Sanctuary City Chicago Confronts the Trump Administration

[Order Michael Finch’s new book, A Time to Stand: HERE. Prof. Jason Hill calls it “an aesthetic and political tour de force.”]

Labor Day weekend in Chicago was marked by the shootings of 58 people in 37 incidents, including eight victims of homicide. These totals surpassed the carnage during the 2024 Labor Day weekend.

The Chicago Fraternal Order of Police issued a statement during the holiday weekend decrying Chicago’s out-of-control violence. “Until we have MORE cops, some federal help is welcome and appreciated!” the statement said. (all caps in the original).

President Trump has offered to provide federal support to Chicago, including deployment of the National Guard. But Illinois’ Democrat Governor JB Pritzker and Chicago’s Democrat Mayor Brandon Johnson would rather pick a fight with President Trump than cooperate in protecting their constituents from Chicago’s longstanding problem of horrific gun violence. They have rejected President Trump’s offer and threatened to sue the Trump administration if President Trump follows through with his plan to deploy the National Guard troops to Chicago anyway if he deems it necessary to do so.

Governor Pritzker himself called up his state’s National Guard to support the Chicago police during the 2024 Democratic National Convention in Chicago. Using National Guard troops to keep the Democrat delegates and politicians safe was fine as far as Pritzker was concerned. But using National Guard troops to help keep ordinary Chicagoans safe is a no-no for this clueless governor.

Governor Pritzker charged that “Donald Trump is attempting to manufacture a crisis, politicize Americans who serve in uniform, and continue abusing his power to distract from the pain he’s causing families.” To the contrary, years of Illinois Democrat leaders’ lax law enforcement created the crisis of violent crime in Chicago, not President Trump who is trying to help solve the crisis.

Blacks in Chicago have suffered the most from the violence in the streets of Chicago. According to data for 2025 through August 31, as reported in the Chicago Tribune, blacks accounted for 212 of the 278 homicide victims in Chicago (76 percent).

Governor Pritzker and Mayor Johnson have counted themselves as supporters of Black Lives Matter. But their dismal records on combatting the violent crime in Chicago that has cost the lives of so many black people mean that saving black lives – or any Chicagoans’ lives – matters less than resisting President Trump.

“We’re going to defend our democracy in the city of Chicago,” the black mayor of Chicago said in defying President Trump. “We’re going to protect the humanity of every single person in the city of Chicago.”

Somehow it eludes Mayor Johnson that saving the lives “of every single person in the city of Chicago” is a prerequisite to saving their humanity. Opposing cash bail and rejecting reliance on incarceration, which he called “racist,” “immoral,” and “unholy,” are certainly not the ways to save innocent lives.

Moreover, Mayor Johnson would rather protect illegal immigrants living in his sanctuary city than keep his city safe with robust law enforcement. “We’re going to protect immigrants, undocumented people,” Chicago’s mayor said. He just recently signed an executive order directing the local police force not to work with federal agents, including in connection with immigration law enforcement operations.

Illegal immigrants, including members of the Venezuelan violent gang Tren de Aragua, are exacerbating Chicago’s violent crime problem. Tren de Aragua gang members, according to a report in the New York Post, are “heavily armed, brazen and spilling into areas of the South Side” of Chicago that “are traditionally controlled by hundreds of entrenched gangs.” A former enforcer for one of the entrenched gangs, who served a 20-year sentence in state prison and now runs a violence prevention program in Chicago’s inner city, made a dire prediction. “When the black gangs here get fed up with the illegalities and criminal activities of these migrants or non-citizens, the city of Chicago is going to go up in flames and there will be nothing the National Guard or the government can do about it when the bloodshed hits the streets.,” he said. “It’ll be blacks against migrants.”

