Hundreds of soldiers from the Texas National Guard arrived in a military training center near Chicago to support the repression of the immigration by US President Donald Trump.
Trump called Chicago as a “war zone”, following recent demonstrations against federal immigration agents in the third largest city in the United States.
The deployment intervenes despite the opposition of the local authorities. Illinois Governor JB Pritzker accused the Trump administration of “authoritarian march” and said that the State “would use all the levers at our disposal to end this takeover”.
Sources told CBS News, the American partner of the BBC, that some troops could start their mission on Wednesday.
CBS also reported that caravans had been installed as temporary accommodation at the army reserve training center, about 80 km southwest of Chicago.
A fence was also installed around the training center on Tuesday evening.
Local officials said they had received few details on the assignments of the troops.
Trump claims that the use of troops is necessary to suppress violence in cities controlled by democrats, repress crime and support his expulsion initiatives.
The troops of the National Guard have a limited power. They do not apply the law and do not make arrests, seizures or searches. Their role is rather to protect federal agents and goods.
Trump has already sent guards to Los Angeles and Washington, DC, and ordered them to enter Memphis and Portland.
However, a federal judge has temporarily prohibited troops from deploying in Portland. Another judge has authorized the deployment to Chicago for the moment.
Chicago experienced an increase in demonstrations against immigration control in the city, most of them taking place in front of the immigration and customs enhancement facilities (ICE) in the United States.
Last weekend, agents of the American border patrol pulled and injured a woman after a group of people have sunk cars in immigration vehicles – although the local media reports that his lawyer challenged certain parts of the government’s events.
A hearing is scheduled for Thursday as part of the trial brought by Illinois and Chicago – which continue to prevent troops from the National Guard of their State and Texas from being federalized or placed under the control of the president.
The mayor of Chicago, Brandon Johnson, told BBC News on Tuesday that proceed thus, “literally select members of the national guard of another state, the state of Texas, then send them to the state of Illinois, is illegal, unconstitutional and dangerous”.
On Monday, Johnson signed a decree prohibiting the ICE agents from operating on the properties belonging to the city.
These deployments have asked both legal and constitutional questions, insofar as the troops of the National Guard are generally deployed by the governor of a state and where laws of a century limit the appeal by the government to the army for domestic affairs.
Trump said he would plan to invoke an even older law, the Insurrection Act, if the federal courts stopped the deployment of national guard troops in American cities.
The law of 1807 authorizes an American president to use military personnel in active service to exercise order to maintain order within the country.
Asked about this on Tuesday in the oval office, Trump refers to Chicago and said that “if the governor cannot do the work, we will do it”.
