WASHINGTON — President Trump asked the Supreme Court on Friday to uphold his deployment of National Guard troops to Chicago.
His lawyers filed an emergency appeal urging the court to set aside rulings of judges in Chicago and hold that National Guard troops are needed to protect U.S. immigration agents from hostile protesters.
The case escalates the clash between Trump and Democratic state officials over immigration enforcement and raises again the question of using military-style force in American cities. Trump’s lawyers have repeatedly gone to the Supreme Court and won quick rulings when lower-court judges have blocked his actions.
Federal law authorizes the president to call into service the National Guard if he cannot “execute the laws of the United States” or faces “a rebellion or danger of rebellion against the authority” of the U.S. government.
“Both conditions are satisfied here,” Trump’s lawyer said.
Judges in Chicago came to the opposite conclusion. U.S. District Judge April Perry saw no “danger of rebellion” and said the laws were being enforced. She accused Trump’s lawyers of exaggerating claims of violence and equating “protests with riots.”
She handed down a restraining order on Oct. 9, and the 7th Circuit Court agreed to keep it in force.
But Trump’s lawyers insisted that protesters and demonstrators were targeting U.S. immigration agents and preventing them from doing their work.
“Confronted with intolerable risks of harm to federal agents and coordinated, violent opposition to the enforcement of federal law, the President lawfully determines that he is unable to enforce the laws of the United States with the regular forces and calls up the National Guard to defend federal personnel, property, and functions in the face of ongoing violence,” Solicitor Gen. D. John Sauer wrote in a 40-page appeal.
He argued that historically the president has had the full authority to decide on whether to call up the militia. Judges may not second-guess the president’s decision, he said.
“Any such review [by judges] must be highly deferential, as the 9th Circuit has concluded in the Newsom litigation,” referring to the ruling that upheld Trump’s deployment of the National Guard in Los Angeles.
Trump’s lawyer said the troop deployment to Los Angeles had succeeded in reducing violence.
“Notwithstanding the Governor of California’s claim that deployment of the National Guard to Los Angeles would ‘escalat[e]’ the ongoing violence that California itself had failed to prevent … the President’s action had the opposite, intended effect. In the face of federal military force, violence in Los Angeles decreased and the situation substantially improved,” he told the court.
But in recent weeks, “Chicago has been the site of organized and often violent protests directed at ICE officers and other federal personnel engaged in the execution of federal immigration laws,” he wrote. “On multiple occasions, federal officers have also been hit and punched by protesters. … Rioters have targeted federal officers with fireworks and have thrown bottles, rocks, and tear gas at them.”
“More than 30 [DHS] officers have been injured during the assaults on federal law enforcement” at the Broadview facility alone, resulting in multiple hospitalizations, he wrote.
Officials in Illinois blamed aggressive enforcement actions of ICE agents for triggering the protests.
Sauer also urged the court to hand down an immediate order that would freeze Perry’s rulings.
The court asked for a response from Illinois officials by Monday.