Attorney General Alan Wilson leads defense of Trump’s deployment of National Guard to Chicago

(COLUMBIA, S.C.) - South Carolina Attorney General Alan Wilson co-led a coalition of state attorneys general in filing an emergency legal brief backing President Donald Trump’s lawful deployment of the National Guard to Chicago to protect federal officers and federal property. The 22 states filed a friend-of-the-court brief with the Supreme Court of the United States, asking it to lift a stay by the U.S. District Court for Northern Illinois, which blocked the Trump administration from sending the National Guard there.

Attorney General Wilson says it’s in South Carolina’s interest to support President Trump’s efforts to enforce immigration policy because our state has been flooded with illegal drugs and violent gang members from other countries who come into the U.S. across our southern border.

“President Trump is simply enforcing federal immigration law that Congress passed,” Attorney General Wilson said. “But activists have gathered in Chicago to protest, sometimes violently, and have threatened federal officers and harmed federal property. President Trump’s order to send in a small number of National Guard members to defend against this lawlessness is responsible, constitutional, and authorized by law.”

In their brief, the attorneys general note that Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s Broadview Processing Center in Chicago has faced violence and unlawful activity by rioters. “More than one hundred people have surrounded the Center and ‘assaulted law enforcement, threw tear gas cans, slashed tires of cars, blocked the entrance of the building, and trespassed on private property,’” they write. But the threat that ICE agents face in Chicago is not limited to that one location, as ICE agents were attacked and rammed by vehicles while on patrol 15 miles from the Broadview Center.

Attorney General Wilson co-led the amicus brief with the attorneys general of Iowa, Montana, and Oklahoma. Joining them were the states of Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, Ohio, South Dakota, Texas, and West Virginia.

You can read their brief here.