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As Suit Filed Over Memphis, Trump Takes Chicago National Guard Fight to Supreme Court
"Militarizing our communities against their will is not only un-American but also leads us down a dangerous path for our democracy," said Democratic Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker.
Oct 17, 2025
While Tennessee elected officials sued over Republican Gov. Bill Lee deploying the National Guard in Memphis at the request of President Donald Trump, the White House on Friday escalated a battle about a similar deployment push in Illinois to the US Supreme Court.
Illinois and Chicago's top attorneys are challenging Trump's attempt to federalize and deploy National Guard soldiers from the state and Texas amid the administration's anti-immigrant "Operation Midway Blitz" in and around the nation's third-largest city. US District Judge April Perry, an appointee of former President Joe Biden, last week issued a temporary restraining order.
On Thursday, a three-judge panel from the US Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit—featuring judges appointed by Trump as well as former Presidents George H.W. Bush and Barack Obama—paused Perry's decision on federalization of Guard troops but unanimously upheld her block on their deployment, declaring that "political opposition is not rebellion."
Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul called the 7th Circuit's order "another win for the people of Illinois and the rule of law in our state," and welcomed that "National Guard troops will not be seen patrolling the city of Chicago, Broadview, or other communities throughout Illinois."
"The responsibility of addressing local crime continues to fall to state and local law enforcement officers who are best trained to protect their communities," he added. "There is no need for troops in the state of Illinois, and my office will continue to vigorously oppose the administration's unlawful overreach."
Now, the Trump administration is appealing to the country's top court, which has a right-wing supermajority that includes three Trump appointees. In the application, Solicitor General John Sauer asks the justices to stay Perry's injunction, which was sought by the state of Illinois and the city of Chicago, so the president can immediately deploy troops.
According to the Chicago Tribune:
The 43-page petition also asked for an immediate administrative stay "given the pressing risk of violence," but the court had taken no action on that as of 5:00 pm Friday.
The filing said Illinois' resistance to a National Guard deployment mirrors similar actions still unfolding in California and Oregon. It asked that President Donald Trump be allowed to deploy some 700 troops in Illinois—300 from the Illinois National Guard and another 400 federalized out of Texas earlier this month.
The Supreme Court asked lawyers for Illinois to respond by 5:00 pm Eastern time on Monday.
Democratic Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker, a frequent critic of the president, said on social media Friday that "Donald Trump will keep trying to invade Illinois with troops—and we will keep defending the sovereignty of our state. Militarizing our communities against their will is not only un-American but also leads us down a dangerous path for our democracy. What will come next?"
Meanwhile, in Tennessee, seven elected Democrats—Shelby County Mayor Lee Harris, Memphis City Councilmember JB Smiley Jr., Shelby County Commissioners Henri Brooks and Erika Sugarmon, state Reps. GA Hardaway (93) and Gabby Salinas (96), and state Sen. Jeff Yarbro (21)—filed a lawsuit and motion for immediate relief over Lee's "patently unlawful" deployment.
The plaintiffs are represented by Democracy Forward, National Immigration Law Center, and Sherrard Roe Voigt & Harbison, which submitted a complaint to the Davidson County Chancery Court arguing that "defendants have trampled on Tennessee law by unilaterally deploying Tennessee National Guard members in Memphis as a domestic police force."
Smiley, who's also an attorney, said in a statement that "Lee's decision to send the National Guard into Memphis at President Trump's request isn't leadership…it's illegal. The governor has disregarded our laws to deploy troops to intimidate our city, and the president's talk of using communities like Memphis as training grounds is dangerous and dehumanizing. Memphis deserves to be respected, not treated like the playground of an out-of-control dictator."
Skye Perryman, president and CEO of Democracy Forward, tied the current conditions in Memphis to other US communities—more than 2,700 of which are planning "No Kings" protests against Trump's increasing authoritarianism on Saturday.
