After an appeals court again blocked the government's attempt to deploy the National Guard in the Chicago area, Vice President JD Vance says the Trump administration will "litigate this as much as we can."
His comments came one day after a federal appeals court in Illinois ruled that the Trump administration can keep federalized National Guard members in the state of Illinois but cannot deploy them for now.
"We're obviously going to litigate this as much as we can," Vance said on ABC's This Week Sunday. "We think that we have the authority to provide proper safety to our citizens all over the United States, but particularly in Chicago."
The ruling Saturday by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit is the latest development in the administration's ongoing push to deploy National Guard members to a number of Democratic cities and states across the U.S., including Chicago and Portland, Oregon.
Trump and other administration officials have claimed that federal forces are necessary to control crime and protect federal agents, while leaders in those cities and others say there is no need for National Guard troops and accuse the Trump administration of overstepping its authority.
Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker, a Democrat who's sparred with Trump over the National Guard deployment, said no troops are on the streets of Chicago thanks to the multiple judicial rulings. "We've got to rely on the courts to do the right thing," he told ABC's This Week.
Most of the 500 National Guard members from Texas and Illinois were based at a U.S. Army Reserve Center in Elwood, Illinois, while a smaller group was sent to a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) facility in Broadview, according to the Associated Press.
The legal back-and-forth rolls on as the country's third-largest city hosts the Bank of America Chicago Marathon on Sunday, which organizers say will draw more than 53,000 runners and 1.7 million spectators to city streets.
There had been some question about whether the race would be a target of the Trump administration's ramped-up immigration enforcement efforts in the Chicago area, also known as "Operation Midway Blitz."
But ICE told the Chicago Sun-Times in a statement that it "does not conduct operations at sensitive locations, such as public events, unless there are exigent circumstances." The Chicago Park District said in a social media post that it had not received any information about ICE agents at the marathon, "contrary to a post circulating on social media."
Enrique Rivera, organizer of the predominantly Latino running club Venados, told member station WBEZ that he was less concerned for runners during the race itself than while they were preparing for it.
"I'm more afraid of individuals that are out there trying to do this in a group of three, a group of four, right?" Rivera said. That's where you know something can happen, and your family won't find out for days."
Along with Portland, Chicago has been a national flashpoint in recent weeks for the Trump administration's national immigration crackdown.
On Thursday, U.S. District Court Judge April Perry of the Northern District of Illinois blocked the government from federalizing and deploying National Guard troops in the state. Perry said descriptions of recent protests around Chicago offered by Trump administration attorneys were "simply unreliable" and issued the 14-day order, though it was partially overturned by an appeals court just two days later.
Still, clashes between protesters and federal agents have continued in the Chicago area. On Friday a journalist with Chicago's WGN television station, Debbie Brockman, was detained by law enforcement agents and later released. A Department of Homeland Security spokesperson said Brockman "threw objects at border patrol's car" but no charges have been filed, the Guardian reported.
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