PinnedA federal judge on Monday declined to block the deployment of National Guard units to Illinois, a mobilization that the state’s governor, JB Pritzker, labeled an “unconstitutional invasion” by the federal government, as President Trump threatened to assume emergency powers to bypass court battles and send in the troops.The outcome of the court hearing in Illinois, which allows the Trump-ordered deployment to move ahead for now, came as a military official said 200 troops from the Texas National Guard were set to fly to the Chicago area late Monday and begin operating there later in the week. A similar effort to deploy Texas troops in Portland, Ore., has been blocked by a judge for now.As the legal battles intensified, both sides engaged in an increasingly caustic war of words, with administration officials accusing protesters in Portland of engaging in insurrection, and officials in Chicago accusing federal forces of attacking demonstrators without provocation.Mr. Trump said on Monday that he was considering invoking the Insurrection Act, which would allow him to deploy troops despite any court orders to the contrary. “We have an Insurrection Act for a reason,” he said, adding, “I’d do that if people were being killed and courts were holding us up, or governors or mayors were holding us up.”Governor Pritzker said that Illinois officials would use every lever at their disposal to fight the administration. “Their plan all along has been to cause chaos, and then they can use that chaos to consolidate Donald Trump’s power,” he warned in an afternoon news conference.Here’s what else to know:Oregon appeal: The Trump administration asked an appeals court to let it send troops from California or Texas to Portland, despite a federal judge’s order late Sunday blocking deployments from any state to the city. The judge was appointed by Mr. Trump. It was unclear how quickly an appeal might be heard. Read more ›Chicago hearing: Judge April M. Perry of Federal District Court in Northern Illinois, a Biden appointee, pressed Trump administration lawyers for more information about National Guard assignments in the, describing herself as “very troubled by the lack of answers.” She said she needed time to review the case before issuing any orders, setting a hearing for Thursday.Local pushback: Mayor Brandon Johnson of Chicago said he would establish “ICE-free zones” to prevent federal agents from staging operations without a warrant. And officials in Broadview, Ill., issued an executive order restricting protests at a federal immigration facility to daytime hours, saying it was in response to federal agents “needlessly deploying tear gas, pepper spray, mace and rubber bullets.” Tensions have flared across the region. Read more ›“Like a war zone”: President Trump on Monday again described Chicago as a crime-ridden “war zone.” And in a legal filing, his administration depicted Portland as a hotbed of violence and chaos, with protests against immigration enforcement efforts there posing “a sufficient impediment to the execution of federal laws and danger of a rebellion.” Conditions on the ground in both cities do not match those descriptions. Read more ›Oct. 6, 2025, 7:39 p.m. ETA federal criminal complaint unsealed on Monday accused a Chicago man of targeting a high-ranking member of the Border Patrol in a murder-for-hire plot, a charge that comes as the Trump administration floods Illinois with immigration enforcement officers and mobilizes National Guard troops.The charging document said that Juan Espinoza Martinez, 37, had recently offered $10,000 in a Snapchat message for the killing of an unnamed senior Border Patrol official.The targeted official was described as someone with a role in “Operation Midway Blitz,” the Trump administration’s Chicago-area immigration enforcement campaign, which has been met with protests and intense criticism from local and state officials.An affidavit signed by a special agent with Homeland Security Investigations said agents learned last week that Mr. Martinez had sent a Snapchat message with a photo of the Border Patrol official and an offer for $2,000 for information on that official or “10k if u take him down.”