Texas National Guard arrives in the Chicago area

By Jeremy Gorner | [email protected] | Chicago Tribune and Texas National Guard has arrived in the Chicago area despite the repeated objections of Illinois officials, who have rejected President Donald Trump’s pledge to deploy the military domestically in response to increasingly heated immigration crackdown protests here and in other Democratic-run cities across the country.

Tribune journalists saw multiple military members, dressed in camouflage and carrying long guns, on federal property in Elwood, a far southwest suburb that is home to a U.S. Army Reserve training center. Soldiers, who wore “T” patches on their arms identical to the ones shown in a picture tweeted by Texas Gov. Greg Abbott on Monday, could be seen walking in and out of mobile sleeping units on the site.

On Monday, a defense contractor told the Tribune that he was setting up sleeper units, showers and a dining hall for 250 people at the makeshift base.

The troops’ arrival angered Will County Executive Jennifer Bertino-Tarrant, a Democrat who oversees the state’s fourth most populous county. Bertino-Tarrant said her office had not been told about plans to garrison the Texas Guard at the training center, a 3,600-acre site that was previously part of the Joliet Army Ammunition Plant property.

“We received no information or coordination from the federal government about this deployment, the scale of operations or the length of time they will be stationed at this facility,” Bertino-Tarrant said in a statement. “The arrival of the National Guard by the Trump Administration is an aggressive overreach. Our federal government moving armed troops into our community should be alarming to everyone.”

State Rep. Larry Walsh Jr., a Democrat who lives in Elwood, also criticized the president for an “ineffective plan” to federalize the Illinois and Texas National Guards. He called the troops “brave and dedicated,” but said deploying Texas soldiers to his community does not address the issues that his constituents care about such as rising grocery prices and the job market.

“Instead, our communities, our families, and our neighbors will have their peace of mind taken from them by an act of political theater,” he said.

The Department of Defense did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

The Will County sheriff’s department said its deputies will not assist the Texas National Guard with immigration enforcement in keeping with Illinois law, but it will work to maintain “safe and orderly roadways for all who travel through Will County.”

Elwood Police Chief Fred Hayes said he was notified Monday to expect increased activity at the training center, but he wasn’t told how many soldiers would be there or for how long.

“The Village of Elwood is honored to host the men and women of the National Guard,” Hayes said. “The Village of Elwood is working closely with local, state and federal partners to ensure that the presence of the National Guard is both effective and minimally disruptive to residents … While the National Guard’s presence is temporary and focused on supporting federal operations outside our jurisdiction, we recognize the importance of keeping our community informed.”

The Texas Guard members are staying in Elwood because Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker is not allowing them to use state armories. Pritzker told the Tribune that the federal government has not given him any information about the soldiers’ arrival in the Chicago area to assist with “Operation Midway Blitz,” the immigration enforcement mission spearheaded by the Department of Homeland Security.

The governor also said he has received no reports of troops being spotted outside the Army Reserve training center.

“They have not been seen on the streets anywhere,” he said. “They’ve not been deployed anywhere that I am aware of.”

The Illinois attorney general’s office filed a lawsuit Monday attempting to block the Trump administration from mobilizing National Guard troops here, arguing that “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.”

But a federal judge in Chicago declined to issue an immediate order blocking Trump’s move to activate Guard members and gave the Trump administration until Wednesday at midnight to respond to the lawsuit, which asks that the federalization and deployment of National Guard troops be declared unconstitutional and that the court block Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth from deploying troops to Illinois.

Judge April Perry, a Biden administration appointee, said she could not issue a temporary restraining order to halt the deployment of troops into Illinois without first reading the lengthy court filings.

“The deployment of federalized National Guard, including from another state, infringes on Illinois’s sovereignty and right to self-governance,” stated the filing, which also names as defendants Hegseth, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and Army Secretary Daniel Driscoll. “It will cause only more unrest, including harming social fabric and community relations and increasing the mistrust of police. It also creates economic harm, depressing business activities and tourism that not only hurt Illinoisans but also hurt Illinois’s tax revenue.”

A frustrated Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson told reporters Tuesday that he did not know where the Texas troops were staying or when they could arrive within the Chicago city limits.

“Those are all great questions,” the mayor said at a City Hall news conference before nodding to the lawsuit seeking to halt Trump’s troop deployment to Illinois. “The judge had the same questions and gave the federal government 48 hours to respond, because none of that has been clear … So no, they have not communicated. None of those things have been made clear. But one thing that I can tell you that is clear is that we’re going to hold this administration accountable.”

While not sparing the president from his usual attacks of declaring “war on Chicago,” Johnson also mentioned that roughly 3,000 runners from Mexico were signed up for the annual city marathon this weekend and he insisted they come because “the best way in which we can demonstrate resistance is not bending the knee to tyranny.”

The Department of Homeland Security did not immediately respond to a request for comment. A White House spokeswoman said Trump has used “his lawful authority to protect federal officers and assets.”

Speaking with reporters in the Oval Office on Tuesday, Trump again suggested invoking the Insurrection Act against Democratic-led cities resisting his National Guard deployments, naming Chicago specifically. The 200-year-old law grants the federal government authority to deploy the military to suppress rebellion within American borders.

