Trump administration lawyers argued in a filing late Wednesday that escalating violence against immigration officials during ongoing “Operation Midway Blitz” enforcement actions justifies the deployment of National Guard troops to protect against “the risk of insurrection against federal authority” that hinders “the ability of federal officials to enforce federal law.”
The Trump administration’s response to the state’s legal push for an emergency gag order marks a historic day in federal court. U.S. District Judge April Perry is scheduled to hear arguments in the case starting at 11 a.m. Thursday in Dirksen U.S. Court, where a packed courtroom has been set up to accommodate the expected influx of national media.
In its 59-page filing, the Justice Department cited recent protests at an Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in Broadview, charges against people accused of ramming Border Patrol vehicles on the city’s Southwest Side that led to a woman being shot by agents, and a case against an alleged Chicago mob member who accuses him of placing a $10,000 bounty on the head of Gregory Bovino, the head of the Border Patrol in charge of the Chicago operation.
“The acts of violence and threats by large numbers of demonstrators, directed at those enforcing federal immigration laws and federal property, pose at a minimum the risk of insurrection against federal authority and significantly impede the ability of federal officials to enforce federal law,” the Justice Department said in the filing.
In its emergency restraining order request, Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul’s office asked a federal court on Monday to find the federalization and deployment of National Guard troops unconstitutional and to block Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth from deploying troops in the state over Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s objections.
“The Trump administration’s unlawful actions have already subjected Illinois to serious and irreparable harm. The deployment of the federal National Guard, including from another state, violates Illinois’ sovereignty and right to self-government,” the attorney general’s filing said.
At a preliminary hearing on the court case Monday, Perry, a Biden appointee whose previous nomination for U.S. attorney general was blocked by then-Senator J.D. Vance on overt political grounds, said she was “deeply troubled” by the Trump administration’s inability to answer questions, such as where Guard members will be sent in Illinois. But she said she was unable to rule on the state’s request for a temporary gag without first reading the voluminous court files.
Thursday’s court proceedings are expected to be long, with dozens of groups on all sides, from California Gov. Gavin Newsom to national law enforcement groups, calling for their say. It is unclear whether Perry will rule on the case on Thursday or issue a written opinion at a later date, but all stakeholders know that time is of the essence.
The Department of Defense has moved in recent days to federalize 300 members of the Illinois National Guard, despite Pritzker’s opposition, as well as 400 members of the National Guard from Texas. Nearly half of the Guard members are eventually expected to be sent from Texas to Illinois, with the support of Republican Texas Gov. Greg Abbott.
Absent a legal order preventing their deployment, such as one issued by a federal judge in Oregon over the weekend barring the Guard from that or any other state, it was unclear what more Illinois officials could do to protect the state from the incursion. Pritzker has long said the law would be on the state’s side in deterring such a spread, but troops began arriving after Perry refused to intervene immediately.
National Guard members were first seen in the area Tuesday at federal property in Elwood near Joliet. There were reports that Guard protection had begun at other federal sites late Wednesday, but there were no immediate signs of troops arriving at Broadview.
Raoul said during a press conference on Monday that his office moved as quickly as possible to file the state’s case against Trump. Meanwhile, Pritzker has continued to strongly oppose Trump’s proposed use of military forces in the state.
“There’s no invasion here. There’s no insurrection here. Local and state law enforcement are doing what they need to do,” Pritzker said Monday. “Donald Trump is using our service members as political props and pawns in his illegal efforts to militarize our nation’s cities.”
Speaking to reporters in the Oval Office on Monday, Trump suggested he could invoke the Insurrection Act if necessary to circumvent court orders or uncooperative officials.
“If I had to enact it, I would do so, if people were being killed and the courts were arresting us, or governors or mayors were arresting us,” he said.
A White House spokeswoman reiterated that Trump was exercising his “lawful authority to protect federal officials and assets.”
Given Trump’s weeks-long flirtation with sending troops to Chicago and his shifting rationale, which was initially ostensibly about combating violent crime in the city but has since shifted to protecting immigration enforcement operations amid the administration’s “Operation Midway Blitz,” “the artificial nature of the crisis is clear,” the state said in its filing.
“The American people, regardless of where they reside, should not live under the threat of occupation by the United States military, especially not just because the leadership of their city or state is no longer in the President’s favor,” the Illinois Attorney General’s Office wrote.
The state filing cited Trump’s long history of “threatening and insulting statements toward” Illinois and Chicago, as well as city and state leaders, dating back to before he entered the 2016 presidential race.