“Putting a price on the life of a law enforcement officer is an attack on the rule of law,” said Andrew S. Boutros, the top federal prosecutor in Chicago, in a statement.That affidavit also said Mr. Martinez sent messages on Saturday directing members of a street gang to an area in Chicago where a federal agent shot a person.It was not immediately clear whether Mr. Martinez had hired a lawyer. An official with the federal defender’s office in Chicago did not immediately respond to a request for comment.Oct. 6, 2025, 7:35 p.m. ETThe federal deployment of 300 National Guard troops in California has been quietly extended through January 2026, according to court documents filed in a challenge to the mobilization of troops in Portland, Ore. The California Military Department, which oversees the state’s National Guard, said in a filing that it had received the extension order from the Trump administration on Sunday as the president was seeking to use about 200 of its troops in Oregon.Oct. 6, 2025, 6:58 p.m. ETPresident Trump in the Oval Office on Monday.Credit...Anna Rose Layden for The New York TimesPresident Trump threatened on Monday to invoke the Insurrection Act — an 1807 law that grants the president emergency powers to deploy troops on U.S. soil — in response to recent court rulings that have blocked his efforts to deploy the National Guard in major American cities.In an appearance in the Oval Office, Mr. Trump was asked under what circumstances he would exercise those emergency powers. Mr. Trump replied that “we have an Insurrection Act for a reason” and that he would invoke the act “if people were being killed and courts were holding us up, or mayors or governors were holding us up.”His remarks came after two court rulings over the weekend blocked the Trump administration from deploying hundreds of out-of-state National Guard troops to Oregon. Judge Karin Immergut, an appointee of Mr. Trump’s, initially blocked his deployment of military forces on Saturday and then broadened her restraining order on Sunday after Mr. Trump tried to sidestep it, telling Justice Department lawyers that the president had been “in direct contravention” of her order.Mr. Trump appeared to be constructing a narrative that would justify invoking emergency powers to deploy the military for domestic law enforcement — an idea he has pushed repeatedly since his first term. The Insurrection Act has not been invoked for more than 30 years, and Mr. Trump’s use of the emergency powers for routine law enforcement would carry profound implications for civil liberties and for the traditional constraints on federal power.The murder rate has fallen significantly in Chicago so far in 2025, with 319 homicides recorded for the year through the end of September — down by nearly half compared with the height of the pandemic. But Mr. Trump has described the city of Chicago in near-apocalyptic language, asserting on Monday that it’s “probably worse than almost any city in the world” and that even Taliban-ruled Afghanistan would “marvel at how much crime we have.”Generally, the Insurrection Act gives the president the power to send military forces to states to quell widespread public unrest and to support civilian law enforcement agencies. Before invoking it, the president must first call for the “insurgents” to disperse, according to a Congressional Research Service report published in 2006. If stability is not restored, the president may then issue an executive order to deploy troops.Oct. 6, 2025, 6:40 p.m. ETRobert ChiaritoReporting from the Chicago areaHeavy rain drove most protesters away from the immigration detention facility in Broadview, Ill., a Chicago suburb, roughly half an hour before a curfew was set to take place at 6 p.m. Central time. Local officials issued an executive order limiting the protests to daylight hours, saying it was to protect demonstrators from attacks by federal agents.Oct. 6, 2025, 6:39 p.m. ETAgents from Immigration and Customs Enforcement detained a person near a Home Depot in the Little Village neighborhood of Chicago in September. Credit...Octavio Jones/ReutersUntil recently, both Chicago and Portland, Ore., had seen less Immigration and Customs Enforcement activity than other American cities.But immigration arrests have surged in the Chicago area since the beginning of September, when the federal government launched an ongoing enforcement operation.Over the past four weeks, Homeland Security officials have announced the arrests of more than 1,000 people across Illinois for immigration violations. That total could not be independently verified, and it was unclear how many of those arrested were still being detained or had been deported. But it would represent a significant escalation.Previously, ICE officers had made about 1,400 arrests in Illinois in the first six months of the Trump administration, most of them in the Chicago area, according to data obtained by the Deportation Data Project. About 60 percent of those arrested in that period had no criminal convictions.In Oregon, ICE had made about 300 immigration arrests in the first six months of the Trump administration, according to the same data, with more than half of those in the Portland area. Over that period, Illinois and