Two courts weigh Trump deployments as National Guard begin Chicago-area patrols

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By Diana Novak Jones, Dietrich Knauth and Jeenah Moon

CHICAGO (Reuters) -Two federal courts thousands of miles apart on Thursday held simultaneous hearings on President Donald Trump’s deployments of National Guard troops to Democratic-led cities, even as Guard soldiers began patrolling a Chicago-area immigration facility that has become a focal point for protests.

In Chicago, a federal judge questioned the accuracy of Trump’s assertions that the Guard soldiers were needed to quell violent protests. Meanwhile, a three-judge panel at a San Francisco appeals court expressed skepticism about Oregon’s argument that Trump exceeded his authority in ordering troops to Portland.

Neither court issued an immediate ruling, though the Chicago judge, April Perry, instructed both sides to return later on Thursday for a potential decision.

The outcomes could have significant implications for Trump’s expanding campaign to deploy U.S. military personnel to the streets of U.S. cities, despite objections from their Democratic leaders.

The Democratic governors of both Illinois and Oregon have accused Trump of deliberately mischaracterizing small, mostly peaceful protests as violent and dangerous in order to justify National Guard deployments.

In Chicago, a government lawyer told Perry that Guard soldiers were needed to protect officers at the facility in nearby Broadview who were facing a “brazen new form of hostility” from protesters.

Since the U.S. government surged immigration enforcement in the city last month, small groups of protesters numbering from a few individuals to about four dozen have gathered daily at the center, where they have sometimes been met by tear gas and rubber bullets. The Broadview police have launched a criminal investigation into the tactics of the federal agents.

Perry said she was troubled by shifting explanations of the Guard’s mission in Chicago. While government lawyers have said in court that troops were there to protect federal officers and property, the judge noted that Trump has said that the soldiers were needed to “solve” crime.

“I am very much struggling to figure out where this would ever stop,” she said.

As that hearing unfolded, the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco was weighing whether to pause a lower court’s ruling that temporarily blocked hundreds of Guard soldiers from entering Portland.

“The president is entitled to great deference, but that deference has a limit,” Stacy Chaffin, an Oregon assistant attorney general, told a three-judge panel. “And that limit is this case, where the president’s determinations are untethered from reality.”

But the judges questioned whether they should only consider the current circumstances or take into account more active protests earlier this year that temporarily shut down the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s Portland headquarters.

U.S. Circuit Judge Ryan Nelson, a Trump appointee, said courts should not engage in a “day-by-day” review of whether troops were needed at any given time.

‘WE’RE GOING TO OTHER CITIES’

The National Guard is part of the military and can be deployed overseas or domestically. In the U.S., they usually are directed by governors and respond to events such as natural disasters. Under U.S. law, National Guard and other military personnel are not typically permitted to engage in civilian law enforcement. 

While a U.S. president can deploy the Guard under certain authorities, Trump is testing the limits of those powers by sending them to cities controlled by his political opponents.

Trump on Thursday again suggested that he intends to expand his effort to deploy troops to U.S. cities to combat what he claims is rampant violence. The president has previously sent troops to Washington, D.C., and Los Angeles. Troops have also been deployed to Memphis, Tennessee, with the support of the state’s Republican governor.

“We’re in Memphis. We’re going to Chicago. We’re going to other cities,” the Republican president said at the start of a Cabinet meeting, adding that the federal presence had been in the Tennessee city for a week.

“We have a very powerful military,” he said. “We have a very powerful National Guard. We are directly confronting the sinister threat of left-wing domestic terrorism and violence, including the terrorist group antifa,” referring to a decentralized anti-fascist movement with no formal structure.

A trial court in Los Angeles has ruled that Trump’s deployment of Guard troops there during the summer was illegal, a ruling the administration is appealing.

DEPLOYMENTS IN CHICAGO

Early Thursday, a handful of soldiers were seen for the first time milling around inside the gates at a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement immigration facility in Broadview, carrying sidearms but without rifles, shields or other riot gear.

Outside the facility, protesters this week have raised concerns that the National Guard troops would escalate tensions.

“I guess I’m ready to get hit by a live round,” Will Creutz, 22, an administrative assistant from Chicago whose body is already bruised from pepper ball strikes, said on Wednesday. “When I survive this and I’m able to think about what I did when something horrible was happening, I will be able to sleep peacefully knowing that I did something.”

A federal judge in Chicago issued a temporary order on Thursday limiting when agents can use force or riot control weapons against protesters in a case brought by journalists and activists who say they were injured by federal agents during demonstrations at the Broadview facility.

(Reporting by Diana Novak Jones in Chicago, Dietrich Knauth in New York and Jeenah Moon in Broadview, Illinois; Additional reporting by Jonathan Allen in New York, Nate Raymond in Boston and Emily Schmall and Renee Hickman in Chicago; Writing by Joseph Ax; Editing by Mark Porter)