On Friday, 200 Oregon National Guard troops were federalized by President Donald Trump, after he said the city of Portland had become a “war zone.” On Saturday, Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker said he was notified that the administration planned to federalize 300 troops there, roughly one month after Trump posted a parody image showing helicopters and a ball of flames over Chicago.
The announcements marked the latest escalation of Trump's use of federal intervention in U.S. cities. Since the start of his second term, he has sent or talked about sending troops to 10 cities, including Baltimore, Maryland; Memphis, Tennessee; the District of Columbia; New Orleans, Louisiana; and the California cities of Oakland, San Francisco and Los Angeles.
Trump has called the deployment of federal immigration agents and National Guard troops into cities necessary and attacked Democrats on crime and immigration policies.
But the governors of Illinois and Oregon see the deployments differently.
“This morning, the Trump Administration’s Department of War gave me an ultimatum: call up your troops, or we will,” Pritzker said in a statement. “It is absolutely outrageous and un-American to demand a Governor send military troops within our own borders and against our will.”
Oregon Gov. Tina Kotek talked to Trump in late September and said the deployment was unnecessary. She refused to call up any Oregon National Guard troops, so Trump did so himself in an order to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.
“Putting our own military on our streets is an abuse of power and a disservice to our communities and our service members,” Kotek said at the time. “And it is unlawful. And it will make Oregonians less safe.”
Attorney General Pam Bondi has issued a memo that also directs component agencies within the Justice Department, including the FBI, to help protect U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement facilities, including in Chicago and Portland.
Here’s a snapshot of where things stand with federal law enforcement activity in Chicago, Portland, and elsewhere:
In Chicago, alarms raised about racial profiling
The sight of armed, camouflaged and masked Border Patrol agents making arrests near famous downtown landmarks has amplified such concerns. Many Chicagoans were already uneasy after an immigration crackdown began earlier this month. Agents have targeted immigrant-heavy and largely Latino areas.
Protesters have frequently rallied near an immigration facility outside the city, and federal officials reported the arrests of 13 protesters Friday near the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement processing facility in Broadview.
The Department of Homeland Security acknowledged that federal agents shot a woman Saturday morning on the southwest side of Chicago. A statement from the department said it happened after Border Patrol agents patrolling the area “were rammed by vehicles and boxed in by 10 cars.”
“The officers exited their trapped vehicle, when a suspect tried to run them over, forcing the officers to fire defensively,” the statement said.
No law enforcement officers were seriously injured, DHS spokeswoman Tricia McLaughlin said.
The woman who was shot was a U.S. citizen and was armed with a semi-automatic weapon, according to McLaughlin. She said the woman drove herself to a hospital for treatment, but a Chicago Fire Department spokesperson told the Chicago Sun-Times that she was found near the scene and taken to a hospital in fair condition.
Immigrants’ rights advocates and residents separately reported that federal agents used tear gas near grocery or hardware stores targeted for enforcement elsewhere in Chicago on Friday and detained a city council member as she questioned the attempted arrest of a man.
Portland awaits a judge's decision
Oregon and Portland officials sued to block the administration from deploying the National Guard. U.S. District Court Judge Karin J. Immergut heard arguments in the case Friday, and a ruling is expected this weekend.
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But even without a decision from the court — the administration federalized 200 troops Friday, starting to train them in anticipation of deploying them to defend federal buildings including an ICE facility in downtown Portland that has been the site of nightly protests. That training was still underway on Saturday, according to U.S. Northern Command.
Trump has called Portland “war ravaged” and suggested the city is “burning down.” But local officials have said many of his claims and media posts appear to rely on images from 2020, when demonstrations and unrest gripped the city following the killing of George Floyd by Minneapolis police.
On Saturday about 400 protesters marched from a park to the Portland Immigration and Customs Enforcement Detention facility. The group included people of all ages and races, families with children and retirees with walkers, the Oregonian reported. Federal agents used chemical crowd control munitions, including tear gas canisters and less-lethal guns that sprayed pepper balls, and arrested at least six people as the group reached the ICE facility.
By 4 p.m. the crowd had thinned significantly.
A federal ‘crime force’ in Memphis
On Wednesday, Hegseth, Bondi and White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller rallied members of a federal law enforcement task force that began operating in Memphis as part of Trump’s crime-fighting plan. Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee, a Republican, has supported the effort.
Bondi said via social media that the task force made more than 50 arrests over a two-day period. More than 200 officers were deputized, including personnel from immigration and drug enforcement. They were serving criminal arrest warrants and teaming with state agencies on traffic stops.
Some residents, including Latinos, have expressed concerns that agents will detain people regardless of immigration status.
Louisiana's governor asks for National Guard
On Sept. 30, Republican Gov. Jeff Landry asked for a guard deployment to New Orleans and other cities to help fight crime.
In a letter to Hegseth, Landry also praised the president's decision to send troops to Washington and Memphis.
He said there has been “elevated violent crime rates” in Shreveport, Baton Rouge and New Orleans, as well as shortages in local law enforcement.
But crime in some of the state’s biggest cities has actually decreased recently, with New Orleans seeing a particularly steep drop in 2025 that has it on pace for the lowest number of killings in over five decades.
Appellate court weighs California deployment
Trump deployed guard soldiers and active duty Marines in Los Angeles during the summer over the objections of Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom, who sued and won a temporary block after a federal judge found the president's use of the guard was likely unlawful.
The Trump administration appealed, and the block was put on hold by a three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. The appellate case is still underway, but the panel has indicated that it believes the administration is likely to prevail.
Associated Press reporters across the U.S. contributed, including Thomas Peipert in Denver; Claire Rush in Portland; Rebecca Boone in Boise, Idaho; and Sophia Tareen in Chicago.
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