Oregon and Illinois clash.....

Oregon and Illinois clash with Trump administration over National Guard deployments

The escalation sparked sharp rebukes and legal action from Democrats.

By Jacob Wendler

The Trump administration’s move to deploy hundreds of National Guard troops to Democratic-led states was met with immediate backlash from state leaders who called the move unwarranted and un-American.

The administration attempted to circumvent a Saturday court order blocking President Donald Trump’s call-up of 200 National Guard troops in Oregon by deploying guard troops from California and Texas to areas across the country, including near Chicago. But California Gov. Gavin Newsom quickly joined a lawsuit brought by state leaders in Oregon seeking to block the move.

In a ruling that came late Sunday night, U.S. District Judge Karin Immergut — a Trump appointee — again blocked the deployment, finding that the move was “in direct contravention” of her previous decision.

Oregon Attorney General Dan Rayfield celebrated the decision late Sunday night, noting that the state was prepared for the Trump administration to appeal the decision. An appeals court could rule as early as Monday on Immergut’s decision.

“It’s incredibly important that we don’t become that frog in boiling water,” Rayfield said Monday morning on MSNBC. “And that’s why I think you’re seeing folks rise up, whether it is Democrats or Republicans, saying, no, we got to draw a line in the sand. You need to stay in your lane, Mr. President, and operate under the Constitution and operate under the laws that Congress has given you.”

Rayfield added that he was “patently offended” by Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s decision to deploy National Guard troops from Texas to other states, arguing the move “really crosses some stringent boundaries that we’ve set as a nation.”

Trump has twice in the past week publicly instructed the military to focus on left-wing domestic threats, telling U.S. naval recruits in Norfolk, Virginia, on Sunday that “We have to take care of this little gnat that’s on our shoulder called the Democrats.” That echoed Trump’s speech to several hundred military generals at the Quantico, Virginia, Marine Corps base last week, in which he instructed them to “handle” what he called the “enemy from within.”

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt called Immergut’s decision “untethered in reality and the law” on Monday, adding that the administration was confident it would win its appeal.

“For more than 100 days, night after night after night, the ICE Facility has been really under siege by these anarchists outside. They have been disrespecting law enforcement, they’ve been inciting violence. We saw again a guillotine rolled out in front of this federal building,” Leavitt told reporters at the White House. “And so the president wants to ensure that our federal buildings and our assets are protected, and that’s exactly what he is trying to do.”

Oregon Republican state Rep. Dwayne Yunker defended the decision to send National Guard troops to Portland despite Immergut’s objections, alleging that Democratic governors “protect criminals” and “punish the people defending our borders.”

“The federal government is now stepping in because Democrat leaders have failed to do their basic job, keep Oregonians safe,” Yunker wrote in a Monday morning social media post. “Instead of enforcing the law, they’ve encouraged illegal immigrants to break it, then rewarded them with taxpayer-funded healthcare, education benefits, and even home loans.”

The administration reiterated its approach following the decision, with White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller citing “a violent armed resistance designed to incapacitate the essential operations of the duly-elected federal government, by force” as justification for the deployments.

“Today’s judicial ruling is one of the most egregious and thunderous violations of constitutional order we have ever seen — and is yet the latest example of unceasing efforts to nullify the 2024 election by fiat,” Miller wrote on X.

He also vowed to fight back against “domestic terrorism” and ensure “the full and unrestricted enforcement of federal immigration law in all fifty states.”

The comments drew sharp rebukes from state leaders, including Rayfield, who called it “incredibly dangerous rhetoric in a democracy, especially when you have a president who appears to be normalizing the use of the military on our American cities.”

Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul also criticized Miller’s comments on Sunday night, calling them “consistent Stephen Miller rhetoric.”

“This call for federalizing the National Guard is not about any emergency situation in the city of Chicago or the Chicagoland area, it’s about this long, well-planned intention of turning our military on our American citizens,” Raoul said in an interview with MSNBC.

Raoul also filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration challenging its attempt to deploy troops from other states to Chicago, calling the moves “unlawful and dangerous.” The suit asks a judge to block the administration from federalizing the Illinois National Guard against Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s objections and from deploying troops from other states into Chicago.

“To the extent that Defendants have offered any basis at all to deploy the military to Illinois, it is based on a flimsy pretext: protests outside a two-story ICE processing facility in Broadview, a suburb of Chicago with less than 8,000 residents,” Raoul wrote in the lawsuit, filed Monday morning in federal court. “But far from promoting public safety in the Chicago region, Defendants’ provocative and arbitrary actions have threatened to undermine public safety by inciting a public outcry.”

The Illinois lawsuit has been assigned to Judge April Perry, an appointee of former President Joe Biden.

On Monday, Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson also appeared to directly confront the Trump administration by signing an executive order establishing “ICE-free zones” across the city.

The order prohibits city-owned or controlled parking lots, vacant lots and garages from serving as staging areas, processing locations or operations bases for immigration enforcement. The order, effective immediately, also allows private businesses to opt into joining the city in creating ICE-free businesses.

“The Trump administration must end the war on Chicago,” Johnson said in a press conference signing the order. He added that if ICE agents violate the order, the city will “take them to court.”