ELWOOD, Illinois — Texas National Guard troops have begun arriving in the Chicago area to help protect federal immigration officers from increasingly violent anti-ICE protests, despite efforts of state and local officials to block them.
Around 100 Texas National Guard soldiers were spotted outside the US Army Reserve Center in Elwood Tuesday morning, according to the Chicago Tribune, with an additional 100 set to arrive later in the day.
A Post reporter saw dozens of uniformed troops armed with rifles outside the facility Tuesday afternoon, and what appeared to be approximately 20 temporary housing units being set up at the outpost about 55 miles south of Chicago.
Workers were walking in and out of a handful of spartan white trailers that appeared to be equipped with HVAC units. Several big-rig trucks belonging to Emergency Disaster Services parked nearby appeared to be transporting them to the site.
Dale Ebert, 78, a local who came to take a peek at the flurry of activity unfolding on the quiet rural road, said the installation appeared seemingly out of nowhere.
“This is new. This was never here, it just popped up,” he told The Post.
“Why are they trying to take over the country? We are not at war,” the Vietnam veteran said quizzically.
“All they’re doing is scaring the hell out of everybody.”
The Lone Star State troops are set to be deployed to locations around the city starting as early as Wednesday, a US military official told the New York Times.
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott said he “fully authorized” Trump to call up to 400 Texas Guard members “to ensure safety for federal officials” in a social media post Sunday.
Abbott shared a photo of Texas National Guard troops boarding an airplane on social media Monday night with the accompanying text, “Ever ready. Deploying now,” however, it wasn’t immediately clear where the pictured soldiers were going.
Their arrival comes amid a torrent of pushback from left-leaning officials, including Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson and Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker, who have fought tooth and nail to thwart the deployments.
The City of Chicago and State of Illinois filed a lawsuit Monday naming Trump and top administration officials, calling the mobilization “patently unlawful” and an encroachment on state sovereignty.
However, District Judge April Perry stopped short of ordering a temporary restraining order for the troop deployment and gave the Trump administration until midnight Wednesday to respond to the suit.
Johnson, Chicago’s beleaguered hard-left mayor, signed an executive order Monday barring immigration officials from certain parts of the city he designated “ICE-free Zones,” a move denounced as “SICK” by the White House, which hit out at Johnson for “aiding and abetting criminal illegal immigrant killers, rapists, traffickers and gang bangers.”
Gov. Pritzker, meanwhile, accused Trump of using National Guard troops as “pawns” and “political props,” and urged Abbott to “immediately withdraw any support for this decision and refuse to coordinate.”
Anti-immigration enforcement demonstrations in and around Chicago have bubbled up for weeks and escalated in recent days.
Last weekend, protesters used vehicles to attack ICE officers on patrol, according to the Department of Homeland Security, which said agents had been targeted twice in such a manner.
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US Border Patrol agents patrolling Chicago’s South Side on Saturday also opened fire and wounded a woman — later found to be armed — after an angry mob attempted to attack the federal officers.
The agents were located about 15 miles from an ICE processing center in the Chicago suburb of Broadview, a site that’s been a hotbed of civil unrest, when the ambush began.
