Savewith a NBCUniversal ProfileCreate your free profile or log in to save this articleOct. 6, 2025, 10:27 AM EDT / Updated Oct. 6, 2025, 3:11 PM EDTBy Gary Grumbach and Dareh GregorianIllinois filed a lawsuit Monday in an attempt to block the Trump administration from deploying federalized National Guard troops on the streets of Chicago. “The American people, regardless of where they reside, should not live under the threat of occupation by the United States military, particularly not simply because their city or state leadership has fallen out of a president’s favor,” the Illinois attorney general’s office wrote in the filing, which names President Donald Trump, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Army Secretary Daniel Driscoll as defendants.“The Trump administration’s illegal actions already have subjected and are subjecting Illinois to serious and irreparable harm,” the suit says.The White House maintained Trump’s actions are lawful.“Amidst ongoing violent riots and lawlessness, that local leaders like [Illinois Gov. JB] Pritzker have refused to step in to quell, President Trump has exercised his lawful authority to protect federal officers and assets. President Trump will not turn a blind eye to the lawlessness plaguing American cities,” said White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson.Representatives for the Justice Department, U.S. Army and Department of Homeland Security did not immediately respond to request for comment. The Pentagon declined to comment.The legal action comes after a federal judge in Oregon issued two separate orders over the weekend temporarily blocking the Trump administration from sending federalized National Guard members from California — or any other state — to Portland, Oregon. Portland and Chicago are part of a wave of Democrat-run cities and states that Trump has targeted with federal troops.“This country has a longstanding and foundational tradition of resistance to government overreach, especially in the form of military intrusion into civil affairs,” U.S. District Judge Karin Immergut, a Trump appointee, wrote in one of her rulings.The suit brought on behalf of Illinois and the city of Chicago makes similar arguments about federal overreach.“The Federalization Order’s deployment of federalized military forces to protect federal personal and property from ‘violent demonstrations’ that ‘are occurring or are likely to occur’ represents the exact type of intrusion on State power that is at the heart of the Tenth Amendment,” the suit says.“The deployment of federalized National Guard, including from another state, infringes on Illinois’s sovereignty and right to self-governance. It will cause only more unrest, including harming social fabric and community relations and increasing the mistrust of police. It also creates economic harm, depressing business activities and tourism that not only hurt Illinoisians but also hurt Illinois’s tax revenue,” the suit says.The city and the state want a judge to declare the administration’s federalization and deployment of the National Guard of the United States, any state National Guard, or deployment of the U.S. military in Illinois as “unconstitutional and/or unlawful.” Trump had been threatening to send the National Guard into Chicago for months, and gave the green light to do so over the weekend. “Amidst ongoing violent riots and lawlessness, that local leaders like [Illinois Gov. JB] Pritzker have refused to step in to quell, President Trump has authorized 300 national guardsmen to protect federal officers and assets,” White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson said in a statement.The suit denies there’s any emergency in the city or that there’s a need for federal troops. “The supposed current emergency is belied by the fact that Trump’s Chicago troop deployment threats began more than ten years ago,” the suit says, pointing to a 2013 Trump tweet where he wrote, “we need our troops on the streets of Chicago, not in Syria.” He’s since worked to “demonize cities where Democrats had been elected as leaders,” and provoked unrest in the state by surging federal law enforcement to target undocumented immigrants and protesters outside of an immigration detention facility in the suburb of Broadview, the suit says.”Among other things, Trump and Noem have sent a surge of SWAT-tactic trained federal agents to Illinois to use unprecedented, brute force tactics for civil immigration enforcement; federal agents have repeatedly shot chemical munitions at groups that included media and legal observers outside the Broadview facility; and dozens of masked, armed federal agents have paraded through downtown Chicago in a show of force and control,” the suit says. “The community’s horror at these tactics and their significant consequences have resulted in entirely foreseeable protests,” it added.Pritzker, in an interview Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Union,” said federal authorities “are the ones that are making it a war zone” in Chicago. Trump has threatened to send the National Guard into other prominent Democratic-run cities against their wishes as well, including New York, Baltimore and New Orleans. The warning comes as the rate of serious crimes has dropped dramatically in those cities and in Chicago in recent years. Statistics from the Chicago Police Department show the murder rate through the end of September is down 29% compared to the same time period last year. Overall crime is down 13%, according to CPD. Trump previously deployed National Guard troops to Los Angeles and Washington, D.C. In early September, a federal judge in California ruled that Trump’s deployment of Marines and National Guard members there was illegal. D.C.’s Democratic attorney general has also sued to challenge the deployment of troops in the capital.