CHICAGO (WGN) — In an exclusive TV interview, Gov. JB Pritzker said he’s prepared to fight President Donald Trump’s call up of 300 Illinois National Guard troops to support the sweeping immigration crackdown in Chicago.
“Let’s be clear that it is illegal to, in fact, call out the National Guard or to send troops into American cities. The Posse Comitatus Act prohibits that,” Pritzker told WGN from his downtown office.
Late Saturday, a federal judge temporarily blocked Trump’s attempt to federalize and deploy the Oregon National Guard in Portland ruling that the president fell short of the high bar required to justify deployment without approval of the state’s governor. The judge in the case was appointed by Trump.
Pritzker says he expects a similar outcome.
“Even they recognize — the Trump appointed judges — that Donald Trump has gone way beyond the constitution, is violating law,” he said.
The Trump administration has already filed a notice of appeal in the Portland case.
According to Pritzker, the Trump administration reached out to his staff and gave the chief executive an ultimatum.
Pritzker says officials told his team if he wasn’t going to call up the Illinois National Guard on his own to assist in the federal immigration enforcement surge in Chicago, known as Operation Midway Blitz, that they would impose Title 10, which places the National Guard under federal control.
“It’s clear that there is something wrong in the way that (President Trump) views the United States and has some odd view of cities that he can come in and militarize them and take over,” Pritzker said.
To combat crime or get anti-ICE demonstrations under control, Trump has moved federal resources into Washington, D.C., Los Angeles, Portland and Chicago, all blue territories led by Democratic mayors. In Memphis, a federal law enforcement task force has already begun operations with support from Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee, a Republican.
Speaking to U.S. military leaders in Virginia last Tuesday, Trump proposed using cities as training grounds for the military.
In Chicago, federal authorities say more than 1,000 people have been arrested in widespread raids by ICE and U.S. Border and Customs Patrol. Masked agents wearing tactical gear and carrying long guns are carrying out the mission which has sparked protests.
Last week’s nighttime military-style raid of a five-story apartment building in Chicago’s South Shore neighborhood troubled Pritzker.
“Look, they’re not showing up with judicial warrants,” Pritzker said. “They’re using detainers, these are non-judicial warrants. They’re literally written by an ICE agent.”
In South Shore, agents kicked down doors, rounded up adults and children and detained people in zip-ties. Dozens were arrested.
“They’re going into buildings like the one on South Shore, in which they took 130 people out of the building, many of whom are U.S. citizens. They zip-tied children, some of them half naked, and put elderly people into U-Haul’s, U.S. citizens for hours while they removed the people they were targeting,” Pritzker said.
On Saturday in Brighton Park, federal law enforcement shot a woman accused of trying to box them in with a vehicle. ICE accuses some demonstrators of attacking their officers and impeding their work.
The governor urges protesters to remain peaceful.
“People who are going to show up and batter a police officer or any law enforcement, you deserve to be taken away, that’s not what your job is a protester,” Pritzker said.
Pritzker is defending the use of Illinois State Police in Broadview, where protests have repeatedly grown contentious.
“What we want is peace, and not just for the protesters, for the people who live in Broadview,” he said.
The so-called unified command force includes state troopers and law enforcement from the Cook County Sheriff’s Office.
According to the Governor, the Broadview police force only has 31 total members, “They don’t have enough to manage something like this.”
Last month, federal officers shot and killed Silverio Villegas-Gonzalez, a Mexican immigrant. Authorities said it was self-defense, that Villegas-Gonzalez had dragged one of their officers with his car, but body camera reportedly showed the agent who opened fire called his injures ‘minor.’
“We’ve got to unravel the facts here because ICE just lies constantly over and over again,” Pritzker said.
In the lead up to the federal surge in Chicago, Trump and Pritzker, widely considered to be eyeing a future White House bid, have been engaged in a war of words.
Pritzker has criticized President Trump’s mental state, saying he’s suffering from dementia. The President has slammed Pritzker’s wealth, intelligence and weight.
“You know, it’s funny whenever the president talks about somebody critically, it’s often projection about what he himself is insecure about. So, think about each of the things that he’s said about me, they’re all true about him,” Pritzker said.
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, in Illinois monitoring operations, blamed Pritzker after she was blocked from using a bathroom at public building. She also told Pritzker to “grow up,” and claimed that Chicago neighborhoods are being victimized by professional terrorists.
“She needs to get out,” the governor said. “She’s the one cosplaying as a social media influencer, who’s dragging with her cameras to catch her every move. She’s dressing up as a law enforcement officer and jumping in as if she’s trained to do any of this. She’s not.”
You can watch the full interview with Gov. JB Pritzker below:
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