“Yeah, well, it’s been invoked before, as you know. If you look at Chicago, Chicago is a great city where there’s a lot of crime,” Trump said. “The mayor is grossly incompetent. … Lowest approval rating, lower than even (Mayor Bill) de Blasio had, which is hard to believe, in New York. I thought de Blasio would always maintain that record, but the Chicago guy is even lower.”

Johnson, for his part, said Trump himself had “incited an insurrection” on Jan. 6, 2021, at the U.S. Capitol and compared him to Russian President Vladmir Putin.

Trump has federalized up to 300 Illinois Guard members and Abbott, a Republican, agreed to also send troops here from his state — military forces federal officials claim are paramount to keep federal officers safe amid escalating protests against the administration’s surge of immigration enforcement.

Abbott said in a social media post Sunday that he “fully authorized the President to call up 400 members of the Texas National Guard to ensure safety for federal officials.”

“You can either fully enforce protection for federal employees or get out of the way and let Texas Guard do it,” he said.

Federal memos have indicated the deployments would last at least 60 days. If the state’s legal challenge fails, it would take a few days before the general public would see the Illinois National Guard on the streets, Pritzker said. The troops must pass medical evaluation and then undergo training that would reflect their mission in the Chicago area before assisting with immigration enforcement.

“We don’t have troops that just sit in barracks in Illinois that are waiting to go on duty,” Pritzker said. “They have jobs. They’re the doctors and EMS and policemen, and they have jobs that are not to do with the National Guard.”

 

Trump has long derided Illinois and Chicago sanctuary laws that restrict local law enforcement from cooperating with federal authorities in enforcing civil immigration matters. A federal judge in Chicago earlier this summer dismissed a lawsuit from the Trump administration challenging those policies.

But the Chicago area and the nation have faced a surge in violence and unrest surrounding ramped-up federal immigration enforcement in recent weeks.

Federal agents fatally shot Silverio Villegas-González last month in Franklin Park as he fled in his car during an attempted arrest. DHS officials immediately claimed an agent had been dragged by the man’s car. But in body camera footage later obtained by the Tribune and other news organizations, the agent referred to his own injuries as “nothing major” moments after he shot and killed the man.

In September, aTwo detainees were killed and the gunman fatally shot himself after the attack. No ICE agents were shot, according to authorities. Trump has blamed the shooting on the “radical left.”

Locally, a woman was shot by an immigration agent Saturday after she allegedly rammed his vehicle on Chicago’s Southwest Side. She was charged with forcibly assaulting, impeding and interfering with a federal law enforcement officer, which carries a sentence of up to 20 years in prison.

An ICE holding facility in west suburban Broadview has been the site of multiple tumultuous anti-immigration enforcement demonstrations, with federal agents hurling tear gas and baton rounds at protesters.

In a Sept. 26 memo to the Defense Department, Homeland Security requested 100 troops to help protect ICE facilities in Illinois from “coordinated assault by violent groups.”

“The violence and dehumanization of these men and women who are simply enforcing the law must stop,” said Tricia McLaughlin, a spokesperson for Homeland Security’s Noem, in a statement.

Illinois officials, however, have accused the Trump administration of spurring conflict and confrontation through its unnecessarily aggressive tactics.

“They are using Gestapo tactics in Chicago, and this is what Trump wants to do, right?” U.S. Sen. Tammy Duckworth said. “He wants to intimidate the people of Chicago. That’s not going to happen.”

The state’s lawsuit argues that there’s no emergency here and that the federalization of troops violates the Posse Comitatus Act, which bars the use of military troops for civilian law enforcement.

“Far from lawless riots, the Broadview protests have been small, primarily peaceful, and unfortunately escalated by DHS’s own conduct, seemingly for the goal of using them as a pretext for the Chicago troop deployment that was announced by Trump long ago,” the state claimed in its filing.

The National Guard’s arrival comes a few days after a federal judge twice blocked the federalized guard from deploying in Oregon. A month ago, a federal judge in California declared guard deployments there in violation of federal law, though that decision was reversed on appeal.

These cases offer a glimpse at what Chicago might experience as the National Guard descends on the nation’s third-largest city — and what legal issues might arise in the burgeoning court battle between Republican federal authorities seeking domestic military expansion and the local Democrats who are staunchly opposed.

Declaring Portland “war-ravaged” amid nightly protests over immigration enforcement, Trump had activated 200 Oregon National Guard troops to protect federal buildings in the Portland area in September, authorizing “full force, if necessary,” according to his Truth Social account.

U.S. District Judge Karin Immergut, a Trump appointee from his first term, temporarily blocked that deployment on Saturday, noting that the protests in Portland overall were “small and uneventful.”

While a president generally is allowed a great deal of deference to federalize National Guard forces when local law enforcement aren’t able to enforce the law, Immergut determined that Trump’s assessment of the situation in Portland “was simply untethered” to the reality there.

“‘A great level of deference’ is not equivalent to ignoring the facts on the ground,” Immergut wrote in her opinion.

The Trump Administration is appealing the ruling.

Fabbre is a freelance reporter.