Illinois leaders went to court Monday to stop President Donald Trump from sending National Guard troops to Chicago, escalating a clash between Democratic-led states and the Republican administration during an aggressive immigration enforcement operation in the nation’s third-largest city.
The legal challenge came hours after a judge blocked the Guard’s deployment in Portland, Oregon.
The Trump administration has portrayed the cities as war-ravaged and lawless amid the government’s crackdown on illegal immigration. Officials in Illinois and Oregon say military intervention isn’t needed and that federal involvement is inflaming the situation.
The lawsuit alleges that “these advances in President Trump’s long-declared ‘War’ on Chicago and Illinois are unlawful and dangerous.”
“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,” the lawsuit says.
Governor: Federal wave is an ‘invasion’
Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker, a Democrat, said some 300 of the state’s guard troops were to be federalized and deployed to Chicago, along with 400 others from Texas.
Pritzker said the potential deployment amounted to “Trump’s invasion,” and he called on Republican Texas Gov. Greg Abbott to block it. Abbott pushed back and said the crackdown was needed to protect federal workers who are in the city as part of the president’s increased immigration enforcement.
White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson confirmed in a weekend statement that Trump authorized using Illinois National Guard members, citing what she called “ongoing violent riots and lawlessness” that local leaders have not quelled.
In Chicago, the sight of armed Border Patrol agents making arrests near famous landmarks amplified concerns from residents already uneasy after an immigration crackdown that began last month. Agents have targeted immigrant-heavy and largely Latino areas.
Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson said Monday that he signed an executive order 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.
Mayor limits protest hours at ICE site
Protesters have frequently rallied near an immigration facility outside the city, and federal officials reported the arrests of 13 protesters on Friday near the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement building in Broadview. Mayor Katrina Thompson, citing safety and other factors, said she was limiting protests to 9 a.m. to 6 p.m.
Elsewhere in the area, the Department of Homeland Security acknowledged that agents shot a woman Saturday on the southwest side of Chicago. The department said it happened after Border Patrol agents patrolling the area were “rammed by vehicles and boxed in by 10 cars.”
Chicago Police Superintendent Larry Snelling said it was reasonable for agents to believe they were being ambushed.
Portland says no crime crisis there
In Portland, U.S. District Judge Karin Immergut on Sunday granted a temporary restraining order sought by Oregon and California to block the deployment of Guard troops from those states to the city.
Immergut, who was appointed by Trump during his first term, seemed incredulous that the president moved to send National Guard troops to Oregon from neighboring California and then from Texas on Sunday, just hours after she had ruled against it the first time.
“Aren’t defendants simply circumventing my order?” she said. “Why is this appropriate?”
Local officials have suggested that many of the president’s claims and social media posts about Portland appear to rely on images from 2020. Five years later, the city has reduced crime, and downtown has seen fewer homeless encampments and more foot traffic.
There has been a sustained and low-level protest outside the Portland ICE facility, but it’s been less disruptive than the downtown clashes of 2020 when demonstrations erupted after George Floyd’s killing.
Most violent crime around the U.S. has actually declined in recent years, including in Portland, where homicides from January through June decreased by 51% to 17 this year compared to the same period in 2024, data shows.
Since the start of 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.
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Associated Press reporters Christine Fernando and Sophia Tareen contributed to this report via AP Newsroom.
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