The state of Illinois and the City of Chicago filed lawsuits against the Trump administration on Sunday, targeting its efforts to deploy hundreds of National Guard troops to the city.
State and city leadership took legal action on the same day California Gov. Gavin Newsom announced that he would also sue Trump for his attempt to deploy California National Guard troops to Portland, Ore.
“We’re suing Donald Trump,” he wrote on X. “His deployment of the California National Guard to Oregon isn’t about crime. It’s about power. He is using our military as political pawns to build up his own ego. It’s appalling. It’s un-American. And it must stop.”
Shortly after Newsom’s post, a federal judge blocked Trump from sending California soldiers to Portland.
The Trump administration is attempting to justify the deployment of troops to Democrat-run cities by painting them as violent and lawless, amid a crackdown on immigration.
Officials in both Chicago and Portland have disputed the president’s characterizations, saying that military intervention isn’t needed and that federal involvement is inflaming the situation.
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The Illinois lawsuit says that “these advances in President Trump’s long-declared ‘War’ on Chicago and Illinois are unlawful and dangerous.”
“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 favour,” it reads.
Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker said the deployment of troops amounted to a “Trump invasion.”
Addressing the media on Monday, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt stated that troops were needed in Portland to quell the alleged unrest.
“You should also ask the people who live in Portland, we’ve actually heard from many members of the community who have said that this is complete civil disobedience. It’s a mess. It’s been loud. It’s been troubling for neighbours in the community who are just trying to live peacefully. And these people are not in there to peacefully protest. They are there to cause mayhem,” she said.
Police and federal officers throw gas canisters to disperse protesters near a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in Portland, Ore., on Sunday, Oct. 5, 2025.
AP Photo/Ethan Swope
Over the weekend, Trump authorized the deployment of the Illinois National Guard in what White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson said was a response to “ongoing violent riots and lawlessness” left unaddressed by local leadership.
In Chicago, federal agents were seen targeting immigrant-heavy and predominantly Latino areas and using increasingly combative measures to detain people, including a city council member at a hospital, The Associated Press reported.
Federal officers hold down a protester in the Brighton Park neighbourhood of Chicago, on Saturday, Oct. 4, 2025, after protesters learned that U.S. border patrol shot a woman Saturday morning on Chicago’s southwest side.
Anthony Vazquez/Chicago Sun-Times via AP
Frequent rallies at an immigration facility outside the city led to 13 arrests on Friday.
On Saturday, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) confirmed that federal agents had shot a woman on the southeast side of Chicago, claiming in a statement that it happened after border patrol agents in the area “were rammed by vehicles and boxed in by 10 cars.”
No law enforcement officers were seriously injured, DHS spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin said. The woman was hospitalized, discharged and is now in the custody of the FBI.
In Portland, U.S. District Judge Karin Immergut granted a temporary restraining order sought by Oregon and California to block the deployment of guard troops from those states to Chicago.
— With files from The Associated Press
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