Illinois and Chicago filed a federal lawsuit Monday to block the Trump administration’s planned deployment of National Guard troops to the state — a move Gov. JB Pritzker called an “invasion.”
Trump pushed forward with the plan to activate hundreds of National Guard soldiers, including some from Texas, despite monthslong opposition from state and local leaders, as well as objections from civic and business groups in the city.
“We must now start calling this what it is: Trump’s Invasion,” Pritzker said in a statement Sunday night. “It started with federal agents, it will soon include deploying federalized members of the Illinois National Guard against our wishes, and it will now involve sending in another state’s military troops.”
Read more: Over Pritzker’s objections, Trump sending 300 National Guardsmen to Chicago, governor says
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem asked President Donald Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to deploy troops to Illinois to protect federal immigration officers and facilities. The Immigration and Customs Enforcement processing center in Broadview, a near-west suburb of Chicago, has been the site of several clashes between ICE agents and demonstrators in recent weeks.
But Pritzker, who said Saturday that he refused the Trump administration’s “ultimatum” to activate the National Guard himself, has insisted there is no emergency necessitating guardsmen on the ground. He also warned that White House officials would use any conflict between immigration agents and civilians as a “pretext” for military occupation.
“It will cause only more unrest, including harming social fabric and community relations and increasing the mistrust of police,” the lawsuit said.
The suit, filed in the Northern District of Illinois, names Trump, Noem and Hegseth as defendants.
Texas National Guard also activated
Illinois filed its lawsuit hours after Republican Texas Gov. Greg Abbott announced he will send 400 guardsmen to cities around the country, including Chicago, and after a federal judge in Oregon blocked National Guard deployments to Portland.
The order is “effective immediately for an initial period of 60 days” and subject to extension, according to the memo, signed by Hegseth. It comes a day after Pritzker confirmed Trump’s intention to federalize 300 members of the Illinois National Guard.
“The American people, regardless of where they reside, should not live under the threat of occupation by the United States military, particularly not simply because their city or state leadership has fallen out of a president’s favor,” the lawsuit reads. “To guard against this, foundational principles of American law limit the president’s authority to involve the military in domestic affairs. Those bedrock principles are in peril.”
The promised deployment comes as ICE has ramped up activity in Chicago and its suburbs as part of “Operation Midway Blitz,” which has so far resulted in more than 800 arrests according to the Department of Homeland Security.
There have also been two shootings since the clashes began. On Saturday, the governor called the administration’s National Guard activation a “manufactured performance” and not about protecting public safety.
Though the Trump administration insists ICE is targeting undocumented immigrants who have criminal backgrounds, reports have mounted of agents arresting those with no history of illegal activity, detaining children along with their parents and even handcuffing U.S. citizens and children with zip ties. Immigrant and civil rights groups have alleged ICE is arresting people without warrants in violation of a federal consent decree.
The lawsuit also alleges ICE activity in Chicago and its suburbs has already subjected Illinois “to serious and irreparable harm.”
Read more: ‘We are not backing down’: Feds ramp up immigration raids in Chicago area | DHS Secretary Noem defends ICE tactics in second Illinois visit
“It also creates economic harm, depressing business activities and tourism that not only hurt Illinoisians but also hurt Illinois’s tax revenue,” the complaint said.
That argument echoes one made by a group of Chicago business and civic groups over the weekend.
“National Guard troops on our streets, like those reportedly being ordered here by the federal government, have the potential to sow fear and chaos, threatening our businesses’ bottom lines and our reputation,” the Chicagoland Chamber of Commerce, Civic Committee of the Commercial Club of Chicago and the Civic Federation said in a joint statement Saturday.
Order violates states’ rights
Attorney General Kwame Raoul argues the troop deployment violates Illinois’ rights as sovereign state to carry about its own law enforcement, as well as 1878 Posee Comitatus Act that bans the military from participating in domestic law enforcement.
The lawsuit also claims the Trump administration failed to meet any criteria that could allow the president to federalize the National Guard. The president can federalize the National Guard to stop a foreign invasion, when the president can’t execute the laws of the country or to stop a rebellion.
Raoul and state leaders have argued for weeks that Trump would use protests in Broadview as a “flimsy pretext” to claim a rebellion.
Several protestors have been arrested near the facility in recent weeks on charges of assaulting officers. Federal agents have sprayed tear gas and fired nonlethal ammunition into crowds that have gathered there.
Over the weekend, a U.S. Border Patrol agent shot a woman on the city’s Southwest Side in a confrontation with protesters. Prosecutors eventually charged the woman and another protestor with attempting to “assault, impede, and interfere with the work of federal agents in Chicago.” According to the Chicago Sun-Times, agents fired “defensive shots” when they saw the woman was allegedly “armed with a semi-automatic weapon,” and she was taken to a nearby hospital for treatment before she was charged.
Further, the lawsuit argues the Trump administration has entirely manufactured any public safety crisis in Illinois that would require military intervention. It cites a 2013 social media post by Trump, two years before he announced his candidacy for president, that suggested the military should be deployed to Chicago. It lists several other derogatory comments Trump made about the city, state and their leaders over the years, including as president.
Read more: As Trump declares ‘we’re going in,’ Pritzker says ‘terror and cruelty is the point’
The lawsuit argues that animosity culminated last week with Trump claiming during a speech to military generals that there was an “invasion from within” and suggesting cities like Chicago should be used as “training grounds” for the military.
How soldiers will be deployed
The lawsuit includes new details about how federal officials communicated with state leaders and gave Pritzker an ultimatum.
DHS sent a memo to the Illinois National Guard on Sept. 28 stating troops “would integrate with federal law enforcement operations, serving in direct support of federal facility protection, access control, and crowd control.”
On Saturday morning, Illinois National Guard Adjutant General Rodney Boyd received a formal email from the Defense Department National Guard Bureau saying Trump asked for at least 300 soldiers, and if Boyd did not activate them within two hours, Hegseth would federalize them. Boyd responded that Pritzker declined to activate the guard. Defense officials sent a new memo late Saturday saying the guard was federalized.
Illinois National Guard leaders received another memo on Sunday informing them soldiers from Texas would be sent to Chicago beginning Monday.
Read more: As Illinois congressional delegation seeks answers, ICE cancels meeting
Abbott, a Republican and ardent Trump supporter, has been a frequent foil of Pritzker, bussing thousands of asylum-seeking migrants from the border to Chicago in 2023 and 2024 and criticizing the Illinois governor for welcoming Texas Democratic legislators who fled their state this summer amid a partisan redistricting fight. He said in a social media post that Pritzker “can either fully enforce protection for federal employees or get out of the way and let the Texas Guard do it.”
Prior to this year, the last time a president federalized a state’s National Guard without a request from a state’s governor was in 1965, when President Lyndon B. Johnson sent federal troops to protect civil rights protesters in Alabama without the cooperation of segregationist Gov. George Wallace.
Capitol News Illinois is a nonprofit, nonpartisan news service that distributes state government coverage to hundreds of news outlets statewide. It is funded primarily by the Illinois Press Foundation and the Robert R. McCormick Foundation.
