NPR’s Juana Summers speaks with Illinois Democratic Gov. JB Pritzker about President Trump’s efforts to deploy the National Guard to Chicago.
JUANA SUMMERS, HOST:
Time is running out for Chicago and Illinois Governor JB Pritzker. President Trump deployed the National Guard to the nation’s third-largest city and announced operations would begin no later than Wednesday. Pritzker, a Democrat, called President Trump’s efforts an “invasion.” And alongside Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson, he’s fighting the administration’s efforts in court. Joining me now is Governor JB Pritzker. Welcome back to the program.
JB PRITZKER: Thank you very much, Juana.
SUMMERS: Thanks for being here. Governor, we’re speaking Tuesday morning, and the Trump administration has said troops will be on the ground no later than tomorrow. You filed suit against this decision, but the judge refused to block the deployment. There will be no hearing until Thursday morning. So I just want to start by asking you: How are you preparing for the fact that the National Guard may well be on the streets of Chicago while this trial is going on?
PRITZKER: Well, let me be clear. The judge will make his decision on Thursday and has not refused anything. She literally read the documents and demanded that the federal government submit something by Wednesday so she could possibly make a decision on Thursday. We don’t know how she will govern, but, given the precedent of what happened in Oregon, we think we will get the rule we want.
Remember, we are currently seeing National Guard troops arriving from Texas. We have our own National Guard that was federalized, and the Texas National Guard was already federalized, so they were able to act quickly. And they have already started arriving, not in Chicago, but in Joliet, in a federal facility. The federal judge, however, warned federal lawyers that it would not be a good idea to deploy them until a decision is made.
SUMMERS: Your state’s attorney general has argued that deploying the military to Illinois is illegal and unconstitutional, regardless of where those forces come from, but the Trump administration, for its part, says it’s deploying troops to help federal agents enforce immigration. So, were agents able to carry out their ICE enforcement duties without the support of local law enforcement?
PRITZKER: They did. And they carry out these tasks. I will say that they do it – they do it in an extremely aggressive manner that borders on violating the law – federal law and state law. But ICE and Customs and Border Patrol agents are on the ground putting their plan into action. The fact is that they literally use the color of people’s skin to determine whether they are going to stop people and ask them for their papers. Now think about it. I don’t walk around with papers proving that I’m an American citizen. I bet you neither. Most people don’t. But they require that if you have, you know, anything other than white skin, you better have something to prove it or you’ll be detained or arrested.
SUMMERS: Governor, President Trump said Monday that at this time he has no plans to do so, but that if governors like you and the courts do not cooperate with his administration’s efforts, he would consider invoking the Insurrection Act, which would give him wide latitude to use guard or active duty troops to enforce the law in Chicago, not limited to protecting federal agents. How serious is this threat?
PRITZKER: Well, remember, the Insurrection Act has the name insurrection in it for a reason. It’s only something you can achieve in the event of an insurrection, a foreign invasion, a true national emergency. It doesn’t exist here, or in Portland. This didn’t exist in Washington or Los Angeles. So I realize that President Trump, who doesn’t read or understand anything, you know, uses the words Insurrection Act as if he understands them, but he doesn’t.
SUMMERS: The president might disagree with your characterization. He claimed it was an emergency. He described…
PRITZKER: Yeah, but…
SUMMERS: …It looks like a war in some of these towns.
PRITZKER: Yes, but he is the one who caused this situation. Which is to say, it was ICE and CBP that were throwing tear gas canisters, that were pelting people with, you know, plastic bullets or rubber bullets. They are the ones who are sowing chaos on the ground, partly because they want to pretend that there is some sort of emergency. There isn’t one. This is happening in a two-block area of a Chicago suburb, Broadview.
So, you know, yeah, they can take their own video of an incident that happens, you know, in this two-block area and make it look like it’s all Chicago. It’s not even in the city of Chicago. In fact, our crime rate has been steadily declining – you know, the homicide rate is half what it was a few years ago, and it’s now falling by double digits every year. Donald Trump, honestly, doesn’t read. He doesn’t understand what’s happening in the cities. He just has an idea in mind. There is a sort of dementia and he keeps repeating things from years past.
SUMMERS: Governor, when I listen to you talk about the insurrection law or the restraining order filed by your state, it seems to me that in many ways you are relying on how things have been done in the past. And if there’s one thing we’ve seen, it’s that the courts seem more than willing to expand the president’s power. Are you worried about where this could all lead?
PRITZKER: Of course. And I think we need to rely on the courts and get decisions that respect the Constitution and the law. Unfortunately, we have a system in which the Supremacy Clause states that federal government laws essentially take precedence over state laws if they directly contravene and that federal agents also enjoy immunity from the federal government for much of their activities. So we don’t do that on the ground. We don’t protect everyone. Sometimes we do it in certain things. But what we can’t do is sit idly by while these things happen.
And that’s why we called on people to take action, like creating evidence for our trials by pulling out their iPhones and Android phones and filming everything. We wouldn’t even know about the alderman who was arrested by ICE just for standing up and asking them questions. She was really docile about the whole thing. It’s on film. We wouldn’t know if someone hadn’t pulled out their phone to take a video. And we have to find ways to hold them accountable – private organizations, private legal organizations, like the ACLU, are already doing it, and to the extent that state and local governments can do it, we are doing it.
SUMMERS: Governor JB Pritzker, Democrat of Illinois, thank you very much for speaking with us.
PRITZKER: Thank you, Juana.
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