Trump authorizes National Guard in Chicago as judge temporarily blocks his plan to deploy federal troops in Portland
By Karina Tsui, Michelle Watson, Zoe Sottile, CNN
(CNN) — The ongoing battle between the Trump administration and Democrat-led cities intensified this weekend, with the White House announcing authorization for hundreds of National Guard members to be sent to Chicago and a federal judge in Oregon hitting pause on the president’s plan to deploy federal troops in Portland.
Those developments came against the backdrop of continuing protests in Chicago and Portland against federal law enforcement carrying out President Donald Trump’s sweeping immigration enforcement agenda.
Trump and his administration have framed demonstrations in the two cities as “violent protests” carried out by “domestic terrorists,” arguing that military deployments are necessary to protect federal immigration personnel and property — despite state and city leaders’ insistence that the protests have been largely peaceful and any violence has been easily dealt with by local law enforcement.
Tensions spiked in Chicago on Saturday when a US Customs and Border Protection agent stepped out of his vehicle and shot five times at a woman in another vehicle, according to a charging complaint. The woman — a US citizen, according to the Department of Homeland Security — had rammed her car into a federal law enforcement vehicle, the complaint claims. DHS said the woman is in FBI custody after being discharged from the hospital, and she and another person are now facing federal criminal charges in connection with the incident.
Assistant DHS Secretary Tricia McLaughlin previously said “law enforcement was forced to deploy their weapons and fire defensive shots” at the woman. No law enforcement officers were seriously injured in the incident, she said.
Video from Friday protests in Chicago and Portland showed heavily armed officers in military-style gear, many of them masked, using tear gas and other deterrents against protesters. In Brighton Park on the southwest side of Chicago Friday, protesters screamed, ran, and tried to shield themselves from tear gas, footage from Reuters shows. “This is Brighton Park, this is not a war zone,” one woman, visibly distressed, told a journalist.
Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker accused Trump’s administration of escalating tensions and provoking people to react.
“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 on CNN’s “State of the Union.”
“They 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.”
Here’s the latest:
Illinois governor says he was told to ‘call up your troops or we will’
On Saturday, the White House announced the president had authorized 300 members of the Illinois National Guard to “protect federal officers and assets” in Chicago, a move Trump has been promising for weeks. It’s a strategy he first deployed to quell anti-ICE protests in Los Angeles in June — the first time a president had federalized National Guard troops against the wishes of a state’s governor in over half a century.
“Amidst ongoing violent riots and lawlessness, that local leaders like (Illinois Gov. JB) Pritzker have refused to step in to quell, President Trump has authorized 300 national guardsmen to protect federal officers and assets,” White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson told CNN. “President Trump will not turn a blind eye to the lawlessness plaguing American cities.”
Hours before the announcement, the Illinois governor said he was dealt an “ultimatum.”
“This morning, the Trump Administration’s Department of War gave me an ultimatum: call up your troops, or we will,” Pritzker said on X Saturday. “It is absolutely outrageous and un-American to demand a Governor send military troops within our own borders and against our will.”
“They want mayhem on the ground,” Pritzker told CNN’s Jake Tapper on Sunday. “They want to create the war zone so that they can send in even more troops,” he said, referencing last week’s massive ICE raid at a Chicago apartment complex that shattered windows and detained dozens of people overnight.
“Now they’re claiming they need 300 of Illinois’ National Guard. Well, we didn’t need them before they showed up,” the governor said.
Tensions around anti-ICE protests in Chicago escalated earlier in the day after a CBP agent shot a driver. Tricia McLaughlin, DHS assistant secretary, described the shots as “defensive” and claimed the woman was armed “with a semi automatic weapon,” although the complaint doesn’t mention that the woman was armed or used a weapon.
“Agents were unable to move their vehicles and exited the car. One of the drivers who rammed the law enforcement vehicle was armed with a semi-automatic weapon,” McLaughlin said in a post. “Law enforcement was forced to deploy their weapons and fire defensive shots at an armed US citizen who drove herself to the hospital to get care for wounds.”
