Here is how the excellent local lawyers have responded to the Manchurian Cantaloupe, at the Supremes (in 46 well-reasoned pages) this afternoon -- and a bit:
. . .The Framers carefully apportioned responsibility over the “militia” -- today, the National Guard -- between the federal government and the States, granting the federal government the authority to call up the militia only for specific purposes and at specific times. . . .
Although the district court concluded that those unusual circumstances were not present in Illinois, and so enjoined the federalization and deployment of the National Guard at the TRO stage, the Seventh Circuit’s decision partially staying that order -- and permitting federalization -- both safeguards the careful balance of power struck by the Constitution and affords the federal government appropriate solicitude while this fast-moving case proceeds in the lower courts. [Trumpian] applicants’ contrary arguments rest on mischaracterizations of the factual record or the lower courts’ views of the legal principles. . . .
As the district court found, state and local law enforcement officers have handled isolated protest activities in Illinois, and there is no credible evidence to the contrary. The Court should decline applicants’ request to unsettle the equitable judgment reflected in the Seventh Circuit’s order and to take the dramatic step of permitting deployment of National Guard troops over Illinois’s objection for the handful of days the TRO currently remains in effect. . . .
On September 8, the Department of Homeland Security (“DHS”) announced “Operation Midway Blitz,” an effort to ramp up immigration-related arrests and deportations in and around Chicago, Illinois. Doc. 13-12.
Within two weeks, DHS announced that the operation had yielded over 500 arrests. DHS touted its arrest numbers again in another press release, declaring that it “remain[ed] undeterred.”
Within a month, DHS announced it had made over 1,000 arrests and that “Operation Midway Blitz is making Illinois safe again. . . .” [On the contrary, all it has done is to teargas peaceful protestors asserting their First Amendment rights, on public sidewalks and streets.]
On September 26, ICE agents deployed tear gas and pepper spray on a group of about 100 to 150 protesters outside the facility. Doc. 13-5 at 8. Broadview’s police department requested assistance from Illinois’s law enforcement mutual aid network, prompting the Illinois State Police and several other local police departments to send support. Id. at 8-9. To ensure public safety, the combined law enforcement team closed three blocks of a nearby street for about three hours in the morning and another two hours that night. Id. at 9. The same day, DHS issued a request (which was not acted upon) to the Department of War for “100 DoW personnel” to “integrate with federal law enforcement operations, serving in direct support of federal facility protection, access control, and crowd control measures.” Doc. 13-2 at 15-16.
The next day, which featured only a small crowd of quiet protesters closely monitored by local police, federal agents told Broadview Police to prepare for a “shitshow” -- specifically, that they intended to increase ICE’s presence in Broadview and escalate their use of chemical agents on the protesters. Doc. 13-5 at 9.
Throughout the rest of the day and into the evening, agents pushed the protesters up the street and deployed tear gas and pepper balls. Id. at 9-10. Following that incident, 11 protesters were arrested, id. at 10, but only five were charged with crimes, and federal grand juries declined to indict at least three of those five. . . .
Do stay tuned. [One of the many original complaints in the federal curts of Chicago may be reviewed, here.] The Supremes, to retain credibility, should defer this case until a full trial on the merits of an injunction has occured -- at a minimum. We shall see.
नमस्ते
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