Members of the National Guard walk near the White House on the National Mall after U.S. President Donald Trump deployed the National Guard and ordered an increased presence of federal law enforcement to assist in crime prevention, in Washington, D.C., U.S., August 21, 2025. REUTERS/Al Drago

By Diana Novak Jones, Dietrich Knauth and Jeenah Moon

CHICAGO (Reuters) -Two federal court hearings on President Donald Trump's deployment of National Guard troops to Democratic-led cities were playing out simultaneously on Thursday, even as Guard soldiers began patrolling a Chicago-area immigration facility that has become a focal point for protests.

In Chicago, a federal judge was considering Illinois' request to block the deployment of some 500 National Guard soldiers, including members of the Texas National Guard. Separately, a three-judge appeals court in San Francisco was hearing arguments over whether to uphold a lower court's temporary ban on Guard troops entering Portland, Oregon.

The Democratic governors of both states have accused Trump of deliberately mischaracterizing small, mostly peaceful protests as violent and dangerous in order to justify National Guard deployments.

"The president is entitled to great deference, but that deference has a limit," Stacy Chaffin, an Oregon assistant attorney general, told the appellate court in California. "And that limit is this case, where the president's determinations are untethered from reality."

In Chicago, a government lawyer told U.S. District Judge April Perry on Thursday that Guard soldiers were needed to protect officers at the facility in nearby Broadview who were facing a "brazen new form of hostility" from protesters.

Since the U.S. government surged immigration enforcement in the city last month, small groups of protesters numbering from a few individuals to about four dozen have gathered daily at the center. Their slogans and jeers have been met by tear gas and rubber bullets. The Broadview police have launched a criminal investigation into the tactics of the federal agents, which opponents have described as aggressive.

Perry said she was troubled by shifting explanations of the Guard's mission in Chicago. While government lawyers have said in court that troops were there to protect federal officers and property, the judge noted that Trump has said that the soldiers were needed to "solve" crime.

The National Guard is part of the military and can be deployed overseas or domestically. In the U.S., they usually are directed by governors and respond to events such as natural disasters. Under U.S. law, National Guard and other military personnel are not typically permitted to engage in civilian law enforcement.

While a U.S. president can deploy the Guard under certain authorities, Trump is testing the limits of those powers by sending them to cities controlled by his political opponents.

Trump on Thursday again suggested he intended to expand his effort to deploy troops to U.S. cities to combat what he claimed is rampant violence.

"We're in Memphis. We're going to Chicago. We're going to other cities," the Republican president said at the start of a Cabinet meeting, adding that the federal presence had been in the Tennessee city for a week.

"We have a very powerful military," he said. "We have a very powerful National Guard. We are directly confronting the sinister threat of left-wing domestic terrorism and violence, including the terrorist group antifa," referring to a decentralized anti-fascist movement with no formal structure.

DEPLOYMENTS IN CHICAGO

Early on Thursday morning, a handful of soldiers were seen for the first time milling around inside the gates at a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement immigration facility in Broadview, carrying sidearms but without rifles, shields or other riot gear.

In a declaration filed in the Chicago case, an Army major general said Guard soldiers would go to the courthouse on Friday due to "two high-profile cases" involving Department of Homeland Security officers.

Niave Knell, deputy commanding general for operations for the U.S. Army North Command, also said that those soldiers, as well as those at the ICE facility in Broadview, were the only authorized mobilizations as of Wednesday.

The court's chief judge, Virginia Kendall, issued a statement on Thursday saying "at no point" had she authorized or requested the National Guard's assistance to secure the building.

The judge, who chairs the court's building security committee, said she works closely with the U.S. Marshals Service, which has jurisdiction over the interior and exterior security of the courthouse.

TRUMP FACING FOUR LAWSUITS OVER DEPLOYMENTS

Trump is facing four lawsuits over his troop deployments to Portland, Los Angeles, Washington, D.C., and Chicago. The deployments have been found illegal by the two trial courts that have reached early decisions, as judges ruled that protests in Los Angeles and Portland did not warrant a military response.

But the California court has so far been overruled by the same appeals court that will oversee the Portland case, saying the president’s military decisions must be given great deference.

Outside the detention facility in Broadview, protesters this week have raised concerns that the National Guard troops would escalate tensions.

“I guess I’m ready to get hit by a live round,” Will Creutz, 22, an administrative assistant from Chicago whose body is already bruised from pepper ball strikes, said on Wednesday. “When I survive this and I’m able to think about what I did when something horrible was happening, I will be able to sleep peacefully knowing that I did something.”

Several hundred people marched in downtown Chicago on Wednesday evening, protesting the deployment.

In addition to the usual slate of protest chants, people shouted “Todos somos Silverio” or “We are all Silverio” after the fatal shooting of immigrant Silverio Villegas Gonzalez by ICE agents in a Chicago suburb in September.

The Chicago police presence was relatively light at the event, with no obvious sign of federal agents.

(Reporting by Diana Novak Jones in Chicago, Dietrick Knauth in New York and Jeenah Moon in Broadview, Illinois; Additional reporting by Emily Schmall and Renee Hickman in Chicago; Writing by Joseph Ax; Editing by Mark Porter)