Illinois officials made a bid for sanctuary supremacy Monday with Chicago’s mayor signing an executive order declaring city property to be “ICE-free zones” and the city and state suing to block President Trump from sending in the National Guard to quell protests of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Mayor Brandon Johnson accused ICE of “a forceful display of tyranny.” He vowed to fight back with his order banning federal agents from using city property and “unwilling” businesses as staging grounds for immigration arrests.
“We need ICE out of our city,” he said. “ICE lies, and people die.”
Mr. Trump has called up National Guard troops to deploy to Illinois. He said local officials aren’t doing enough to protect ICE as it tries to carry out Operation Midway Blitz, a surge of immigration arrests that began a month ago.
Illinois and Chicago sued to head off the troops and blamed Mr. Trump for turning what had been low-level protests into a growing unrest in the city.
A similar legal battle is raging in Portland, Oregon, where Mr. Trump also tried to deploy troops. A federal judge issued two restraining orders to block his efforts. Judge Karin Immergut said ongoing anti-ICE protests in Portland don’t rise to the level of an emergency that would justify National Guard troops.
SEE ALSO: Chicago declares ‘ICE-free’ zones as city escalates feud with Trump
“Defendants are temporarily enjoined from deploying federalized members of the National Guard in Oregon,” she directed in an order late Sunday.
Mr. Trump suggested he still has an ace card to play.
He said he would invoke the Insurrection Act, if necessary, to overcome legal obstacles and deploy troops.
“So far, it hasn’t been necessary. But we have an Insurrection Act for a reason,” he said. “If I had to enact it, I’d do that if people were being killed, and courts were holding us up, or governors or mayors were holding us up.”
Mr. Trump ordered troops into Oregon after months of protests of ICE’s regular presence in Portland. That builds on years of violent protests in the West Coast city. During the first Trump administration, protests shut down the ICE office for days and nightly assaults on the federal courthouse in 2020 marked the most sustained Black Lives Matter violence in the country.
Mr. Trump has justified the deployments by pointing to federal law that allows them in situations of invasion, rebellion or where “regular” forces are unable to carry out their mission.
SEE ALSO: Judge issues new order blocking Trump from bringing out-of-state troops to Oregon
The administration said it has had to draw additional agents and officers from other places to protect ICE and Customs and Border Protection operations in Illinois and Oregon. Federal attorneys said that’s proof that the regular forces aren’t enough.
Judge Immergut, a Trump appointee, rejected that. She said ICE has been able to carry out operations in Portland despite the protests.
Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul made a similar argument about his state. He said the protests outside ICE’s processing facility in Broadview, west of Chicago, haven’t derailed the administration’s major immigration enforcement blitz that began last month.
The Democrat heaped most of the blame for flaring passions on the federal government.
He accused the Department of Homeland Security of distorting facts in the shooting death of a migrant target who department officials said tried to drag ICE officers with his vehicle. He said that was followed by other “provocative displays of force” by senior department leaders.
Mr. Raoul said federal agents were using “chemical munitions” to “attack” protesters outside the ICE facility.
He said local police have opened a criminal investigation into the federal agents involved.
In Chicago, Mr. Johnson also said ICE has been distorting facts to justify heavy-handed tactics.
“We have a rogue, reckless group of heavily armed, masked individuals roaming throughout our city that are not accountable to the people of Chicago,” the mayor said.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt called Judge Immergut’s ruling “untethered in reality and in the law.”
“For more than 100 days, night after night after night, the ICE facility has been really under siege by these anarchists outside,” the spokeswoman said.
In June, Mr. Trump federalized and deployed National Guard troops as well as active-duty Marines to quell anti-ICE protests in Los Angeles.
A district judge issued an injunction, but the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals disagreed and allowed the president to continue the deployment.
Mr. Trump has appealed Judge Immergut’s ruling to that same appeals court.
Mr. Trump has eyed troop deployments over anti-ICE protests in Los Angeles, Portland and Chicago.
He also has used the National Guard to provide force protection in the nation’s capital and Memphis, Tennessee, where they assist the federal law enforcement agencies that he has surged to combat street crime
• Stephen Dinan can be reached at sdinan@washingtontimes.com.
• Kerry Picket can be reached at kpicket@washingtontimes.com.
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