Oregon were both among the 10 states with the lowest rates of immigration arrests per 100,000 residents. Data on whether arrests in Portland have risen recently was not available.Oct. 6, 2025, 6:23 p.m. ETSome 200 Texas National Guard troops are expected to fly to the Chicago area late Monday or overnight aboard military aircraft, a U.S.military official said. The Guard members are expected to begin operating on the ground no sooner than Wednesday, the official said.Oct. 6, 2025, 5:53 p.m. ETPeople linked arms in protests on the Southwest Side of Chicago on Saturday, after a car crash involving federal agents and two motorists who federal authorities said were pursuing the agents recklessly. ICE agents responded with pepper balls and tear gas.Credit...Jamie Kelter Davis for The New York TimesThe signs in Spanish are taped to windows in storefronts all over Chicago: “ICE NO ES BIENVENIDO AQUÍ.”Warning networks have been operating all day, every day, as people who spot agents from Immigration and Customs Enforcement on the streets text friends and neighbors or begin streaming urgent cautions on Facebook Live.Even tourists have been drawn into the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown, startled by the sight of federal agents marching in camouflage last weekend through the upscale city’s Gold Coast, near the famed Magnificent Mile.What began quietly in Chicago one month ago as a promise by the Trump administration to increase arrests of illegal immigrants is now being felt all over this city of 2.7 million people and in the broader metropolitan area encompassing millions more.Tensions are flaring up like small, intense wildfires. At elementary schools on the West Side, parents have organized to stand guard at dismissal time. Some construction businesses are keeping their warehouse doors open to keep an eye out for ICE agents. Owners of small businesses are doing their own deliveries, to protect their Latino employees from driving through the city streets.In Edgewater, on the Far North Side along Lake Michigan, a neighborhood listserv lit up with worries on Sunday over a helicopter circling the area. Could it be ICE, one person asked. Is there anything we can do, asked another.Neighbors came out onto the streets of the Southwest Side on Saturday after a car crash involving federal agents and two motorists, who the Department of Homeland Security said were pursuing the agents recklessly. ICE agents responded with pepper balls and tear gas; the crowd, shouting and waving anti-ICE signs, remained until the federal agents finally left.Restaurants have cut back hours or stopped making deliveries altogether, unwilling to risk the arrest of their employees.“We can’t ask anyone to risk their safety just to serve bagels,” one restaurant, Bagel Miller, explained in a Facebook post explaining its closure last weekend.Berto Aguayo, a lawyer and advocate for immigrants, described a month of rising tensions, political organizing and outright fear, as Mr. Trump’s dragnet ensnared U.S. citizens alongside illegal immigrants.“Our family gatherings are filled with crying and trying to figure out how we get past this moment,” Mr. Aguayo said. “People are being terrorized. People are being attacked. That’s what it feels like.”When he visits his mother’s home in Back of the Yards, a neighborhood on the Southwest Side, he said, he sees far fewer people walking around than usual. “Every single person who looks brown is scared,” he said.Oct. 6, 2025, 4:58 p.m. ETAs part of his effort to deploy the military in major cities, President Trump threatened to invoke the Insurrection Act, which would grant him emergency powers to send in troops, as a means to bypass court rulings that have blocked the deployments. “We have an Insurrection Act for a reason,” Trump said, adding, “I’d do that if people were being killed and courts were holding us up, or governors or mayors were holding us up.”Oct. 6, 2025, 4:42 p.m. ETFrom the White House, President Trump justified his effort to put National Guard troops in Chicago but evaded questions about his legal authority to do so. “It’s like a war zone,” he said of Chicago. “You can go to Afghanistan, you can go to a lot of different places, and they probably marvel at how much crime we have.” He claimed that Washington, where troops were deployed this summer but have engaged in very little law enforcement, is now perfectly safe.Credit...Anna Rose Layden for The New York TimesOct. 6, 2025, 4:37 p.m. ETThe sight of U.S. Border Patrol agents in Chicago has been especially startling to residents in recent weeks. At a news briefing, Gov. JB Pritzker questioned why they are in Chicago at all, since the city does not border another country. “They have declared that the border is at the shores of Lake Michigan,” he said. “That doesn’t seem right to me.”Credit...Jamie Kelter Davis for The New York TimesOct. 