Runners participate in the Chicago Marathon on Sunday.
Nam Y. Huh/AP
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Nam Y. Huh/AP
After an appeals court again blocked the government’s attempt to deploy the National Guard in the Chicago In this area, Vice President JD Vance said the Trump administration would “litigate this issue as much as possible.”
His comments come a day after a federal appeals court in Illinois ruled that the Trump administration can keep federalized National Guard members in the state of Illinois but cannot deploy them at this time.
“We’re obviously going to litigate this case as much as possible,” Vance said. said on ABC This week Sunday. “We believe we have the authority to provide adequate security for our citizens throughout the United States, but particularly in Chicago.”
The decision Saturday’s ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit is the latest development in the administration’s ongoing efforts to deploy National Guard members to a number of Democratic cities and states across the United States, including Chicago and Portland, Oregon.
Trump and other administration officials have asserted that federal forces are needed to control crime and protect federal agents, while leaders in these and other cities say there is no need to deploy National Guard troops and accuse the Trump administration of overstepping its authority.
Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker, a Democrat who clashed with Trump over the National Guard deployment, said no troops were on the streets of Chicago thanks to multiple court rulings. “We have to rely on the courts to do the right thing,” he said. told ABC This week.
Most of the 500 National Guard members from Texas and Illinois were based at a U.S. Army Reserve center in Elwood, Illinois, while a smaller group was sent to a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) center in Broadview, according to the Associated Press.
The legal wrangling continues as the nation’s third-largest city hosts the Bank of America Chicago Marathon on Sunday, which organizers say will attract more than 53,000 runners and 1.7 million spectators in the streets of the city.
There have been questions about whether this race would be the target of the Trump administration’s intensified immigration enforcement efforts in the Chicago area, also known as “Operation Midway Blitz.”
But the ICE told the Chicago Sun-Times in a statement that it “does not conduct operations in sensitive locations, such as public events, except in an emergency.” The Chicago Park District said in a social media post that she had not received any information about the ICE agents present at the marathon, “contrary to a message circulating on social media”.
Enrique Rivera, organizer of the predominantly Latino Venados running club, told member station WBEZ that he was less concerned about runners during the race itself than while they were preparing for it.
“I’m more afraid of individuals who try to do this in a group of three, a group of four, right?” » Rivera said. That’s when you know something could happen, and your family won’t know for days. »
Along with Portland, Chicago has been a national hot spot in recent weeks for the Trump administration’s nationwide immigration crackdown.
U.S. District Court Judge April Perry of the Northern District of Illinois on Thursday blocked the government to federalize and deploy National Guard troops to the state. Perry said Descriptions of recent protests around Chicago offered by Trump administration lawyers were “simply unreliable” and issued the 14-day order, although it was partially overturned by an appeals court two days later.
However, clashes between protesters and federal agents continue in the Chicago area. On Friday, a reporter for Chicago’s WGN television station, Debbie Brockman, was arrested by law enforcement and then released. A Department of Homeland Security spokesperson said Brockman “threw objects at the Border Patrol car,” but no charges were filed, the Department of Homeland Security said. Tutor reported.