“The current supposed state of emergency contradicts the fact that Trump’s threats to deploy troops in Chicago began more than a decade ago,” the state said. In a social media post from 2013, Trump wrote: “We need our troops on the streets of Chicago, not in Syria.”
The state alleged that hostility toward Illinois and Chicago continued during his first term in the White House and his time out of office into his second term, culminating in a September 30 speech to senior military officers at the Pentagon, in which Trump told the assembled generals that he had told Hegseth: “We should be using some of these dangerous cities as a training area for our military National Guard, but militarily, Because we’re going to Chicago very soon.”
In arguing its case, the Attorney General’s Office pointed to recent court decisions in federal court in Oregon, where a Trump-appointed judge issued two orders blocking the federalization of that state’s Guard and thus the deployment of Guard members from neighboring California or any other state.
In his memo, Hegseth told Texas officials that Trump had “authorized me to coordinate with you on the mobilization of up to 400 members of the Texas National Guard” under Title 10, which allows State Guard forces to be placed under federal command under orders “issued by the Governor.”
In a social media post Sunday night, Abbott, who has repeatedly clashed with Pritzker over the past several years, wrote: “You can either enforce full protection for federal employees or get out of the way and let the Texas Guard do it.”
At the heart of the fight over the deployment of troops in Illinois is the Trump administration’s assertion that an emergency exists, warranting such action.
The move also comes against the backdrop of Trump’s long-standing criticism of Illinois and Chicago laws that prohibit law enforcement from cooperating with federal authorities in civil immigration enforcement. Earlier this year, a federal judge in Chicago dismissed a lawsuit filed by the administration challenging those policies.
More recently, the administration has cited incidents, including heated protests outside a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement processing facility in western suburban Broadview, to justify its use of troops. In a September 26 memo to the Department of Defense, the Department of Homeland Security requested 100 troops to help protect ICE facilities in Illinois from “coordinated attack by violent groups.”
In his memo recalling members of the Texas Guard over the weekend, Hegseth wrote: “On October 4, 2025, the President determined that incidents of violence, as well as the real threat of continued violence, impede the enforcement of the laws of the United States in Illinois, Oregon, and other locations throughout the United States.”
But in its court filing on Monday, the state reiterated the position Pritzker, Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson and other Democratic leaders have taken since Trump raised the specter of a troop deployment in late summer, arguing that no such emergency exists and that using military personnel as the administration proposed would violate the Posse Comitatus Act, which prohibits the use of federal forces to enforce Civil law.
In the lawsuit and public comments, Illinois officials blamed federal authorities for inciting conflicts, including by using “abusive tactics” against protesters and others in Broadview.
“Far from the lawless riots, the Broadview protests were small, primarily peaceful, and were unfortunately escalated by the conduct of DHS, apparently with the intent of using them as a pretext for Trump’s long-announced troop deployment to Chicago,” the state claimed in its filing.
The state’s lawsuit also turned the Trump administration’s bluster to undermine its argument that troops are necessary, citing statements touting the successes of recent immigration enforcement activities and a “confident show of force” on September 28, during which “dozens of Department of Homeland Security agents wearing tactical gear and carrying semi-automatic rifles marched through downtown streets,” as evidence that there is no case. Emergency requiring the deployment of forces. From the federal forces.
In a show of unity, US Senators Dick Durbin and Tammy Duckworth, a veteran wounded in combat in Iraq, and all 14 Democratic members of the state’s congressional delegation, sent a letter to Trump urging the president to reverse course.
The picture of what the potential spread in Illinois might look like became clearer Monday through court records and information from local officials.
Documents filed in the Illinois lawsuit showed that Maj. Gen. Rodney Boyd, commander of the Illinois National Guard, said Sunday evening that he believed federal officials intended to deploy a total of 500 members of the Illinois National Guard, according to a statement filed with the lawsuit by Lt. Gov. Bria Scudder, a top aide to Pritzker.
Of those, 300 will be members of the Illinois National Guard, while the rest will be Texas National Guard members “retired from Border Patrol service,” Scudder recounted.
In their filing late Wednesday, Trump’s lawyers said federal officials “undoubtedly have a significant and concrete interest in protecting their property and employees from harm,” and that the temporary restraining order should be denied.
“Plaintiffs ask the Court to second-guess the President’s judgment about the current situation in Illinois and exercise oversight authority over his deployment of federal Guardsmen, while potentially endangering federal officers (and others),” the filing said. “But responsibility and accountability for those decisions should lie with the political branches of the federal government, not this court.”
Tribune reporter Tess Kenney contributed to this story.
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