Court blocks deployment of National Guard troops to Illinois

A federal judge in Chicago has temporarily blocked US President Donald Trump's order to deploy hundreds of National Guard troops to Illinois, five days after another US judge blocked a similar deployment in Portland, Oregon, Reuters reported, quoted by BTA.

US District Judge April Perry said that allowing the deployment of National Guard troops to the state would only "add fuel to the fire" after hearing more than two hours of arguments from lawyers for the US government and the state of Illinois, which sued the Trump administration over the troop deployment.

The judge said her full written decision would be released today.

On Thursday morning, National Guard troops were seen patrolling an immigration detention center in a Chicago suburb that has been a frequent target of protests in recent weeks.

Separately, a three-judge panel of a federal appeals court in San Francisco on Thursday appeared inclined to overturn a decision blocking the deployment of troops to Portland, which would have cleared the way for hundreds of troops to enter the city.

The outcomes of both cases could have significant implications for Trump’s expanding campaign to deploy military personnel to the streets of American cities despite objections from their Democratic leaders.

Government lawyers in both courts have argued that the National Guard troops are needed to protect federal employees and property from protesters. The Democratic governors of Illinois and Oregon accused Trump of deliberately portraying small, mostly peaceful protests as violent and dangerous to justify deploying the National Guard.

In announcing her decision from the bench Thursday, Perry said she found it hard to believe the government's claims of violence during the protests outside the immigration center in Broadview, Illinois.

She cited a ruling by another Chicago judge, also issued Thursday, that temporarily limited the authority of federal agents to use force to disperse crowds. Protesters and journalists had filed a separate lawsuit seeking such an injunction, alleging that federal officers had injured them in downtown Broadview.

Perry said that the behavior of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers had sparked the protests and that deploying National Guard troops to Broadview would "only fuel the fire that the defendants themselves have started.".