Hundreds of national guard troops remained in the Chicago area as city and Illinois officials awaited a judge’s decision to stop Donald Trump’s aggressive immigration enforcement operation in the nation’s third-largest city.
It was still unclear where specifically the Trump administration would send the troops who reported to an army training site south-west of Chicago, which was laden with extra fencing and tarps put up to block the public’s view of the facility late on Wednesday evening.
As they arrived this week, trucks marked Emergency Disaster Services pulled in and out, dropping off portable toilets and other supplies. Trailers were set up in rows.
“The federal government has not communicated with us in any way about their troop movements,” the Illinois governor, JB Pritzker, told reporters. “I can’t believe I have to say ‘troop movements’ in an American city, but that is what we’re talking about here.”
Roughly 500 soldiers – 200 from the Texas national guard and 300 from the Illinois national guard – were mobilized to the city for an “initial period of 60 days”, according to statement issued from US Northern Command, part of the defense department, which called the operation a “federal protection mission”.
The guard members are in the city to protect US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) buildings and other federal facilities and law enforcement personnel, according to Northern Command. A small number of troops have started protecting federal property in the Chicago area, officials told the Associated Press.
While the deployment came as part of a crackdown threatened by Trump, in response to unsubstantiated claims that big cities run by Democrats are overwhelmed with crime, the stated mission says military will be “performing ground activities to protect federal functions, personnel, and property”.
It marks Trump’s fourth deployment of national guard troops on to the streets of a major US city in as many months, following deployments in Los Angeles, Washington DC and Memphis. In all cases except Memphis, it happened against the wishes of state and city leaders.
Trump repeatedly has described Chicago in hostile terms, calling it a “hellhole” of crime, although police statistics show significant drops in most crimes, including homicides.
A judge will also have a role in determining how many boots are on the streets: a court hearing will be held on Thursday on a request by Illinois and Chicago to declare the guard deployment illegal. Elsewhere, an appeals court has scheduled a hearing the same day over the government’s desire to send the guard to Portland, Oregon. A judge blocked that effort over the weekend.
The nearly 150-year-old Posse Comitatus Act limits the military’s role in enforcing domestic laws. However, Trump has said he would be willing to invoke the Insurrection Act, which allows a president to dispatch active duty military in states that are unable to put down an insurrection or are defying federal law.
“This is about authoritarianism. It’s about stoking fear,” Chicago’s mayor, Brandon Johnson, said. “It’s about breaking the constitution that would give him that much more control over our American cities.”
Trump, meanwhile, sent barbs from Washington, saying on social media that Pritzker and Johnson, both Democrats, “should be in jail” for failing to protect federal agents during immigration enforcement crackdowns.
Asked about Trump’s wish to jail him, Pritzker in downtown Chicago extended his arms and told MSNBC: “If you come for my people, you come through me. So come and get me.”
Meanwhile, in Memphis, Tennessee, a small group of troops were helping on Wednesday with the Memphis Safe Task Force, said a state military department spokesperson who did not specify the exact role or number of the guard members. The taskforce is a collection of about a dozen federal law enforcement agencies ordered by Donald Trump to fight crime.
Tennessee’s Republican governor, Bill Lee, who has welcomed the guard, has said previously that he would not expect more than 150 guard members to be sent to the city.
The Associated Press contributed to this report
