The running battle between President Donald Trump and Democratic-led cities is nearing a new inflection point, as National Guard troops gather near Chicago while lawyers prepare for critical court hearings 2,000 miles away from each other.
The Trump administration is tying planned deployments in Chicago and Portland, Oregon, to increasingly tense protests outside Immigration and Customs Enforcement facilities, as well as citing the shooting at an ICE facility in Dallas. Two ICE detainees were killed there. Trump has called it an attack on law enforcement.
The president ramped up his criticism Wednesday of Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson and Democratic Gov. JB Pritzker, who called the Guard call-up “Trump’s invasion” over the weekend.
“Chicago Mayor should be in jail for failing to protect Ice Officers! Governor Pritzker also!” Trump wrote on Truth Social.
Both officials responded to Trump’s criticism on X Wednesday morning, and later, the mayor told CNN’s Pamela Brown it is “certainly not the first time that Donald Trump has called for the arresting of a Black man, unjustly.”
“I’m not going anywhere,” he added. “I’m going to stay firm as the mayor of this amazing city.”
Meanwhile, Pritzker wrote on X he doesn’t plan on backing down, saying, “Trump is now calling for the arrest of elected representatives checking his power. What else is left on the path to full-blown authoritarianism?”
“Masked agents already are grabbing people off the street,” the governor said. “Separating children from their parents. Creating fear.”
Trump’s commitment to the military option has been shown not only in courts, but in the frequent air travel by members of his administration. FBI Director Kash Patel and Assistant Attorney General Todd Blanche paid a brief visit to Chicago on Tuesday, at the same time Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem flew to the Portland ICE office.
Noem visited the Chicago ICE facility last week, just after multiple Cabinet officials held a news conference in Memphis, Tennessee, touting the coming Guard deployment there.
If the pending court cases challenging the deployments don’t go Trump’s way, the president has said he may effectively overrule them by invoking the Insurrection Act, which allows the deployment of troops in the US in certain limited situations – it’s the largest statutory exception to the Posse Comitatus Act, which generally prohibits the use of the military inside the US for domestic law enforcement purposes.
“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, sure I do that.”
Before National Guard troops are sent out for their protection mission, members undergo training in de-escalation, crowd control, and the standing rules for use of force, US Northern Command says on its website.
National Guard members are on their missions specifically to help federal functions, personnel and property, which can include “crowd control and establishment of security perimeters,” Northern Command said. Military members will not be arresting protesters as that is a law enforcement activity, it added.
Here is where the National Guard deployments stand now:
Chicago
It’s said that nature abhors a vacuum, and the vacuum produced by a federal judge’s decision to avoid an immediate ruling on whether to block the president’s deployments in Chicago is quickly being filled by hundreds of Guard troops pouring into local training facilities there.
Trump authorized 300 Illinois National Guard troops for active duty in Chicago, and the Republican governor of Texas, Greg Abbott, volunteered another 400 of his state’s guardsmen. Three hundred members of the Illinois National Guard and 200 members of the Texas National Guard were activated under Title 10 and are now in the Chicago area, US Northern Command said in an update Wednesday.
Members of the Texas National Guard were seen at a suburban training center Tuesday. The troops are undergoing training, including in de-escalation and crowd control, US Northern Command said.
The judge overseeing the court case, District Court Judge April Perry – nominated to the bench last year by President Joe Biden – told both sides earlier this week she needed more time to digest the complicated legal issues surrounding the troop deployments.
Both sides have until the end of the day Wednesday to submit their written arguments to Perry, with a hearing scheduled for Thursday morning. The Trump administration filed a response Wednesday afternoon asking the court to be allowed to file an oversized brief.
A group of 26 former governors across the US submitted a brief Wednesday in support of the temporary restraining order halting the deployment of the National Guard in the area, saying it would “only exacerbate tensions in Chicago.”
“The president’s assertion of authority to deploy military troops on domestic soil based on his unreviewable discretion, and without the cooperation and coordination of state authorities, threatens to upset the delicate balance of state and federal authority that underlies our constitutional order,” the filing says.
The mayor of Chicago said local police trying to maintain order are being put in a difficult position.
“The president of the United States of America is literally pitting law enforcement against law enforcement,” Johnson said during a news conference Tuesday.
On Wednesday, he told CNN, “What we are seeing is a full escalation from these federal agents.
“We always knew that sending in the federal agents was a pretext to the National Guard,” Johnson said. “His ultimate goal is to send the military into American cities.”
As the legal fight unfolds, the impacts are being felt throughout the city. A soccer match between Argentina and Puerto Rico, originally scheduled to take place in Chicago next week, has been relocated to Florida as immigration tensions heighten in the city, a person familiar with the decision told The Associated Press on Wednesday.
Portland
The deliberative steps of the Illinois judge contrast with the fast movement on the similar case in Portland.
Judge Karin Immergut – a Trump appointee who once served on the Starr investigation into President Bill Clinton – almost immediately blocked Trump’s call-up of the Oregon National Guard on Saturday.
When the White House responded by deploying federalized California National Guard troops to Portland on Sunday, Immergut responded by expanding her ruling to stop all National Guard deployments in Oregon.
Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem stands on the roof of a US Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in Portland, Oregon, on Tuesday. – Ethan Swope/AP
The case is now moving to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, which is being asked by the White House to suspend Immergut’s order and allow guardsmen to be deployed. The court ruled Wednesday that the Oregon National Guard can be federalized but not deployed during the appeals process.
A Thursday hearing is scheduled for arguments on the restraining order preventing outside states’ National Guard members from coming into Oregon. It will be in front of a three-judge panel – two Trump appointees and a Clinton appointee who was once a justice on the Oregon Supreme Court.
Memphis
While the rollout of the military in Portland has been blocked by a judge, the planned rollout in Memphis is being slowed by more practical concerns.
“The Tennessee National Guard should be coming in the next few days or in the next week or so,” Democratic Mayor Paul Young told CNN affiliate WATN on Tuesday.
The exact role that the Tennessee National Guard, which is being deployed to Memphis by Republican Gov. Bill Lee, will play in the city has not been revealed.
A large group of federal law enforcement agents is already in the city as part of the Memphis Safe Task Force. The group made 386 arrests in just over a week, according to Justice Department figures released Wednesday, with more than 200 being classified as either “warrant pickups” or “administrative.” Two arrests were made in homicide cases.
The mayor’s Democratic political leadership has been at odds with the Trump administration and Republican state leaders over the need for federal involvement, but Young said they are cooperating.
“It was something that the governor and the president decided, and as mayor of the city, it’s my job to make sure it’s coordinated well within our community,” he told WATN.
Correction: An earlier version of this story misstated the type of federal troops training for deployment near Chicago. They are National Guard troops.
CNN’s Haley Britzky and Taylor Romine contributed to this report.
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