Illinois governor criticizes Trump plan to send troops to protect ICE agents

CHICAGO (CN) — The Trump administration will deploy 100 troops to Illinois in response to concerns about the safety of Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers, Illinois Governor JB Pritzker announced at a Monday news conference.

Pritzker, among a litany of other state and local politicians and activists, held a news conference Monday afternoon in response to reports of ICE agents — donned in tactical gear with rifles — patrolling downtown Chicago Sunday afternoon.

“Moments ago, the Illinois National Guard received word that the Department of Homeland Security has sent a memo to the Department of War seeking the deployment of 100 military troops to Illinois, claiming a need for the protection of ICE personnel and facilities,” he said. “What I have been warning of is now being realized.”

The ICE agents seen downtown were part of Operation Midway Blitz — the Trump administration’s effort to ramp up deportations in longtime sanctuary city Chicago. President Donald Trump threatened to send the military to Chicago at the beginning of September, although he initially walked the efforts back, citing lack of cooperation with local officials.

Trump said Chicago needed federal assistance to address the city’s escalating crime. He called Chicago a “killing field and a “hellhole” and said the violence in the city is worse than Afghanistan or any other war zone.

Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson pushed back on Trump’s characterization of the city and noted that shootings, carjackings and robberies are down compared to recent years. In April, Johnson said, Chicago saw the fewest number of homicides since 1962.

Johnson reiterated some of those concerns at the Monday news conference and said Trump is provoking conflict as a pretext to send more federal agents into Chicago.

Pritzker echoed Johnson’s statements about Trump inciting conflict, particularly in reference to enforcement escalations at the Broadview ICE processing facility over the weekend. He said federal agents “wreaked havoc” on the community and didn’t try to communicate with local authorities about their plans.

“Let me be clear: They are not communicating with the city of Chicago, with the state of Illinois, with Cook County, with Broadview, with anybody," the Illinois governor said. “They are going at this because I don’t know. Greg Bovino is putting up his TikTok videos, and it’s giving a misimpression of what’s happening on the ground. We have peaceful protesters — as they have all across the country, by the way. People are peacefully protesting, and we have, in response to that, chemical agents being fired at people.”

Pritzker referenced CBS reporter Asal Rezaei, who quickly took to social media after an ICE agent shot a pepper ball at her truck Sunday afternoon.

“An ICE agent took a direct shot at my car today," she wrote in a post shared on Instagram. “Absolutely unprovoked. My window was open and chemicals went all over my face. Been puking for two hours.”

This was not the first time agents at the Broadview facility targeted the press. Saturday evening, ICE agents detained Steve Held, the co-founder of independent media organization Unraveled Press. It was unclear why Held was detained, but he was released in the wee hours of Sunday morning.

Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul joined Pritzker, Johnson, and the gaggle of other politicians and activists at Monday’s presser. He said Trump’s mobilization of the troops was not just ineffective but illegal.

“The images we have seen in Chicago look more like a region under siege than America under peace time,” Raoul said. “If it was not clear, it should be now — the president wants to instill chaos in Chicagoans and the American people at large.”

Craig Futterman, who founded the Civil Rights and Police Accountability Project at the University of Chicago Law School, echoed some of Raoul’s concerns when Trump initially threatened to send the National Guard into Chicago.

“That’s a fundamental threat to democracy and freedom — the very things that make America, America. It’s not who we are; you don’t deploy the military on your own citizens. That’s the stuff of dictators and authoritarian regimes.. The only, in the very limited time that a president is authorized to do so under the Posse Comitatus Act, essentially is when there’s an insurrection or a rebellion.”

“There is no insurrection in Chicago, and the reason that the president has given is ‘I want to bring in the troops to get crime under control.’ That’s unconstitutional. There is nothing under the law that permits that.”

Pritzker said it is unclear what the Trump administration requested the military to do in Illinois, and he is hopeful that they’ll be able to deter the federal government from carrying out what already seems to be in progress.

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