Illinois and Chicago sue Trump administration over deployment of National Guard
By Dakin Andone, CNN
(CNN) — We’ve moved to Live Updates for coverage of this developing story. Follow the latest here.
The state of Illinois and Chicago on Monday sued the Trump administration over its move to deploy National Guard troops to Chicago as the White House targets Democrat-led cities amid weeks of protests against the federal government’s immigration enforcement campaign.
The lawsuit opens a new front in the legal battles the White House is waging against state and local officials, coming just hours after a federal judge blocked a similar deployment of the guard to Portland, Oregon.
“Defendants’ deployment of federalized troops to Illinois is patently unlawful,” the lawsuit says. “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 comes two days after the White House announced President Donald Trump authorized sending 300 members of the Illinois National Guard to Chicago to “protect federal officers and assets,” reprising a strategy he first used against anti-Immigration and Customs Enforcement protests in Los Angeles and Washington, DC.
News of the deployment was condemned by Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker, who said he refused to call up the National Guard after the Trump administration demanded he do so. On Sunday – after learning the administration also planned to send 400 members of the Texas National Guard to Illinois and Oregon, among other places – Pritzker likened the move to an “invasion.”
The lawsuit asks the court to order the administration to stop federalizing or deploying any National Guard troops to Illinois, and to declare the federalization of National Guard troops more broadly as unlawful. Trump, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and Department of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth are among the defendants named.
In a statement, a White House spokesperson said the president “will not turn a blind eye to the lawlessness plaguing American cities.”
“Amidst ongoing violent riots and lawlessness, that local leaders like Pritzker have refused to step in to quell, President Trump has exercised his lawful authority to protect federal officers and assets,” spokesperson Abigail Jackson told CNN.
The complaint, filed in the US District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, Eastern Division, argued the deployments are politically motivated, claiming Trump has a long history of making “threatening and derogatory” comments about Chicago and the state of Illinois, dating to at least 2013.
Among other examples, it calls out a September 6 social media post by Trump in which he said Chicago would “find out why it’s called the Department of WAR,” referring to the president’s rebranded name for the Pentagon.
Illinois and Chicago have already seen a “surge” of federal agents, some of whom have responded to demonstrations at an ICE facility in Broadview, near Chicago, the lawsuit says. Those protests are a “flimsy pretext” to deploy National Guardsmen to the state, the lawsuit says.
Instead, “Defendants’ provocative and arbitrary actions have threatened to undermine public safety by inciting a public outcry,” the lawsuit says, because local and state law enforcement have been sent to “maintain the peace” in Broadview while ICE continues operating the facility.
“There is no legal or factual justification” for the National Guard federalization order, the lawsuit says.
Illinois’ complaint follows a similar challenge to the administration’s move to assign federalized guard troops from Oregon and California to Portland.
Officials in both states had objected, and a Trump-appointed federal judge on Sunday temporarily blocked the deployment of National Guard from anywhere in the US to Portland.
The president, the judge said, appeared to have “exceeded his constitutional authority” by federalizing troops, because protests in Portland “did not pose a ‘danger of rebellion.’”
This story has been updated with additional information.
The-CNN-Wire
™ & © 2025 Cable News Network, Inc., a Warner Bros. Discovery Company. All rights reserved.
