Trump Sends 200 Texas National Guard Troops to Illinois Despite Local Opposition

Two hundred Texas National Guard troops have arrived in Illinois on the orders of U.S. President Donald Trump, the Pentagon confirmed Tuesday, ahead of a planned deployment in Chicago that has drawn sharp opposition from state and local Democratic leaders.

According to a Pentagon official who spoke on condition of anonymity, the troops were sent to Illinois to protect “federal functions, personnel, and property” and will remain mobilized for an initial 60-day period. The Guardsmen were sighted at a military facility in Elwood, southwest of Chicago.

The deployment comes as Trump continues sending National Guard units to major U.S. cities — including Los Angeles, Washington, D.C., and Memphis — and has threatened to invoke emergency powers to bypass court challenges.

Illinois Governor JB Pritzker condemned the move, saying the troops “should stay the hell out of Illinois,” calling any deployment without state approval an “invasion.”

Over the weekend, Trump authorized the deployment of 700 National Guard troops to Chicago, prompting a lawsuit from Illinois state officials accusing him of using the military “to punish his political enemies.”

“The American people, regardless of where they reside, should not live under the threat of occupation by the United States military,” the Illinois Attorney General’s office and Chicago’s legal counsel said in a joint statement.

A federal judge, April Perry, declined to grant an immediate injunction blocking the deployment but scheduled a hearing for Thursday.

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem defended the move, calling Chicago “a war zone,” while Trump described Portland — another Democratic-led city facing troop deployment — as “war-ravaged” and plagued by violent crime.

However, U.S. District Judge Karin Immergut, in a separate ruling blocking a similar deployment to Oregon, wrote that Trump’s justification was “simply untethered to the facts,” noting that protests there did not pose a rebellion and could be managed by regular law enforcement.

Following that ruling, Trump hinted at invoking the Insurrection Act, which allows presidents to deploy troops domestically in cases of rebellion.

“We have an Insurrection Act for a reason,” Trump said, adding that he would use it if “people were being killed and courts or governors were holding us up.”

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