after affording great deference to the president’s evaluation of the circumstances, we see insufficient evidence of a rebellion or danger of rebellion in Illinois,” the court said.
“The spirited, sustained, and occasionally violent actions of demonstrators in protest of the federal government’s immigration policies and actions, without more, does not give rise to a danger of rebellion against the government’s authority.”
“The administration remains barred from deploying the National Guard of the United States within Illinois,” the court said.
Illinois and the city of Chicago filed suit to block the deployment, a move also taken by the authorities in the western state of Oregon to block the sending of National Guard troops to Portland.
Illinois and Oregon are not the first states to file legal challenges against the Trump administration’s extraordinary domestic use of the National Guard.
Democratic-ruled California filed suit after the Republican president sent troops to Los Angeles earlier this year to quell demonstrations sparked by a federal crackdown on undocumented migrants.
A district court judge ruled it unlawful but an appeals court panel allowed the deployment to proceed.
AFP
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