President Trump threatens to jail Chicago mayor and Illinois governor
President Donald Trump has suggested that the mayor of Chicago and the governor of Illinois should be jailed for “failing to protect ICE.”
President Donald Trump’s deployment of the National Guard to Portland and Chicago will be heard in court on Thursday, October 9, as state leaders push back against what they say is the illegal and unwarranted militarization of their cities.
In Illinois, a judge is expected to decide whether to block the deployment of hundreds of security guards to the nation’s third-largest city. In California, a federal appeals court will consider a lower court’s order blocking the deployment of the National Guard to Portland.
Hearings are scheduled to begin at noon Eastern time in both San Francisco and Chicago.
The legal battle began as the National Guard began patrolling immigration facilities in the village of Broadview, Illinois, about 19 miles west of downtown Chicago. The facility has been the site of protests against aggressive ICE raids in the city, with occasional clashes between federal agents and demonstrators.
Hundreds of people marched through downtown Chicago on Wednesday, October 8, to protest the president’s mobilization of 500 soldiers to the city, including 200 from Texas.
State and local officials pushed back, accusing the White House of manufacturing a crisis to justify sending troops to Democratic strongholds. President Trump characterized these cities as in crisis and accused their leaders of allowing crime and illegal immigration to flourish.
Lawsuits pile up over Trump’s National Guard deployment
The Trump administration is fighting four lawsuits over the deployment of the National Guard to Democratic-led cities, including Los Angeles, Washington, D.C., Portland and Chicago. So far, judges in Los Angeles and Portland have ruled the deployment illegal and unjustified.
In the Portland case, U.S. District Judge Karyn Immergut, a Trump appointee, blocked the initial deployment of the Oregon National Guard before the White House announced it would send Guard troops from California and Texas. Attempting to evade Imargut’s original orders, she ended up forbidding military entry into Portland.
The Trump administration appealed the decision to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit, which previously ruled in its favor. In June, an appeals court reversed a lower court’s ruling that the summer deployment of troops to Los Angeles was illegal because of escalating violence and property damage during anti-ICE protests.
In Illinois, state and local leaders sued the Trump administration over the weekend deployment of troops. In an emergency hearing, U.S. District Judge April M. Perry allowed the deployment to move forward, but warned that any military action before the Oct. 9 hearing could be used as evidence against the Trump administration.
(This story has been updated to add new information.)
Contributed by: Reuters
