A group of plaintiffs in Chicago, including reporters, press associations, nonprofits, and unions, has filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration, alleging that federal agents have used "extreme brutality" trying to silence journalists and protesters in the city, reported Politico on Tuesday.
"The organizations — who were also joined in the suit by individual protesters — allege in the 52-page suit that federal agents acted to 'intimidate and silence' civilians and members of the media who did not pose an imminent threat to law enforcement at protests outside a local Immigration and Customs Enforcement processing facility — posing a violation to protesters’ and journalists’ First Amendment rights," the report continued.
This comes as Trump has ordered the National Guard into Portland, Oregon, shortly after protests cropped up outside an ICE facility there. A federal judge appointed by Trump put that order on hold.
In the lawsuit, plaintiffs urge a federal court to “observe, record, and report on the federal agents’ activities and the public’s demonstrations against them," saying that the government has, on an unprecedented scale, “undermined bedrock constitutional protections on this scale or usurped states’ police power by directing federal agents to carry out an illegal mission against the people for the government’s own benefit.”
The president has repeatedly threatened to conduct a National Guard occupation of Chicago as well, following similar operations in Los Angeles and Washington, D.C., and is ramping up immigration enforcement presence there. In many of these interventions, he has not explicitly cited resistance to immigration enforcement, but claimed these cities need order restored from general crime.
Illinois officials have pushed back hard on Trump's threats, with Gov. J.B. Pritzker (D) telling the president, "Your remarks about this effort over the last several weeks have betrayed a continuing slip in your mental faculties, and are not fit for the auspicious office that you occupy."