A federal judge on Friday night released her full opinion justifying an earlier decision to block President Donald Trump from deploying Texas National Guard troops in Chicago — and she even went so far as to question his administration’s grasp on reality.
In her ruling, Judge April Perry began by citing a lengthy quote from the Federalist Papers in which Alexander Hamilton addressed concerns that a tyrannical US president would use a militia from one state to invade and occupy another state.
After giving the matter brief consideration, Hamilton dismissed fears about a would-be tyrant carrying out such a scheme on the grounds that “it is impossible to believe that they would employ such preposterous means to accomplish their designs.”
And yet, Perry noted, this exact scenario is one that the state of Illinois and the city of Chicago claim is happening right now, as they argue that “National Guard troops from both Illinois and Texas have been deployed to Illinois because the president of the United States wants to punish state elected officials whose policies are different from his own.”
Perry went on to consider circumstances in which the president may federalize the National Guard, and concluded that the administration’s case for sending the National Guard to Chicago did not meet any of them.
Perry noted that the president may federalize the National Guard if “there is a rebellion or danger of a rebellion against the authority” of the US government, but she argued there has historically been a “very high threshold for deployment” that is not justified by current circumstances.
“In the late 1800s and early 1900s, ‘rebellion’ was understood to mean a deliberate, organized resistance, openly and avowedly opposing the laws and authority of the government as a whole by means of armed opposition and violence,” she explained. “As an example, during the late 1800s, after the close of the Civil War, the Supreme Court and several statutes referred to the Civil War as constituting a ’rebellion.‘”
She then found that the administration itself has not claimed any Civil War-like rebellion is occurring in the US right now.
“In all of the memoranda actually deploying the National Guard to Illinois, the court does not see any factual determination by President Trump regarding a rebellion brewing here,” she wrote. “This is sensible, because the court cannot find reasonable support for a conclusion that there exists in Illinois a danger of rebellion.”
Elsewhere in the ruling, Perry examined the government’s claims that local law enforcement officials have been unable to contain demonstrations at the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in Broadview, Illinois, which has become a focal point for protests in recent weeks.
Although there have been incidents in which local law enforcement has had to intervene to keep protesters from getting too close to the facility, Perry said, there has never been a level of disorder that would justify the deployment of the National Guard.
“The ICE Processing Center has continuously remained open and operational throughout the protest activity,” she wrote. “Broadview Police are not aware of any occasion where an ICE vehicle was prevented from entering or exiting due to activity by protestors.”
This led her to remark upon a “troubling trend” of the Trump administration “equating protests with riots” and “a lack of appreciation for the wide spectrum that exists between citizens who are observing, questioning, and criticizing their government, and those who are obstructing, assaulting, or doing violence.”
“This indicates to the court both bias and lack of objectivity,” she wrote. “Ultimately, this court must conclude that defendants’... perceptions are not reliable.”