"Yet, again, the president and his allies are engaged in an unlawful and harmful use of military force in an American city. There has been no invasion or rebellion in Memphis, which is the prerequisite for National Guard deployment," Perryman said. "The people of Tennessee deserve leaders who respect the limits of their office and the rule of law. Using military forces in our cities and communities without legal justification threatens democracy and puts communities at risk."
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Siding With Trump, Facebook Suspends Chicago Community Group Issuing ICE Alerts
"This is the same company that had policies allowing for chatbots to have 'sensual' conversations with kids, but discussing local law enforcement among neighbors is a bridge too far, huh?"
Oct 15, 2025
Chicago residents in recent weeks have found numerous ways to resist the Trump administration's deployment of hundreds of federal agents in its increasingly violent "Operation Midway Blitz" anti-immigration campaign—with thousands of people marching to demand armed officers leave the city, some physically intervening in arrests, and community members volunteering to patrol their neighborhoods to warn the public when agents are nearby.
But the alliance between Big Tech and the Trump administration on Tuesday interfered with efforts by more than 80,000 Chicagoland residents to show solidarity with immigrants and people of color, as Facebook suspended a community group where people have been tipping off their neighbors when they see US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and other federal agents in public areas.
Days after far-right activist and conspiracy theorist Laura Loomer, who has gained considerable influence in the White House despite holding no formal government position, spoke out against a group called ICE Sighting-Chicagoland, Facebook parent company Meta suspended the group to stop its 84,000 members from sharing information about impending ICE raids and enforcement actions.
Loomer wrote on the social media platform X on Sunday that "Big Tech executives" such as Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg should "use this as an opportunity to be in compliance and to support President [Donald] Trump’s immigration policies, but they aren’t."
She said the presence of the community group was evidence of Zuckerberg's "leftist subversion of Trump and his policies."
Two days later, US Attorney General Pam Bondi announced that action had been taken to stop Chicago area residents from discussing the deployment of federal agents.
"Today, following outreach from the [Department of Justice], Facebook removed a large group page that was being used to dox and target ICE agents in Chicago,” said Bondi Tuesday.
"If the Facebook posts happen to bother Trump, will they still be uncensored, and will their 'free expression' be protected? If you understand what a Trump suck-up Zuckerberg is these days, you can probably take a wild guess."
Bondi repeated a claim by the Department of Homeland Security that immigration agents have faced escalating violence from protesters in Chicago. Few specific examples have backed up the claim, while ICE agents and other officers have been filmed tear-gassing a residential neighborhood; shooting pepper spray at a priest at a demonstration; slamming a congressional candidate on the ground; and holding a journalist on the ground before shoving her in an unmarked car, ramming into another vehicle while speeding away, and eventually releasing her without charges.
The Chicago Sun-Times noted two examples of immigration officers being injured on the job in Chicago recently: one who said his injuries he sustained during a traffic stop that proved fatal for an immigrant named Silverio Villegas González were "nothing major," and another who "hurt his leg chasing a protester."
The administrator of ICE Sighting-Chicagoland posted a screenshot of messages they had received from Meta, which accused the group of failing to follow Facebook's community standards. The group had never been reported or flagged previously.
Meta spokesperson Francis Brennan—a former campaign adviser for Trump during the 2020 election—told the Sun-Times the group had violated Facebook's “Coordinating Harm and Promoting Crime” policy, which bars groups and users from “outing the undercover status of law enforcement, military, or security personnel if the content contains the agent’s name, their face or badge, and any of the following: The agent’s law enforcement organization, the agent’s law enforcement operation, [or] explicit mentions of their undercover status.”
Facebook's policy was revised in 2023; it had previously banned people from sharing explicit identifying information about undercover agents, not mentions of the agencies they work for.
Zuckerberg said earlier this year that content moderation on Facebook had "gone too far" and apologized to Republican lawmakers for previously stopping users from spreading misinformation about Covid-19.
"If the Facebook posts happen to bother Trump, will they still be uncensored, and will their 'free expression' be protected? If you understand what a Trump suck-up Zuckerberg is these days, you can probably take a wild guess," wrote Joe Kukura at SFist on Tuesday.