6, 2025, 4:37 p.m. ETMayor Brandon Johnson of Chicago urged residents to “push back against tyranny” by organizing politically against the Trump administration’s escalation of federal forces in the city. “This battle is going to take place in the courts and in our communities,” said Johnson, a former labor organizer.VideoCreditCredit...Governor of Illinois handout, via ReutersOct. 6, 2025, 4:37 p.m. ETFederal prosecutors in Chicago announced a murder-for-hire charge on Monday against a man who they said had solicited the killing of a senior Border Patrol official who has been part of immigration enforcement efforts in Illinois. The charging document described the defendant as a gang leader and said he offered $10,000 for the killing of the official, who was not named in court records.Oct. 6, 2025, 4:14 p.m. ETJudge April M. Perry, a Biden appointee, pressed Trump administration lawyers during an emergency court hearing for more information about National Guard assignments in Illinois, where state officials are suing to stop their deployment. She described herself as “very troubled by the lack of answers,” but she said she needed time to review the case before ruling on the state’s request for a temporary restraining order.Oct. 6, 2025, 4:11 p.m. ETDuring a court hearing in Chicago, a lawyer for the federal government said Texas National Guard troops were not expected to be deployed in Illinois until Tuesday or Wednesday. The lawyer said he believed Illinois National Guard troops would begin reporting for duty tomorrow and would undergo training before being sent out on assignment.Oct. 6, 2025, 3:53 p.m. ETKwame Raoul, the Illinois attorney general, said in a news conference with the governor that the mobilization of troops to Illinois is unconstitutional, meeting none of the legal requisites necessary for such a deployment. “I’m here to say that the president’s actions are illegal,” he said. “No president can flout the Constitution.”VideoCreditCredit...Governor of Illinois handout, via ReutersOct. 6, 2025, 3:52 p.m. ETGovernor Pritzker recounted the events of the past month in Illinois, accusing the Trump administration in a news conference of inciting conflict and deploying violence against the public. “Their plan all along has been to cause chaos, and then they can use that chaos to consolidate Donald Trump’s power,” he said.VideoCreditCredit...Governor of Illinois handout, via ReutersOct. 6, 2025, 3:39 p.m. ETGov. JB Pritzker of Illinois said the state would use every lever at its disposal to fight back against the Trump administration’s deployment of the Texas National Guard to Illinois, which the governor at a news conference called an “unconstitutional invasion of Illinois by the federal government.”Oct. 6, 2025, 3:33 p.m. ETIn an emergency hearing, a federal judge declined to immediately block President Trump’s deployment of National Guard troops to Chicago, as state and local officials had requested in a lawsuit filed this morning. She set a hearing for the issue on Thursday. Troops from Texas are on their way, according to a military official.Oct. 6, 2025, 3:19 p.m. ETA hearing in federal district court in Chicago is underway on a lawsuit filed by city and state officials this morning seeking to block the deployment of National Guard troops to Illinois. Federal lawyers say Texas National Guard troops are expected to travel to Illinois today.Oct. 6, 2025, 2:12 p.m. ETDemonstrations at the ICE building in Portland, Ore., began in early June, and have sometimes included protesters in colorful costumes.Credit...Spencer Platt/Getty ImagesPresident Trump on Sunday described Portland as a city “burning to the ground,” with “insurrectionists all over the place.”But the demonstrations that prompted his outrage have rarely expanded beyond a one-block radius of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility that sits on the edge of a waterfront neighborhood, about two miles from Portland’s downtown.Political wrangling over the city intensified this weekend.After the Trump administration tried to send hundreds of California National Guard troops to Portland, while mustering hundreds more from Texas, a stern ruling on Saturday from Judge Karin Immergut of the U.S. District Court in Oregon sought to block the deployment.Judge Immergut, who was appointed by Mr. Trump in 2019, wrote that the protests in Portland “were not significantly violent or disruptive.”The demonstrations at the ICE building began in early June, and they have rarely numbered more than two dozen people. But clashes between