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SCOTUS Keeps Nat'l Guard Out of Chicago12/24 06:23
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Supreme Court on Tuesday refused 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 efforts to
send troops to U.S. cities.
The justices declined the Republican administration's emergency request to
overturn a ruling by U.S. District Judge April Perry that had blocked the
deployment of troops. An appeals court also had refused to step in. The Supreme
Court took more than two months to act.
Three justices -- Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch -- publicly
dissented.
The high court order is not a final ruling but it could affect other
lawsuits challenging President Donald Trump's attempts to deploy the military
in other Democratic-led cities.
"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,"
the high court majority wrote.
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.
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.
Democratic Illinois Gov. 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 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 U.S. 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.
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, D.C.
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 U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
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