The US supreme court refused on Tuesday to let Donald Trump send national guard troops to the Chicago area. It represented an important reining-in of the US president’s efforts to expand the use of the military for domestic purposes in historic moves against a growing number of Democratic-led jurisdictions.
The nation’s highest court denied the US justice department’s request to lift a judge’s order in October that has blocked the deployment of hundreds of national guard personnel in a legal challenge brought by Illinois state officials and local leaders, who had opposed any federalisation of those troops to offer backup to immigration enforcement.
The department had asked to allow the deployment while the litigation plays out. There have been sustained protests outside an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) facility in Broadview, on the outskirts of Chicago, with aggressive tactics used against the resistance by the authorities.
Last week, authorities arrested 21 protesters and said four officers were injured outside the Broadview facility. Local authorities made the arrests.
The justices decided on a 6-3 vote on Tuesday to back a lower court and rule that the Trump administration had not met the legal burden needed to show that it was not able to execute the laws of the land without federal military intervention.
The three justices leaning furthest to the right on the bench, Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch, dissented on Tuesday.
The decision was a significant defeat for Trump’s efforts to send troops to US cities as part of his immigration crackdown and arguments that some cities and states are doing a bad job of fighting crime.
The justices declined the Republican administration’s emergency request to overturn a ruling by US district judge April Perry that had blocked the deployment of troops. An appeals court also had refused to step in. The supreme court took more than two months to act.
The high court order is not a final ruling but it could affect other lawsuits challenging Trump’s attempts to deploy the military in other Democratic-led cities.
“At this preliminary stage, the government has failed to identify a source of authority that would allow the military to execute the laws in Illinois,” the majority on the bench wrote.
Justice Brett Kavanaugh said he agreed with the decision to block the Chicago deployment, but would have left the president more latitude to deploy troops in possible future scenarios.
The White House did not immediately respond to an email message seeking comment.
In a dissent, Alito and Thomas said the court had no basis to reject Trump’s contention that the administration was unable to enforce immigration laws without troops. Gorsuch said he would have narrowly sided with the government based on the declarations of federal law enforcement officials.
The administration had initially sought the order to allow the deployment of troops from Illinois and Texas, but the Texas contingent of about 200 national guard troops was later sent home from Chicago.
The Trump administration has argued that the troops are needed “to protect federal personnel and property from violent resistance against the enforcement of federal immigration laws”.
But Perry wrote that she found no substantial evidence that a “danger of rebellion” is brewing in Illinois and no reason to believe the protests there had gotten in the way of Trump’s immigration crackdown.
Perry had initially blocked the deployment for two weeks. But in October, she extended the order indefinitely while the supreme court reviewed the case. – Guardian
