In a move that has heightened legal and political tensions, the Trump administration has deployed National Guard units to assist local law enforcement in Chicago and Memphis. The deployments, which began this week, are characterized by the administration as a necessity to address crime and protect federal property but are being resisted by local Democratic leaders as an infringement on federal power.
Chicago Deployment: Emphasis on Federal Immigration Centers
In accordance with U.S. Northern Command, a group of around 200 National Guard troops from Texas have been called up to be deployed in the Chicago region. Their main role will be to protect U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) structures and other federal buildings, as well as federal law enforcement officers.
Those troops have reassembled around 300 Illinois National Guard soldiers at an Army Reserve Center in Elwood, roughly 55 miles southwest of Chicago. The 500-troop force is being sent under federal orders from the Northern Command and has been called out for 60 days. A Northern Command official, who discussed the operations anonymously, was not available to provide details on how the soldiers are being outfitted.
The deployment is against the backdrop of ongoing protests at an ICE facility in the Chicago suburb of Broadview. In an associated court development, U.S. District Judge Sara Ellis indicated on Wednesday her willingness to restrict federal agents from using some crowd control measures—such as tear gas—against nonviolent protesters and journalists at the Broadview location. The location has been a focal point for protests, including an episode in June that police characterized as a riot.
Memphis Deployment: Fed-Implementation with a Federal Crime Initiative
Concurrently, in Memphis, a smaller, unspecified number of Tennessee National Guard troops have begun supplementing the “Memphis Safe Task Force.” This task force is a federal, multi-agency effort, comprising about a dozen law enforcement agencies, established in response to President Trump’s call to quell violent crime. A state Military Department spokesperson affirmed the deployment of the Guard but was not able to cite their assignments or the troop number. Republican Tennessee Governor Bill Lee, who also supported the deployment, previously stated he did not believe more than 150 Guard troops would be sent into the city.
Broader Political Context and Legal Challenges
The deployments are part of a larger trend in which federal troops have been deployed to several cities governed by Democratic officials that the President has termed as being plagued by crime overruns—something that is not necessarily documented in the local crime statistics.
This strategy has faced aggressive legal resistance. A Democratic leadership suit is challenging the Chicago deployment aggressively, with a hearing scheduled for Thursday. In another case, an appeals court scheduled a hearing to review the federal government’s plan to deploy the Guard to Portland, Oregon, after a lower court judge tabled that proposal at the weekend.
The use of military personnel in a domestic law enforcement mission is restricted by the Posse Comitatus Act, enacted in 1878. However, President Trump has signaled an intention to use the Insurrection Act, which provides a president with additional authority to use active-duty military forces to suppress insurrectionary states that are unable to quell an insurrection or to states that are defying federal law.
Critics of the deployments argue that they are politicized. Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson criticized the move, stating, “This is about authoritarianism. It’s about stoking fear. It’s about dismantling the Constitution that would provide him this much more power over our American cities.”
The situation remains fluid, with ongoing legal proceedings and continuing political debate about the presence of federal forces in American cities.
