In a dramatic turn of events on October 10, 2025, a federal judge in Chicago issued a sweeping temporary restraining order, halting the Trump administration’s controversial plan to deploy National Guard troops to Illinois. The decision, delivered by U.S. District Judge April Perry, comes amid a surge of protests and legal battles over the federal government’s intensified immigration enforcement actions in the state.
The ruling, which lasts for at least 14 days, effectively blocks President Donald Trump from sending 500 National Guard troops—drawn from Texas and California—into Chicago and its suburbs. According to Capitol News Illinois, the judge’s order prevents the federal government from using out-of-state National Guard forces for “federal protective missions” anywhere in Illinois during this period. The judge’s decision followed nearly three hours of heated courtroom arguments, with both the state of Illinois and the city of Chicago opposing the deployment as unnecessary and potentially inflammatory.
The heart of the dispute centers around ongoing protests at the Broadview Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) processing center, located about 13 miles west of downtown Chicago. In recent weeks, the facility has become the epicenter of demonstrations against the Trump administration’s “Operation Midway Blitz,” a crackdown that has resulted in more than 1,000 arrests in Chicago and its suburbs. Yet, as Judge Perry noted, the protests have never exceeded 200 demonstrators at any given time—far short of the “rebellion” threshold required by law to justify federal intervention of this scale.
“I have seen no credible evidence that there is a danger of rebellion in the state of Illinois,” Judge Perry stated from the bench, as reported by Capitol News Illinois. She acknowledged that some protesters had assaulted immigration agents and damaged federal property, including vehicles belonging to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and U.S. Border Patrol. However, she also pointed out that most evidence suggested it was federal agents—not protesters—who had escalated the violence. Perry recounted recent incidents where agents used chemical agents and non-lethal rounds against crowds “as small as 10 people.”
Throughout the proceedings, the judge repeatedly challenged the Department of Justice’s portrayal of the protests as violent and out of control. “Deploying the guard will only add fuel to the fire that the defendants themselves have started,” she asserted. Perry emphasized that National Guard troops are “not trained in de-escalation,” and argued that their presence would likely increase, rather than diminish, civil unrest. The judge’s skepticism extended to the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) claims, which she described as “unreliable.” She cited a string of recent legal decisions that cast doubt on the federal government’s narrative, including a separate ruling that found ICE had violated a consent decree restricting warrantless arrests.
Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul, who attended the hearing and whose office played a key role in the lawsuit, was visibly emotional after the ruling. He praised the attorneys who worked on the case, calling them “true American heroes.” In remarks to reporters, Raoul stressed the broader significance of the decision: “This is an important decision not just for the state of Illinois but for the entire country. The question of state sovereignty was addressed in this decision. The question of whether or not the president of the United States should have unfettered authority to militarize our cities was answered today.”
Eric Wells, a senior lawyer for Raoul’s office, delivered a sharp rebuke to the Trump administration’s arguments in his closing statement. “I can only say that what I think what we heard from the United States Department of Justice was startling, unbounded, limitless and not in accord with our system of ordered liberty of federalism, of a constitutional structure that has protected this nation and allowed it to prosper for hundreds of years,” Wells said, according to Capitol News Illinois.
The Trump administration, for its part, is preparing to appeal Judge Perry’s decision. DOJ lawyer Eric Hamilton argued that the situation in Chicago was dire, painting the protests as “violent resistance of duly enacted immigration laws.” He claimed that dozens of federal agents had been “injured, hit, punched,” and even described an incident in which a protester allegedly ripped off an agent’s beard. Judge Perry pressed Hamilton for details, questioning the veracity of such dramatic claims. The administration’s legal team also cited a recent altercation in Brighton Park, a neighborhood on Chicago’s Southwest Side, where a Customs and Border Protection agent shot a woman during a confrontation with protesters. However, the woman’s attorney countered that body-camera footage contradicted the official narrative, and the federal judge overseeing the case ordered her release.
Meanwhile, local authorities have taken steps to maintain order around the Broadview facility. The Illinois State Police, Broadview Police, and the Cook County Sheriff’s Office have formed a “unified command” and erected fencing around the building. This coordinated response was cited by a federal immigration official in an internal email describing a recent weekend as “great,” attributing the relative calm to the new security measures rather than the presence of federal troops.
Judge Perry’s restraining order comes on the heels of several other legal setbacks for the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement efforts. In the past 48 hours alone, four separate, unrelated legal decisions from four different neutral parties have cast doubt on the Department of Homeland Security’s version of events, Perry noted. These include a First Amendment restraining order won by journalism groups, barring federal agents from arresting peaceful protesters or journalists covering immigration demonstrations, and prohibiting the use of harsh crowd control methods like tear gas and non-lethal ammunition.
Despite the judge’s clear rebuke, the federal government had already dispatched National Guard troops from Texas and California to Illinois earlier in the week, even after Perry urged them to wait for the court’s decision. Fourteen members of California’s National Guard were sent to train Illinois troops, while Texas guardsmen made their first appearance at the Broadview facility Thursday morning. For now, however, the judge’s order ensures that no additional troops can be deployed, and those already present are barred from engaging in federal protective missions.
The legal battle is far from over. The Trump administration is expected to pursue an appeal, and the broader constitutional questions raised by the case—about presidential authority, state sovereignty, and the limits of federal power—are likely to reverberate well beyond Illinois. As the debate rages on, one thing is clear: the nation’s eyes are fixed on Chicago, where the struggle over immigration enforcement, civil liberties, and the role of the military in domestic affairs has come to a head.
