District Court: TRO For Troops In Chicago Area, TRO From Using Riot Tactics Against Protests, And More!

from the now-go-home dept

Hello from the free state of Illinois! We just talked about Donald Trump’s incurrsion into Chicago and the surrounding area, in which he first sent in a bunch of masked ICE agents to terrorize citizens and immigrants alike, at one point raiding an apartment building with agents repelling from blackhawk helicopters like the reincarnated form of Osama Bin Laden was hiding inside of it. When a couple of hundred protesters showed up outside of a major ICE facility in nearby Broadview, the feds first fired gas and pepper bullets at them for the crime of protesting, and eventually shot a protester seven times for “ramming” an ICE vehicle as part of a “convoy.” Notably, the convoy appears to have consisted of a couple of vehicles and lawyers for the protest claim bodycam footage, not yet released, shows that it was the ICE vehicle that did the ramming, and that an agent jumped out at the protestor shouting “Do something, bitch!” before shooting her seven times.

Cool.

Well, the threat to ICE from the people they were solely shooting at was enough for Trump to want National Guard members from both Illinois and, bizarrely, Texas to deploy to the Chicago area to “protect” ICE agents and for Mayor Brandon Johnson and Governor J.B. Pritzker to be arrested. Full on authoritarianism. Those local officials refused to back down and in fact sued to get the military the hell out of Chicago’s streets. In the meantime, Pete Hegseth, presumably while having a splitting headache and a bad bout of dehydration, had already sent the troops in.

Now, two separate judges at the District Court have issued two separate orders upon the federal government and both are firmly in the loser category for Trump.

Let’s start with the TRO on the National Guard being deployed to the Chicago area.

A judge has temporarily blocked the Trump administration from federalizing or deploying the national guard in Illinois after Donald Trump ordered hundreds of troops to Chicago to help with immigration enforcement and to battle what the White House says are high crime rates in the city.

US district judge April Perry issued her decision from the bench after more than two hours of arguments from lawyers for the federal government and the state of Illinois, which sued the Trump administration over the deployment. The order took effect on Thursday and will remain in place for two weeks.

According to reporters present in the courtroom, Perry said she had “seen no credible evidence that there is a danger of a rebellion in the state of Illinois”. On Thursday evening, around the time of Perry’s ruling, about half a dozen guard soldiers were milling around inside the gate at the Ice center in Broadview. A group of about 10 protesters were outside.

Now, we all know how little regard this administration has for court orders. I fully expect them to try to play semantic and technical games to keep the troops where they are. After all, who else will shuffle their feet around with nothing to do if not our soldiers? But that will kick off yet another constitutional crisis. I expect it and, frankly, I want it to happen. I keep saying this, but this is going to come to a head sooner or later and we might as well get things started. The sooner Trump exceeds his authority and fully thumbs his nose at the rule of law, the sooner someone is going to have to do something about it. And if that means Republicans finally waking up and getting him to back down, great. If it means impeachment, all the better. But since neither of those things is likely to happen, instead I expect civil activity to spring up all across the country in major cities. Let’s go.

Lawyers for the government tried to pretend reality wasn’t reality with Judge Perry and she simply wasn’t buying it.

Eric Hamilton, a justice department lawyer, said the Chicago area was rife with “tragic lawlessness”.

“Chicago is seeing a brazen new form of hostility from rioters targeting federal law enforcement,” Hamilton said. “They’re not protesters. There is enough that there is a danger of a rebellion here, which there is.”

In handing down her order, Perry assailed the Department of Homeland Security for providing a version of events on the ground that was “simply unreliable”.

Folks, I can’t stress this enough: the federal government is completely full of shit. I grew up two towns over from Broadview, the location of “the rebellion”. I live 20 minutes away from the ICE facility in question. I nearly drove past it on my way to work this morning. If there is a rebellion in the works, it is remarkably silent and invisible. When this judge says “hey, you’re full of shit!” as politely as possible to a government lawyer, I can promise you that she’s right.

The Trump administration is of course going to appeal this, but I would bet they’ll lose there as well. And then this will go before SCOTUS and god knows what those lunatics will decide. But make no mistake: the government’s lawyers are lying. Blatantly lying. I live here. I know it to be so. And this will further galvanize legal action from other states that can see where this all ends if not challenged.

Two dozen other states with a Democratic attorney general or governor have signed an appeals court filing in support of the legal challenge by California – and also one in the Portland, Oregon, where a similar troop deployment is also being challenged.

Collective action is desperately needed, so more of this, please.

But the courts weren’t done. A separate judge in the court issued an injunction both to keep ICE and other federal agents from using riot control tactics on small, peaceful protests, and to cut the shit with their jackboot thugs routine.

In a separate ruling on Thursday, the US district judge Sara Ellis issued a preliminary injunction restricting agents’ use of force, including pepper balls, rubber bullets and physical force such as pulling, shoving or tackling against protesters and journalists who don’t pose a serious threat to law enforcement.

Ellis’s order covers all of northern Illinois and also requires federal agents to wear “visible identification” such as badges, the subject of heated debate as viral footage has surfaced of masked, plainclothes officers carrying out immigration enforcements in several US cities.

You boys and girls want to hunt human beings and violate the rights of citizens and the due process rights of all manner of people? Show your faces. Show your names and your badges. Be accountable. Don’t hide behind balaclavas or masks and unmarked cars indistinguishable from impersonators. You’ll do this out in the open or you won’t do it at all. That’s as American as baseball and apple pie.

This isn’t the end of this. It might not even be the beginning of the end. I fully expect the federal government to violate these injunctions essentially immediately. I’m also taking note of a complete lack of outrage from elected Republicans over Trump’s violation of law as well as his call to jail elected officials for the crime of not following his orders. Cowards, all of you.

But again, this is going to come to an inflection point sometime. It might as well be now. After all, I love the smell of court injunctions in the morning.

Filed Under: april perry, brandon johnson, broadview, chicago, donald trump, eric hamilton, ice, illinois, jb pritzker, national guard, sara ellis, thuggery