Pritzker: Trump is Preparing to Deploy Texas National Guard Troops to Illinois

Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker (D) said Tuesday President Donald Trump is preparing to deploy National Guard troops in the state over the governor’s repeated objections. Pritzker also warned Trump will soon launch large-scale immigration raids in Chicago.

Pritzker said the Trump administration has begun staging the Texas National Guard for deployment in Illinois. He added that Illinois law enforcement agents were informed by Trump administration officials that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and other federal agencies will soon begin immigration operations across Chicago.

“In the coming days, we expect to see what has played out in Los Angeles and Washington, D.C., to happen here in Chicago,” Pritzker said, referring to Trump’s aggressive deployment of the military in Los Angeles earlier this year and his recent deployment in D.C.

Pritzker’s comments came just hours after Trump said he would deploy troops to Chicago but did not specify when. 

“We’re going in,” Trump said in a press conference earlier Tuesday. “I didn’t say when.”

Trump in recent weeks has repeatedly threatened to deploy troops to Chicago, Baltimore, New York and other Democratic-run cities. The president has falsely portrayed those cities as being overrun with violent crime while ignoring cities in Republican-run states — some of which sent National Guard troops to D.C. — that have higher crime rates. 

If Trump sends Texas National Guard troops into Illinois, it will mark the first time he’s deployed one state’s guard personnel against a nonconsenting state, raising severe state sovereignty issues.

In Los Angeles, Trump deployed California National Guard troops after federalizing them using an archaic federal statute.

Pritzker said the head of the Illinois State Police over the weekend was informed by Gregory Bovino, a senior Customs and Border Protection official who led aggressive immigration raids in Los Angeles, that immigration raids in Chicago would soon begin.

The governor said the Trump administration began staging for the raids Monday by moving military vehicles onto federal properties in the state and relocating federal agents from Los Angeles to Chicago.

Pritzker said he believes the Trump administration is timing the immigration raids for Mexican Independence Day, which Chicago’s Latino communities celebrate annually.

“It breaks my heart to report we have been told that ICE will try to disrupt community picnics and peaceful parades,” the governor said. “Let’s be clear, the terror and cruelty is the point.”

Pritzker added that the Trump administration may use any pushback to immigration operations as pretext to deploying National Guard troops. 

“If someone flings a sandwich at an ICE agent, Trump will try and go on TV and declare an emergency,” he added, while urging Chicagoans to “not take the bait.”

“None of this is about fighting crime or making Chicago safer. None of it,” Pritzker said. “For Trump, it’s about testing his power and producing a political drama to cover up for his corruption.”

“Any rational person who has spent even the most minimal amount of time studying human history has to ask themselves one important question: Once they get the citizens of this nation comfortable with the current atrocities committed under the color of law, what comes next?”

Earlier Tuesday, a federal judge in California ruled that Trump violated federal law by using the military to enforce domestic law in Los Angeles.

This is story has been updated with additional details throughout.