On Sunday, Pritzker told CNN the Trump administration is releasing information before local officials have had a chance to assess.
“What happens in these sorts of incidents is typically, ICE puts out a press release before anybody else can speak with the press and then it gets reported on social media and elsewhere,” Pritzker said on “State of the Union.” “They are just putting out their propaganda, and then we’ve got to later determine what actually happened.”
DHS later identified the woman as 30-year-old Marimar Martinez and said she is in FBI custody after being discharged from the hospital. The complaint says she was treated for a gunshot wound. Martinez was named in an intelligence bulletin last week “for doxing agents and posting online,” McLaughlin said.
Another person, Anthony Ian Santos Ruiz, 21, was “involved in the ramming” and is in law enforcement custody, DHS said. The two are facing federal charges related to Saturday’s incident, authorities said Sunday in a news release.
Court documents say the two “forcibly assaulted, resisted, opposed, impeded, intimidated, and interfered with an officer of the United States.”
CNN is working to determine legal representation for Martinez and Ruiz.
The National Lawyers Guild Chicago, which sends legal observers to protests, says they witnessed “many violent attacks by federal law enforcement on the community” at protests over the weekend, both in Brighton Park and at the controversial Broadview Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility near Chicago.
The nonprofit legal group condemned the “use of police violence and criminal charges, whether federal, state or local, to suppress the righteous dissent of the people.”
The Cook County Sheriff’s Office said no arrests had been made as of 10 a.m. on Sunday after six were arrested on Saturday “in connection with protests in Broadview around the facility being used by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).”
No ‘danger of rebellion’ in Portland, judge finds
Three hundred California National Guard members are on their way to Oregon on President Trump’s orders after a judge blocked his deployment of federal troops to Portland, California Gov. Gavin Newsom announced Sunday.
The California governor is planning to sue over the deployment, Newsom said in a statement.
“This is a breathtaking abuse of the law and power,” Newsom said.
The state of Oregon likewise plans to return to court to challenge the deployment, the state’s attorney general said Sunday.
District Judge Karin Immergut had granted a temporary restraining order Saturday blocking Trump from sending the National Guard to Portland, ruling that city and Oregon officials “are likely to succeed on their claim that the President exceeded his constitutional authority and violated the Tenth Amendment” in ordering the deployment.
Immergut — a Trump appointee — said the president appeared to have federalized the Oregon National Guard “absent constitutional authority” and that protests in Portland “did not pose a ‘danger of a rebellion.’” The judge said Oregon attorneys showed “substantial evidence that the protests at the Portland ICE facility were not significantly violent” leading up to the president’s directive.
The Trump administration swiftly filed a notice that it will appeal the ruling to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.
The judge did note that recent incidents cited by the Trump administration of protesters clashing with federal officers “are inexcusable,” but said “they are nowhere near the type of incidents that cannot be handled by regular law enforcement forces.”
Immergut warned some of the arguments offered by the Trump administration “risk blurring the line between civil and military federal power — to the detriment of this nation.”
Roughly 200 National Guard troops were undergoing training in preparation for a potential deployment to Portland, a US Northern Command spokesperson told CNN Friday. The new ruling places the National Guard back under the command of Gov. Tina Kotek for now, Oregon Attorney General Dan Rayfield said.
The temporary restraining order expires in 14 days, but the state plans to request an extension, Rayfield said. CNN reached out to the governor’s office for details on any changes to the Oregon National Guard’s status.
Amid the legal victory for state leaders, crowds of protesters continued to gather late into the night Saturday outside an Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in South Portland.
Demonstrators both for and against the National Guard deployment rallied outside the building, according to CNN affiliate KATU, whose crews reported seeing federal agents deploying multiple rounds of pepper balls, flash bangs and tear gas to clear streets.
Portland’s police department said its officers did not see any crimes against people or property during Saturday’s demonstration and that they made no arrests and did not use munitions. The department referred CNN’s questions regarding reports of law enforcement’s use of munitions to federal authorities.
CNN reached out to ICE and the Department of Homeland Security for further information.
CNN’s Whitney Wild contributed to this report.
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