Illinois leaders sue to halt Trump's National Guard deployment to Chicago after chaotic week- National & International News -

Illinois leaders sue to halt Trump’s National Guard deployment to Chicago after chaotic week

Leaders of Chicago and the state of Illinois are suing the Trump administration to halt a planned deployment of National Guard troops to Chicago. However, a federal district judge declined to issue a restraining order immediately, saying she needed time to review extensive filings in the case. She also gave the federal government until Wednesday to respond. Trump has also sent Texas National Guard troops to Chicago, which may arrive on Tuesday or Wednesday.

The legal challenge came after a federal judge in Oregon temporarily blocked Trump’s effort to federalize the National Guard there to send them to Portland. Judge Karin Immergut said the President’s justification to send troops in to quell unrest was “simply untethered to the facts”. Immergut also temporarily blocked Trump’s attempt to send California National Guard troops to Oregon.

Stirring the pot

The presence of federal agents in Chicago has already caused a great deal of unrest. Last week, a raid by agents at an apartment complex in South Shore stirred outrage. Witnesses say children were tied together with zip ties and led away from the scene, while others were turned out of their homes naked. The raid was targeting immigrants but virtually every apartment had its door beaten down, including the homes of US citizens.

Then on Saturday, a US citizen woman was shot and wounded by an ICE agent in Brighton Park. ICE claims that the woman “rammed” the agent’s vehicle and that she was shot “in self-defense” after the agent exited their vehicle. DHS spokeswoman Tricia McLaughlin claimed that the woman had a semi-automatic weapon, but the original complaint makes no mention of the woman having a weapon.

In a CNN interview, Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzer cast doubt on DHS’s version of events. “They won’t let us access the facts,” Pritzker said, “They are just putting out their propaganda, and then we have got to later determine what actually happened”.

Pritzker also said the federal mission seemed to be more about sowing chaos (which then forms a pretext to send in the National Guard) than addressing the city’s crime problem. “They’re raiding neighborhoods where, instead of going after the bad guys, they’re just picking up people who are brown and Black and then checking their credentials,” Pritzker said. He said the agents, “need to get out of Chicago if they’re not going to focus on the worst of the worst, which is what the president said they were going to do,” Pritzker said. “They need to get the heck out.”