Chicago’s new lawsuit against imminent National Guard deployment paints a city besieged by disproportionate federal force, its inhabitants angered by the killing of an undocumented resident, pain inflicted gleefully and needlessly by federal law enforcement and the looming specter of further occupation.
Following Los Angeles, Washington D.C. and Portland, the city and state challenged President Trump’s deployment of the Guard to quell what the administration describes as fantastically war-like unrest. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced the mobilization of Guard from Illinois and Texas to Chicago and Portland on Sunday. The move prompted an emergency hearing in the Portland case, where a federal judge grilled the Justice Department lawyers for “circumventing” her order blocking the deployment of Oregon Guard.
Chicago’s lawsuit, filed Monday, tells of escalating state violence meant to provoke a response, the better to justify sending in the military.
“Among other things, Trump and Noem have sent a surge of SWAT-tactic trained federal agents to Illinois to use unprecedented, brute force tactics for civil immigration enforcement; federal agents have repeatedly shot chemical munitions at groups that included media and legal observers outside the Broadview facility; and dozens of masked, armed federal agents have paraded through downtown Chicago in a show of force and control,” it said. “The community’s horror at these tactics and their significant consequences have resulted in entirely foreseeable protests.”
It details Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, on a visit to the sole ICE facility near Chicago, choosing to enter and exit through paths congested with protesters, the better to spark a confrontation with law enforcement. It includes photos of heavily armed officers boating down the Chicago River, supposedly securing upscale sections of the city’s downtown. It tells of the killing of longtime resident and father Silverio Villegas González by DHS officers, who initially claimed that they’d acted in self defense (an account quickly disproven).
Similarly to Portland, modest protests at the ICE processing center outside of Chicago have been used as the primary pretext for the military crackdown.
“According to the sworn statement of the Broadview police chief who witnessed this conduct daily, the ‘use of chemical agents by federal agents at the ICE facility in Broadview has often been arbitrary and indiscriminate. At times it is used when the crowd is as small as ten people,’” the lawsuit said, adding from the police chief’s account: “Over the course of my career in law enforcement, the way in which federal agents have indiscriminately used chemical agents in Broadview is unlike anything I have seen before.”
The judge on the case has reportedly scheduled a hearing for Thursday.
Attacking the Judges
Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller unleashed a tirade at Judge Karin Immergut, a Trump appointee, early Monday morning, calling her second order, blocking the deployment of other states’ National Guard to Portland, “one of the most egregious and thunderous violations of constitutional order we have ever seen” and “the latest example of unceasing efforts to nullify the 2024 election by fiat.”
Trump had weighed in against Immergut earlier in the day, complaining that he wasn’t served well “by the people who pick judges” and that “he” (Immergut is a woman) “ought to be ashamed of himself” (again, a woman).
“We have long reached the point where Trump needs to openly defy these judges,” tweeted right-wing commentator Matt Walsh. “Some random federal judge has no authority to decide how and if troops are deployed. She is not the commander in chief. Ignore her and deploy them. It’s time for a showdown with these activist judges.”
Opening Day for the Justices
Monday marks the official beginning of the new Supreme Court term — a date that has become mostly ceremonial, given the increasing brunt of the workload being done on the emergency docket during all months of the year.
Tuesday features the first big culture war fight of the season, as the Court will hear arguments against Colorado’s conversion therapy ban. On Wednesday, it’ll hear a case related to Illinois’ acceptance of ballots postmarked by Election Day, but received afterwards.
In Case You Missed It
Late last night: Judge Hands Down Second, Emergency Ruling Protecting Portland From National Guard Occupation
TPM Cafe: The Trump Administration’s New Protection Racket for Higher Ed
Morning Memo: A Major New Constitutional Clash Erupts in Oregon
Today’s big story: The Trump Admin’s Mostly Unnoticed Move to Crack Down on the Opposition
Yesterday’s Most Read Story
DHS Includes White Supremacist Meme in Video Promoting Deportation Blitz
What We Are Reading
How to Save the American Experiment — New York Times
Libraries Can’t Get Their Loaned Books Back Because of Trump’s Tariffs — 404 Media
The Left Has Its Rabbit Holes — New York Times
We need to start calling this what it is: political violence.
ICE is on a collision course with disaster. An org this big and violent, and this undisciplined and ill led, has little chance of avoiding tragedy.
In the aftermath, reasonable people will wonder how we went so far astray. When Trump is dead and Stephen Miller and Kristi Noem are in prison, what’s left of MAGA will blame Biden and Obama for instigating so much un-American activity.
It is GOP political violence for the camera. They have been videotaping each time the goons fire tear gas at the 10 people protesting. They had videotape rolling when the black hawk dropped the goons to the roof top in order to trash the apartments and make a show of children in tiptoes in the middle of the night. ‘see i am tough’ - actually I think they are cowards because they don’t have their body camera rolling, no id badges, and their face is hidden.
Miller needs to die in prison.
Now is the time to begin a massive series of NON-VIOLENT, peaceful protest demonstrations in Chicago (and in Portland and other cities threatened by ICE and MAGA violence), just as the Black community and white allies responded to the provocative, dangerous violence unleashed by Bull Connor and his poiice dogs and fire hoses in Alabama in the 1960s.
And, to cite another example of long-range victory for decency and freedom, emulate Poland’s Solidarnosc in the 1980s, which brought down the Communist dictatorship.
Those powerful, peaceful protests, and all the searing photographs and journalists’ stories that they generated, turned the tide.
PLEASE: No crazy “Antifa” retaliatory violence, which is exactly what Trump, Vance, Miller, Noem, and the rest of the MAGA goons are hoping to set off.
We have the moral highground, and we can win this if we’re brave and steadfast. It’s Trump and his regime who are panicking.