Zuckerberg was one of several tech billionaires who attended Trump's inauguration in January. Last month he and other Silicon Valley executives attended a White House dinner where they "lavished praise" on the president as they discussed their investments in artificial intelligence and their hopes for a "pro-business, pro-innovation" approach to the technology from the administration.
At the AV Club on Wednesday, Mary Kate Carr said the removal of the ICE Sighting group was "yet another installment of 'How are tech billionaires carrying water for Donald Trump today?'"
"This is the same company that had policies allowing for chatbots to have 'sensual' conversations with kids, but discussing local law enforcement among neighbors is a bridge too far, huh?" wrote Carr.
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'Terrifying Escalation' as Trump's Federal Troops Bring War-Like Scenes and Chaos to Chicago
A group of veteran Chicago activists said the latest immigration enforcement operations are "a brazen attempt to instill fear in and demand obedience of all Americans."
Oct 15, 2025
Federal immigration enforcement officials have been ramping up operations in Chicago in recent days, including in a violent confrontation on Tuesday in a neighborhood in which agents deployed smoke grenades, pepper balls, and tear gas against local demonstrators.
As reported by the Chicago Sun-Times, the confrontation began when federal agents deliberately rammed into a car that they had been pursuing on the Southeast Side of Chicago.
The collision with the vehicle forced the car's two occupants to exit the vehicle and flee from law enforcement officials on foot. Shortly after this, a crowd of local residents came out of their homes and began protesting against the actions of the immigration agents.
According to the Sun-Times, "a large number of armed Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agents responded to the crowd by hurling smoke grenades, shooting pepper balls and deploying at least three rounds of tear gas over the area, even with children and seniors in the area." By the end of the confrontation, four protesters were placed under arrest, as were the two men who were targeted for arrest by immigration enforcement officials.
Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker expressed outrage over the incident and demanded accountability from Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem over what he described in a social media post as "unchecked attacks on Chicago residents."
"[ Immigration and Customs Enforcement] is an out-of-control danger to our peaceful communities," he added.
Andre Vasquez, a Chicago City Council member, told The New York Times in an interview that federal immigration officials are causing chaos throughout the city.
"Chicago’s been doing just fine, and then these guys showed up," he said. "There is big concern about what these unidentified, masked men are doing in this city without accountability. Chicagoans are just trying to live their life. We’re not going to tolerate unconstitutional authoritarianism."
As Common Dreams has reported, the Trump administration has deployed federal agents to several cities that it claims are overrun with crime—but statistics have shown violent crime on a significant decline in recent years in Chicago and other cities targeted by the president.
Oscar Sanchez, who volunteers for a local rapid response network that tracks immigration enforcement activities, told the Sun-Times that the latest actions by CBP agents mark a significant escalation in law enforcement aggression.
“When you’re using these tactics, you are asking people to be hospitalized,” he said. “You see elderly folks on the [ground], so you just ask yourself, what is this for? Why is the aggression needed? Why are these elevated tactics even being used?”
Sanchez's words were echoed by six Chicago activists who took part in 1960s demonstrations against the Vietnam War, and who wrote an editorial for the Sun-Times in which they described the tactics being used by law enforcement as a "terrifying escalation" beyond anything used by law enforcement officials during the famous anti-war demonstrations outside the 1968 Democratic National Convention.
After describing the actions taken by the Chicago Police Department and the Illinois National Guard during the 1968 protests—including "clubbing, corralling, gassing protesters, dragging many of us into patrol wagons"—they said that what the Trump administration is doing today is even worse.
"Flouting the Constitution, President Donald Trump has declared war on the very people he was elected to serve," they wrote. "The Trump administration, weaponizing the Department of Homeland Security against ordinary Americans, is occupying Los Angeles, Washington, DC, Memphis, Chicago, and Portland, deploying military tactics to stifle free speech, staging performative raids under the pretext of pursuing dangerous criminals, and subverting democratic norms without accountability."
The end goal of these operations, the activists warned, is "a brazen attempt to instill fear in and demand obedience of all Americans."
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