federal agents and the small but persistent group of protesters intensified following the president’s comments. Two people were arrested on Sunday night.Even with the increased use of tear gas and other less lethal weapons to move the crowd away from the building, the demonstrations over the past few days have exhibited Portland’s usual hint of whimsy, including people in costume: One protester was dressed as a chicken, and another as a frog.Portland, a frequent target of the president’s ire, is a progressive city known for its quirky cultural scene. While rates of violent crime have declined over the past few years, the city is facing a housing affordability crisis and is dotted with boarded-up storefronts and homeless encampments.Now that Judge Immergut has blocked the use of federalized National Guard troops in Portland, city and state leaders hope for a period of calm.Dan Rayfield, Oregon’s attorney general, said on Sunday that he expected the president to abide by a court order “if it is in black and white with no shades of gray.” He noted that the president still had the power to move other federal law enforcement agencies into Portland to protect the ICE building.Oct. 6, 2025, 2:10 p.m. ETThe Trump administration’s legal filing over its right to send troops to Portland paints the city as a hotbed of violence and chaos, and argues that he has the authority to deploy troops, calling the protests there “a sufficient impediment to the execution of federal laws and danger of a rebellion.”Oct. 6, 2025, 2:07 p.m. ETThe Trump administration filed an emergency motion on Monday asking a federal appeals court to stay a judge’s ruling that bars the president from sending National Guard troops from any state to Portland, Ore.Oct. 6, 2025, 2:06 p.m. ETJudge Karin J. Immergut during her Senate confirmation hearing in 2018. Credit...Win McNamee/Getty ImagesWhen President Trump’s plan to deploy National Guard troops to Portland hit a major snag over the weekend, it did so at the hands of one of his judicial nominees, Judge Karin Immergut of the Federal District Court for the District of Oregon.“This is a nation of constitutional law, not martial law,” wrote Judge Immergut, 64, in a Saturday order rejecting the administration’s claims that it needed military support to protect federal property and enforce immigration law, what she called an “extraordinary measure.”Arguments made by Mr. Trump’s Justice Department, she continued, “risk blurring the line between civil and military federal power — to the detriment of this nation.”Hours earlier, after a Friday hearing before Judge Immergut, Stephen Miller, the White House deputy chief of staff who is the architect of Mr. Trump’s push to deploy U.S. soldiers on their own soil, said the problem lay elsewhere. “Far-left Democrat judges,” he said, were obstructing the administration’s attempt to “dismantle terrorism and terror networks.”But Judge Immergut is anything but a far-left judge. When Mr. Trump first nominated her to the federal bench in 2018, she arrived with strong conservative credentials, and her career shows a willingness to pursue cases no matter which party’s ox is gored. As a lawyer during the 1990s, she served under Ken Starr during his investigation of President Bill Clinton.She personally questioned Monica Lewinsky about the details of her affair with Mr. Clinton before a grand jury, successfully eliciting fine-grained specifics of their sexual encounters that critics would later call salacious when they appeared in Mr. Starr’s report.During the next two decades, she built a career as a federal prosecutor, first in California and then in Oregon. She prosecuted white-collar fraudsters, money launderers and drug traffickers. In 2003, she was chosen by President George W. Bush to be the U.S. attorney for the District of Oregon, supervising dozens of prosecutors and overseeing high-profile terrorism cases.As a prosecutor, Judge Immergut was “incredibly hard-working” and “apolitical in her approach,” said Billy J. Williams, who has known her since the 1990s and also went on to lead Oregon’s U.S. Attorney’s Office, first under President Obama and then continuing through Mr. Trump’s first term. “When she’s on the bench, she’s an incredible listener who isn’t afraid, in the moment, to either make a statement or ask deeper questions. She’s always prepared.”Scott Asphaug, who also worked under Judge Immergut during her time as Oregon’s chief federal prosecutor, said she told her team to “do the right thing, for the right reason.”