The Supreme Court has dealt a significant blow to the Trump administration’s expansive immigration enforcement efforts by refusing to permit the deployment of National Guard troops in the Chicago area.
The justices decided against an emergency appeal from the administration seeking to overturn a ruling by U.S. District Judge April Perry, which had halted the troop deployment. An appeals court had also previously denied the administration’s request.
Justice Brett Kavanaugh, appointed by former President Donald Trump, concurred with the decision to keep the Chicago deployment on hold. However, he expressed that he would prefer the president to have broader authority to deploy troops in similar future situations.
Justices Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas, and Neil Gorsuch, all appointed by Republican presidents, dissented from the majority decision.
While the Supreme Court’s order does not constitute a final ruling, it may influence other legal challenges to President Trump’s attempts to deploy military forces in other cities governed by Democrats.
“At this preliminary stage, the Government has failed to identify a source of authority that would allow the military to execute the laws in Illinois,” stated the majority opinion of the high court.
The outcome is a rare Supreme Court setback for Trump, who had won repeated victories in emergency appeals since he took office again in January.
The conservative-dominated court has allowed Trump to ban transgender people from the military, claw back billions of dollars of congressionally approved federal spending, move aggressively against immigrants and fire the Senate-confirmed leaders of independent federal agencies.
The Supreme Courtrefused to allow the Trump administration to deploy National Guard troops in the Chicago area to support its immigration crackdown, a significant defeat for the president’s ‘Operation Midway Blitz’
Trump-nominated Justice Brett Kavanaugh said he agreed with the decision to keep the Chicago deployment blocked, but would have left the president more latitude to deploy troops in possible future scenarios
Democratic Illinois Governor JB Pritzker applauded Tuesday´s decision as a win for the state and country.
‘American cities, suburbs, and communities should not have to faced masked federal agents asking for their papers, judging them for how they look or sound, and living in fear that the President can deploy the military to their streets,’ he said.
White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson, on the other hand, said the president had activated the National Guard to protect federal personnel and property from ‘violent rioters.’
‘Nothing in today´s ruling detracts from that core agenda. The Administration will continue working day in and day out to safeguard the American public,’ she said.
Alito and Thomas said in their dissent that the court had no basis to reject Trump’s contention that the administration needed the troops to enforce immigration laws.
Gorsuch said he would have narrowly sided with the government based on the declarations of federal law enforcement officials.
The Trump administration announced in September it had begun detaining illegal immigrants all across the windy city as part of ‘Operation Midway Blitz.’
Estimates indicate Chicago is home to approximately 150,000 illegal immigrants, accounting for about eight percent of households.
The Trump administration announced in September it had begun detaining illegal immigrants all across the windy city as part of ‘Operation Midway Blitz’
Federal agents tackle a protester after a face off outside an apartment building along Maple Lane in the Chicagoland suburbs
Since Trump took office, large-scale deportations in major cities have been central to the president’s domestic policy.
The administration had initially sought the order to allow the deployment of troops from Illinois and Texas, but the Texas contingent of about 200 National Guard troops was later sent home from Chicago.
The Trump administration has argued that the troops are needed ‘to protect federal personnel and property from violent resistance against the enforcement of federal immigration laws.’
But Perry wrote that she found no substantial evidence that a ‘danger of rebellion’ is brewing in Illinois and no reason to believe the protests there had gotten in the way of Trump´s immigration crackdown.
Perry had initially blocked the deployment for two weeks. But in October, she extended the order indefinitely while the Supreme Court reviewed the case.
The US Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in the west Chicago suburb of Broadview has been the site of tense protests, where federal agents have previously used tear gas and other chemical agents on protesters and journalists.
Last month, authorities arrested 21 protesters and said four officers were injured outside the Broadview facility. Local authorities made the arrests.
The Illinois case is just one of several legal battles over National Guard deployments.
Border Patrol operations commander Greg Borino – who leads Trump’s immigration crackdown – publicly confronted Daniel Biss, the mayor of nearby Evanston, Illinois, during ‘Operation Midway Blitz’
District of Columbia Attorney General Brian Schwalb is suing to halt the deployments of more than 2,000 guardsmen in the nation’s capital.
Forty-five states have entered filings in federal court in that case, with 23 supporting the administration´s actions and 22 supporting the attorney general´s lawsuit.
More than 2,200 troops from several Republican-led states remain in Washington, although the crime emergency Trump declared in August ended a month later.
A federal judge in Oregon has permanently blocked the deployment of National Guard troops there, and all 200 troops from California were being sent home from Oregon, an official said.
A state court in Tennessee ruled in favor of Democratic officials who sued to stop the ongoing Guard deployment in Memphis, which Trump has called a replica of his crackdown on Washington, DC.
In California, a judge in September said deployment in the Los Angeles area was illegal. By that point, just 300 of the thousands of troops sent there remained, and the judge did not order them to leave.
The Trump administration has appealed the California and Oregon rulings to the 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals.
