(Washington) Donald Trump’s government asked the US Supreme Court on Friday to authorize the deployment of the National Guard in Chicago.
The US president announced in early October the sending of hundreds of National Guard troops to the country’s third largest city, saying they were needed to fight crime and protect federal immigration enforcement (ICE) agents.
But a federal judge immediately suspended this deployment, arguing that there was “no credible evidence that there was a danger of rebellion in the state of Illinois”, of which Chicago is the largest city.
A decision confirmed on appeal Thursday, the court finding that the administration had not established that the conditions prevailing in this city justified the deployment of soldiers.
But in his Supreme Court filing, John Sauer, the government’s legal advisor, believes on the contrary that federal agents in Chicago are “forced to operate under the constant threat of collective violence.”
Blocking the National Guard’s deployment “improperly encroaches on the president’s authority and unnecessarily endangers federal personnel and assets,” Sauer added.
For weeks, the Republican president had been targeting Chicago, announcing that he wanted to deploy the National Guard there as he did in Los Angeles, Washington, and Memphis (south), each time against the advice of local Democratic authorities.
A similar deployment in Portland, another city run by Democrats, was temporarily blocked by the courts.
The National Guardsmen, army reservists, are trained to respond to natural disaster situations but they can also fight abroad.
Donald Trump has made the fight against illegal immigration a top priority, speaking of an “invasion” of the United States by “criminals from abroad” and communicating extensively on expulsions of immigrants.