“Our job was not simply to win,” he said. “Our job was to act in a judicious and just manner.”In an emergency hearing on Sunday night, Judge Immergut clarified her restraining order, barring the administration from sending in National Guard troops from any other state. Having already ruled that President Trump lacked a legal basis for sending the military, she warned the administration could be “in direct contravention” of her order, citing reports that troops from Texas and California could soon be on their way.“Aren’t defendants simply circumventing my order?” she asked. “Why is this appropriate?”Like Judge Immergut, Mr. Williams was working out of the Mark O. Hatfield Courthouse in downtown Portland in the summer of 2020. That was when Attorney General Bill Barr sent federal agents to Portland to deal with crowds who had gathered around the courthouse to protest the death of George Floyd at the hands of the police.Mr. Williams said that while parts of downtown Portland did resemble a “war zone” back in 2020, the circumstances of the current protests, which are smaller in scale and concentrated around an ICE building in South Portland, were “vastly different.”“I don’t fault ICE for doing their work,” he said. “I believe in law and order. And people get to protest it, so long as that’s done in a lawful manner. It’s a careful balance.”Judge Immergut’s ruling, he said, “was based on the facts of 2025, not 2020; what’s happening now is nothing like what happened then.”The judge has not yet made a final ruling on the merits of the case. Her temporary restraining order will expire later this month, and a trial is scheduled in Portland for the morning of October 29.The Trump administration has appealed Judge Immergut’s initial ruling to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. And on social media, Mr. Miller is not letting Judge Immergut’s conservative background interfere with his attacks on the legitimacy of her rulings. Her order, he wrote, amounted to an attempt to “nullify the 2024 election by fiat.” On Monday, he called her a “district court judge with no conceivable authority, whatsoever, to restrict the President,” and an “Oregon judge.”On Sunday, Mr. Trump addressed his selection of Judge Immergut more directly, telling reporters that “if they put judges like that on, I wasn’t well-served by the people who picked judges.”But while he seemed to be cognizant of the fact that one of his nominees had ruled against him, his awareness did not extend to that judge’s gender. Mr. Trump repeatedly referred to Judge Immergut as “he” and “him.”“That judge ought to be ashamed of himself,” he said.Shawn Hubler contributed reporting.Oct. 6, 2025, 2:01 p.m. ETBroadview, Ill., a suburb of Chicago, issued an executive order curtailing protest hours outside of a federal immigration facility starting today, allowing demonstrations only between 9 a.m. and 6 p.m. The protest curfew is in response to federal agents “needlessly deploying tear gas, pepper spray, mace and rubber bullets at individuals and reporters” during protests at the facility, Katrina Thompson, the village president, said in a statement.Credit...Jamie Kelter Davis for The New York TimesOct. 6, 2025, 2:00 p.m. ETPresident Trump has no interest in taking over American cities and is trying to “fix” crime, said Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, during a briefing. “People just want to feel safer,” she said, arguing that the president has the right to send the National Guard anywhere he “deems necessary,” despite several judges already deeming his actions unconstitutional. Other than in Washington, the Guard troops have been not been deployed for crime-fighting efforts.Oct. 6, 2025, 1:38 p.m. ETFederal officers in Portland, Ore., on Sunday.Credit...Spencer Platt/Getty ImagesA federal judge late Sunday broadened her order blocking the Trump administration from deploying National Guard troops for “federal protection missions” in Portland, Ore., the latest legal roadblock to President Trump’s widening immigration crackdown in Democratic-run cities.Judge Karin Immergut of U.S. District Court in Oregon also told Justice Department lawyers in the hearing that she viewed Mr. Trump’s continuing efforts to send troops to Portland as “in direct contravention” of the earlier order issued by her court.Judge Immergut had initially blocked the deployment of Oregon National Guard troops to Portland. Her broader order came after the Trump administration sought to circumvent that ruling by sending hundreds of California National Guard troops to the city, while mustering hundreds more from Texas.In an emergency hearing on Sunday, Judge Immergut, an appointee of President Trump, broadened her initial restraining order to cover “the relocation, federalization or deployment of members of the National Guard of any state or the District of Columbia in the state of Oregon.”The protests in Portland that had been targeted by Mr. Trump “were not significantly violent or disruptive,” Judge Immergut wrote, adding that she expected a trial court to agree with the state’s contention that the president had exceeded his constitutional authority. The Trump administration quickly appealed.The decision to essentially substitute California troops for the thwarted Oregon deployment drew vehement criticism from Gov. Gavin Newsom of California and Gov. Tina Kotek of Oregon, both Democrats. They charged that the use of the out-of-state troops without their consent was an abuse of power and illegal.