Governor Pritzker and Mayor Johnson are making things worse with their pro-illegal immigrant sanctuary policies. State and local officials have been “oftentimes affirmatively thwarting” enforcement of “federal immigration laws over a period of years,” the Trump Justice Department alleged in a lawsuit filed against the city of Chicago and the state of Illinois. Their policies have “resulted in countless criminals being released into Chicago who should have been held for immigration removal from the United States,” the Justice Department alleged.

The Trump administration is preparing to flood Chicago with immigration law enforcement agents to apprehend and detain illegal immigrants that have been free to roam the streets of the sanctuary city, beginning with the “worst of the worst.” In doing so, they would be helping the underfunded, overwhelmed Chicago police to make Chicago a safer city. At minimum, President Trump can deploy National Guard troops to protect these agents from violent protesters while they are enforcing U.S. law, as well as to protect federal facilities from trespass, arson, and vandalism.

It is true that the Posse Comitatus Act prohibits the use of the military to conduct local domestic law enforcement, except in Washington D.C. or if the president invokes the Insurrection Act, which President Trump has not done yet.

However, President Trump has the legal authority to federalize the National Guard pursuant to 10 U.S.C. § 12406(3), which authorizes the president to do so “[w]henever … the President is unable with the regular forces to execute the laws of the United States.” The president can deploy National Guard troops to a state to protect federal facilities and to protect federal immigration agents from attacks and obstruction while they try to enforce the federal immigration laws. The president does not need that state governor’s consent to do so if he determines that the local police and non-military federal law enforcement alone will not be sufficient to allow him to sufficiently execute the immigration laws.

Governor Pritzker and Mayor Johnson have urged Chicagoans to non-violently resist federal immigration law enforcement in and around Chicago. Protesters have already gathered outside the ICE processing center in a suburb of Chicago with the goal “to literally stop the processes happening here,” as one protester described. If what we saw in Los Angeles last June and are still seeing in Portland, Oregon today is any indication, the protests will escalate into violent riots in Chicago as well. If so, that will provide the justification for President Trump to exercise his lawful authority under 10 U.S.C. § 12406(3) to send in the National Guard.

No doubt Governor Pritzker and Mayor Johnson will sue the Trump administration upon President Trump’s deployment of National Guard troops to Chicago and may be joined by other progressive litigants. These plaintiffs will try to bring their lawsuit before a sympathetic federal district court judge. They will argue that President Trump lacks legal authority to do so without Governor Pritzker’s consent, distinguishing Chicago from Trump’s successful deployment in the nation’s capital of Washington D.C. National Guard troops who report directly to the president of the United States. The resisters are counting on an activist progressive federal district court judge willing to intervene on their behalf as Federal District Court Judge Steven Breyer has been doing in California.

Judge Breyer ruled that President Trump was not legally authorized to deploy military troops to Los Angeles during last June’s riots. He did so on September 2^nddespite the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals’ June 19^thruling, which stayed a previous restraining order by this same rogue judge and concluded that the president likely had such statutory authority. “Affording appropriate deference to the President’s determination, we conclude that he likely acted within his authority in federalizing the National Guard under 10 U.S.C. § 12406(3),” the Ninth Circuit opinion stated.

That should have been the end of the matter, but Judge Breyer wanted another bite at the apple. Instead of adhering to the Ninth Circuit Court’s ruling that had already stayed his previous order, Judge Breyer criticized the Ninth Circuit’s “highly deferential reading” of the operative statute. Not only has he interfered with the president’s exercise of his lawful executive authority. He has also arrogantly thumbed his nose at a higher federal appeals court. We can expect another reversal of Judge Breyer’s order on appeal.

The halcyon days for illegal immigrants are over. Lawless sanctuary cities like Chicago are on notice that President Trump will do what he believes he must do to enforce U.S. immigration laws, especially against the more dangerous illegal immigrants, wherever ICE finds them. No matter what Governor Pritzker, Mayor Johnson, other pro-illegal immigrant politicians, and activist progressive judges believe, the law is on President Trump’s side.