Illinois Sues to Block Hundreds of Guard Troops that Could Deploy in Chicagoland as Feds Continue to Wage War on Residents
- aaroncynic
- Oct 6
- 5 min read
Illinois Governor JB Pritzker said that President Donald Trump plans to federalize 300 or more National Guard troops to send to Chicago, along with other cities like Portland, Oregon.
“This morning, the Trump Administration’s Department of War gave me an ultimatum: call up your troops, or we will,” Pritzker said in a statement on Saturday. “In the coming hours, the Trump Administration intends to federalize 300 members of the Illinois National Guard. They will pull hardworking Americans out of their regular jobs and away from their families all to participate in a manufactured performance — not a serious effort to protect public safety. For Donald Trump, this has never been about safety. This is about control.”
A memo obtained and published by CBS News on Sunday confirmed this.
“Up to 300 members of the Illinois National Guard will be called into Federal service effective immediately for a period of 60 days. The Chief of the National Guard Bureau will immediately coordinate the details of the mobilization with you, in coordination with the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and Commander, U.S. Northem Command. The mobilized Service members will be under the command and control of the Commander, U.S. Northern Command."
The statement says troops would be deployed "to protect Federal property, at locations where violent demonstrations against these functions are occurring or are likely to occur based on current threat assessments and planned operations."
Sunday night, Pritzker reiterated the statement and added more context, saying that the Texas National Guard would be deployed to Illinois, Oregon, and other locations and called it an "invasion."
“This evening, President Trump is ordering 400 members of the Texas National Guard for deployments to Illinois, Oregon, and other locations within the United States. No officials from the federal government called me directly to discuss or coordinate.
“We must now start calling this what it is: Trump’s Invasion. It started with federal agents, it will soon include deploying federalized members of the Illinois National Guard against our wishes, and it will now involve sending in another state’s military troops."
The announcement(s) come as the Department of Homeland Security continues to escalate its attacks on the people of Chicago, its suburbs, and the collar counties surrounding Cook County. In just the last week, in addition to regularly kidnapping people off the street in the Chicagoland area, ICE conducted several large-scale raids, including one in the South Shore neighborhood that featured Blackhawk helicopters with heavily armed agents rappelling from them, doors broken down, homes broken into, property stolen, and people, including children, zip-tied and disappeared into vans in the middle of the night.
Beginning on Friday and through the weekend, ICE agents also deployed tear gas in several Chicago neighborhoods, including near a hospital in Humboldt Park, a school and grocery store in Logan Square, and through a swath of the Brighton Park neighborhood after community members began a spontaneous protest in response to agents shooting a motorist. Additionally, agents violently handcuffed Chicago Alderwoman Jessie Fuentes at a hospital, who was advocating for a person in the custody of federal agents.
DHS released a statement alleging that the agents in Brighton Park were “rammed by vehicles and boxed in by 10 cars” while “patrolling in the greater Broadview area,” which is some 15 miles northwest of the neighborhood. According to an 8 page criminal complaint published by the Sun-Times, the motorist allegedly "drove aggressively and erratically towards” agents' vehicles, disobeyed stop signs, red lights and drove “the wrong way down one-way streets in order to pursue the CBP Vehicles.” Evidence of the allegations has still yet to be confirmed, and video circulating on social media appears to contradict the DHS narrative. In the wake of the shooting, DHS agents deployed a host of chemical munitions on people at the scene, including members of the Chicago Police Department. The motorist and one other person have been charged with felony assault.
Law enforcement from federal, state, and local agencies have also ramped up attacks and arrests on people protesting outside of the ICE detention facility in Broadview, Illinois, a western suburb of Chicago. For weeks and months, community members, activists, and elected officials have been protesting outside the facility, where many of the people kidnapped by ICE in the greater Chicagoland area are held and “processed.” Those who’ve been inside the facility, including Steve Held, a journalist with the outlet Unraveled, who have been documenting the situation for weeks, described deplorable conditions detainees face.
“Reportedly some ICE detainees are held for days, even up to a week,” Held wrote in a thread on Bluesky, after being released from being arrested while covering protest outside the facility. “Our room stank of sweat & pepper ball powder after just a few hours. Their room appeared dirty, filled with men dressed for labor, trying to get comfortable to sleep in chairs or on the cold floor in the cinder block room.”
Governor Pritzker has directed pleny of fiery rhetoric towards Trump and has repeatedly told residents of Chicagoland to protest and film what ICE does when they kidnap people off the street. At the same time, the Illinois Department of Transportation set up large concrete barricades outside of the facility in Broadview to designate a "free speech zone." Various federal agencies still attacked demonstrators anyway, with the help of the Illinois State Police and other local agencies.
While National Guard troops were not yet seen on the streets of Chicago or the surrounding area on Sunday, the war of words between President Trump and Governor Pritzker continued.
Speaking to Jake Tapper on CNN’s State of the Union, Governor Pritzker called the raid in South Shore “shameful,” and said that the state’s Department of Children and Family Services is investigation what happened to the children who were zip-tied and elderly people who were held in a truck for more than three hours.
“What kind of a country are we living in? And this raid at this building is emblematic of what ICE and CBP and the president of the United States, Kristi Noem and Greg Bovino, are trying to do,” said Pritzker. “They want mayhem on the ground. They want to create the war zone, so that they can send in even more troops.”
Monday morning, the State of Illinois filed a lawsuit attempting to block the deployment. “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 complaint reads, according to The Hill.
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