Duckworth confronts defense officials over Guard deployment in Chicago
Source: CRAIN’S CHICAGO BUSINESS
Sen. Tammy Duckworth today confronted Department of Defense officials at a hearing over National Guard use in U.S. cities, telling them federal forces have been deployed “under false pretenses.”
“Why is this administration so focused on turning our military against Americans here at home?” the Illinois Democrat said at a hearing of the Senate Armed Services Committee. “And make no mistake, this is deeply unpopular. Most Americans don’t want this.”
Duckworth, a member of the committee, worked with the Republican chairman, Sen. Roger Wicker, R-Mississippi, to convene the hearing featuring two civilian Trump administration appointees and the general overseeing National Guard deployments in states such as California, Illinois and Oregon where the Democratic governors did not invite the federal intervention.
Wicker defended President Donald Trump and his administration’s actions to mobilize the National Guard to assist with immigration enforcement and general law enforcement.
“Current crime rates in our largest cities have become a substantial burden on local and federal law enforcement agencies,” he said. “Increasingly, these agencies are unable to keep our communities safe. They are underfunded and stretched thin, unable to reinstitute law and order on their own. The guard is uniquely suited to assist with the fight against crime.”
But Duckworth said the administration has spent $341 million so far on mobilization of National Guard troops this year to the Chicago area, Los Angeles, Portland, Ore., and Memphis.
“Enabling the president, any president, to send military troops into American cities under transparently flimsy pretexts to meet his whims will have a dangerous and profoundly damaging impact on our nation’s military,” Duckworth said.
She noted the court rulings that have kept troops from being deployed on the streets in Chicago and Portland. The U.S. Supreme Court is still weighing an emergency request from the Trump administration to undo an injunction keeping Guard forces from deployment in the Chicago area. And yesterday, a federal district judge issued an injunction against the deployment of California National Guard forces in Los Angeles and ordered that their control be returned to Gov. Gavin Newsom.
The Defense Department witnesses were Mark Ditlevson, the principal deputy assistant secretary for homeland security and America’s security affairs; Charles Young III, principal deputy general counsel; and General Gregory Guillot, leader of the U.S. Northern Command, the Colorado Springs, Colo.-based arm of the department that oversees interactions with National Guard units.
Those officials generally defended the president’s decisions to mobilize and deploy Guard units.
Young said the president was acting within his legal authority and that “from all reports,” Guard units “are well received by the citizens they serve.”
When Ditlevson said Guard units were working closely with state and local governments, Sen. Angus King, a Maine Independent who caucuses with Democrats, called that “borderline humorous.”
“That didn’t happen in Illinois or California,” King said.
Duckworth pressed Ditlevson on whether Guard deployments would ever expand beyond the administration’s stated goal of protecting federal buildings and agents.
“In Illinois, you have Texas National Guard units deployed to Illinois against our governor’s wishes,” she said, adding that those units were “forced down our throats.”
“I can’t commit to that,” Ditlevson replied. “As a federal troop, the president has the authority to move them to another state.”
Duckworth also criticized the administration’s stated rationale for deploying the Guard in Illinois to protect U.S. Immigration & Customs Enforcement and other federal agents engaged in immigration activities.
“There was no rioting in Chicago before ICE was sent in,” Duckworth said. “And for the past two months, Illinoisans have seen DHS federal agents abusing our communities. President Trump wanted to put our troops in the middle of it. The courts have stopped him so far, and the courts are finding, again and again, that there is no legal reason for what he is doing. But in his ideal world, Trump wants our professional military to defend unprofessional and abusive federal law enforcement agents.”
By: Mark Walsh
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