The Trump administration is sending 300 National Guard troops to Illinois, the latest example of the federal government sending guard members to blue cities.
“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 spokeswoman Abigail Jackson said in a statement.
Pritzker on Saturday said he was informed by the Trump administration that the Defense Department plans to federalize 300 National Guard members and deploy them within his state.
“It is absolutely outrageous and un-American to demand a Governor send military troops within our own borders and against our will,” Pritzker said in a statement, adding that he was given an ultimatum by Defense Department officials to “call up your troops, or we will.”
“I want to be clear: there is no need for military troops on the ground in the State of Illinois,” Pritzker added. “I will not call up our National Guard to further Trump’s acts of aggression against our people.”
The president has for weeks threatened to surge federal law enforcement and National Guard troops to Chicago.
Earlier Saturday, a federal judge in Oregon temporarily blocked a separate deployment of the National Guard to Portland, Oregon, which the president authorized to protect Immigration and Customs Enforcement facilities in the city.
That move activated 200 National Guard troops in Portland as part of the president’s stated agenda to curb crime in American cities.
The state of Oregon and the city of Portland sued the Trump administration, seeking a temporary restraining order in an attempt to stop the president from sending National Guard troops there, pushing back on the president’s claims that protests were violent or out of control.
The Defense Department announced that it had activated troops to support and protect federal employees and property in the Portland area while they await a federal judge’s decision in the case.
The case comes after Trump said in a social media post last week that he was directing Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to deploy troops to Portland, claiming that the city was “under siege from attack by Antifa and other domestic terrorists.”
The president has pointed to protests near Immigration and Customs Enforcement facilities in Oregon as evidence of his claims.
“We ultimately have a perception-versus-reality problem,” Caroline Turco, senior deputy city attorney for Portland, said during a hearing in front of U.S. District Judge Karin J. Immergut on Friday. “The perception is that it is World War II out here. The reality is that this is a beautiful city with a sophisticated resource that can handle the situation.”
A lawyer for the federal government — Deputy Assistant Attorney General Eric Hamilton — pointed to isolated incidents of protesters lighting incendiary devices and throwing rocks as evidence that troops are necessary to defend against “cruel radicals who have laid siege” to ICE facilities.
Trump has deployed National Guard troops to two other American cities this year — Los Angeles and Washington, D.C. In California, the Trump administration said it sent National Guard troops and Marines to quell anti-ICE protests, while in Washington, the president said the National Guard troops were deployed to fight crime.
In early September, a federal judge ruled that Trump’s deployment of Marines and National Guard members to Los Angeles was illegal. Days after that ruling, attorneys for Washington, D.C., also sued to challenge the deployment of troops in the nation’s capital.
The president has also signed an order establishing a task force to mobilize the National Guard in Memphis, Tennessee.
He has additionally threatened to deploy National Guard troops to other American cities run by Democratic mayors, like Baltimore and New Orleans.
Trump’s decision to deploy troops to multiple American cities received renewed scrutiny earlier this week after he told senior military leaders on Monday that “we should use some of these dangerous cities as training grounds for our military, National Guard.”