“The rule of law has prevailed — and California’s National Guard will be heading home,” Mr. Newsom said after the judge’s restraining order was issued late Sunday.But the judge’s order did not cover a pending deployment of guard troops to Chicago.Oct. 6, 2025, 1:27 p.m. ETMembers of the National Guard in Washington.Credit...Kenny Holston/The New York TimesThe Trump administration’s effort to send hundreds of National Guard troops into one major American city after another has prompted a multistate court fight.As the legal battles escalate, here’s what to know about the National Guard.What is the National Guard?The National Guard is a state-based military force made up of hundreds of thousands of trained soldiers who typically serve only part-time, but may be activated in times of need, most often during natural disasters, wars or civil unrest.When they are not on duty, Guard troops typically hold civilian jobs or attend college.The overall force has two parts, the Army National Guard and the Air National Guard. Each functions as a reserve force for the associated branch of the active-duty military. National Guard troops can be called up and deployed overseas to support military operations abroad, as they were during the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.The Army National Guard, which descends from colonial and state militias, is the oldest part of the U.S. military.Who controls the National Guard?Both state governors and the president have the power to activate National Guard troops. When presidents have done so for duty in the United States, it has almost always been at the request of state or local officials. For example, President George H.W. Bush activated California National Guard troops in 1992 following a request from the governor of California for help quelling riots related to the beating of Rodney King.When President Trump deployed the California National Guard to the streets of Los Angeles over the summer in response to protests against his immigration crackdown, it was the first time since the civil rights movement in 1965 that a president had summoned a state’s National Guard troops against the will of the state governor.A federal judge later ruled that the Mr. Trump’s use of the troops to Los Angeles was illegal, saying that the president had effectively turned the troops into a “national police force” in violation of the Posse Comitatus Act, a 19th-century law that generally prohibits the use of federal troops for domestic civilian law enforcement.A correction was made on Oct. 6, 2025: Because of an editing error, an earlier version of this article referred incorrectly to the police violence against Rodney King that led to riots in Los Angeles in 1992. He was beaten, not killed.When we learn of a mistake, we acknowledge it with a correction. If you spot an error, please let us know at nytnews@nytimes.com.Learn moreOct. 6, 2025, 11:38 a.m. ETMayor Brandon Johnson of Chicago said the sharp escalation in federal immigration raids and arrests has caused the recent conflict and disruption in the city. “I’m calling on this president to leave us the freak alone,” he said. “We haven’t bothered anybody. We’re talking about a city where our economy is rebounding, where violent crime is going down.”Credit...Jim Vondruska/ReutersOct. 6, 2025, 11:31 a.m. ETMayor Brandon Johnson of Chicago says he will issue an executive order establishing “ICE-free zones,” banning federal immigration agents from staging on city property or private businesses without a warrant. “We cannot allow them to rampage through our city with no checks or balances,” Johnson said of federal agents. “If Congress will not check this administration, then Chicago will.”Oct. 6, 2025, 11:12 a.m. ETThe first group of about 200 Texas National Guard solders is en route to Chicago, a U.S. military official said on Monday. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on Sunday federalized 400 members of the the state’s National Guard, with the support of Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas, to support federal law enforcement officials in Chicago and Portland.