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The city of Chicago and the state of Illinois have filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration, seeking to halt the White House’s plans to send National Guard troops to the city.
The lawsuit comes as Trump is deploying troops to Democratic-run cities across the country to advance his authoritarian and anti-immigrant agenda under the guise of fighting crime.
The White House has said it needs 300 troops from the Illinois National Guard to “protect federal officers and assets,” parroting its justification for sending troops to Los Angeles earlier this year to repress protests against Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids. Notably, a federal judge later ruled that the use of National Guard troops in that instance was unlawful.
The Trump administration has indicated that it would also like to deploy National Guard troops from other states to Chicago.
President Donald Trump’s “deployment of federalized troops to Illinois is patently unlawful,” reads the complaint from the state and city. “Plaintiffs ask this court to halt the illegal, dangerous, and unconstitutional federalization of members of the National Guard of the United States, including both the Illinois and Texas National Guard.”
The lawsuit further argues that Trump’s calls to deploy troops are politically motivated, given the president’s many “threatening and derogatory” comments regarding Chicago over the years.
Troops shouldn’t be deployed to a state without the state’s consent, the lawsuit contends, saying:
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 administration’s actions “subjected and are subjecting” residents of the state “to serious and irreparable harm,” the lawsuit adds.
According to the U.S. Constitution, while the president is commander-in-chief of the military, only Congress has the power “to provide for calling forth the militia to execute the laws of the union, suppress insurrections and repel invasions.” While Congress has passed subsequent laws allowing the president to call up the National Guard in limited circumstances, Trump’s recent attempts to deploy troops in American cities likely fall outside the scope of these statutes.
In anticipation of Trump deploying the National Guard during his second term in office, Joseph Nunn, legal counsel on Liberty and National Security for the Brennan Center for Justice, said in November that Trump cannot do so without the consent of states, except in some very rare instances.
“The law is not a blank check allowing the president to use military forces anywhere in the country and for any purpose so long as they can find one willing governor,” Nunn wrote at the time.
He added:
Deployments of the National Guard…must in all cases respect the co-equal and territorially limited sovereignty of the states. As a constitutional matter, the deployment of unfederalized Guard personnel into a nonconsenting state is never permissible.
Nunn also suggested that Trump could only use the military unilaterally through the Insurrection Act — which some observers caution the administration may consider invoking in the future.
The lawsuit from Illinois and Chicago comes after Oregon and Portland sued last week to block Trump’s use of the National Guard in Portland. U.S. District Judge Karin J. Immergut, a Trump appointee, sided with the state and city, placing an injunction on the administration barring them from sending troops.
Afterward, Trump called up troops from California and Texas instead, violating the spirit of Immergut’s ruling. In response, California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) announced that California would join in Oregon’s suit, and filed an emergency petition this weekend. Immergut, once again, placed a hold on Trump’s actions.
“How could bringing in federalized National Guard from California not be in direct contravention of the (decision) I issued yesterday? … Is there any legal authority for what you are doing?” Immergut said to White House lawyers during oral arguments before her order was made.
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