Pentagon approves use of Navy base for Chicago ICE operations

The Pentagon has approved the use of a Navy base on the outskirts of Chicago as a staging ground from which the Trump administration can launch operations against undocumented immigrants, said two defense officials familiar with the issue.

Naval Station Great Lakes will serve as a hub in upcoming operations overseen by the Department of Homeland Security, the officials said, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue.

It could also potentially be used as a place to house National Guard or active-duty service members, if President Donald Trump orders a surge of U.S. troops to the city, as he did this summer in Los Angeles and Washington, D.C.

The approval, which has not previously been reported, comes after DHS sought permission late last month for agents with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and other law enforcement personnel to use the base. It also comes as Gov. JB Pritzker and other top officials in Illinois decry the president’s aggressive tactics, lack of coordination and characterization of Chicago as a “hellhole” of crime requiring federal intervention.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s office did not respond to requests for comment. Other defense officials referred questions to DHS, which issued a statement that did not answer questions about the base’s usage.

“DHS is targeting the worst of the worst criminal illegal aliens — including murderers, rapists, gang members, pedophiles, and terrorists — across the country,” the statement said. “DHS will go to wherever these criminal illegal aliens are-including Chicago, Boston, and other cities.”

Critics of DHS and National Guard deployments in Los Angeles and Washington, D.C., have noted that many of the people detained by federal law have no documented history of violent behavior. More than half of those arrested since the administration took office do not have a past criminal conviction, according to ICE data obtained this summer by the Deportation Data Project, a team of lawyers and academics, with assistance from the UCLA Center for Immigration Law and Policy.

The approval to use the Great Lakes base, which is primarily used for training Navy recruits, comes as Trump asserts broad control to deploy the military domestically in ways that have prompted legal challenges and outcry. The president has pressured Democratic governors to approve National Guard deployments in urban centers struggling with crime and violence, while mostly glossing over similar challenges in cities in Republican-run states.

Expanded ICE operations are expected to begin in Chicago as soon as this week, with Trump and his senior advisers leaving it ambiguous whether a military deployment will follow. Military planning reported by The Washington Post last month has raised the possibility of either National Guard or active-duty troops being used.

Such a mission would almost certainly be contested in court. Judge Charles Breyer of the U.S. District Court in San Francisco found this week that a similar operation in Los Angeles earlier this year violated the Posse Comitatus Act, a federal law that prohibits U.S. troops from participating in civilian law enforcement. The Trump administration has appealed the ruling.

Pritzker, the Illinois governor, has repeatedly decried any plan to send troops to Chicago without the consent of state and local leaders. On Tuesday, he told reporters that “in the absence of significant federal coordination,” his team had gathered information from “patriotic officials inside the government and from well-sourced reporters about Donald Trump’s plan, which is to deploy armed military personnel to the streets of Chicago.”

Pritzker said Trump was looking for “any excuse to put active-duty on our streets supposedly to protect ICE,” and already had begun preparing members of the Texas National Guard for a deployment to Illinois. Texas officials have not commented on the issue.

It’s unclear how Trump would legally send U.S. troops to Chicago without Pritzker’s consent.

If the president were to deploy troops under authorities laid out in Title 10 of federal law, they would likely be tightly restricted on what sort of support they can provide. In June, Trump deployed to Los Angeles a battalion of 700 active-duty Marines and federalized 4,000 members of the California National Guard, arguing it was necessary to protect ICE officers and federal property after a handful of violent incidents against federal personnel.

Trump also might attempt to deploy National Guard troops in Chicago under another legal status laid out in Title 32 of federal law. But under such status, they cannot legally be deployed without a governor’s consent, said Joseph Nunn, a legal expert for the Brennan Center for Justice’s liberty and national security program.

The president can collaborate with governors to send National Guard troops with federal pay under Title 32 if a governor consents — a possibility that the president floated on Wednesday, when he said the National Guard could be deployed in New Orleans to help control crime.

Trump on Wednesday muddied the waters on whether he intends to federalize National Guard members and send them to Chicago, suggesting that Pritzker will have to ask for it.

“We could straighten out Chicago — all they have to do is ask us,” he told reporters. “I want to go into Chicago, and I have this incompetent governor who doesn’t want us.”

Pritzker has emphasized that he will not be asking the president for military assistance in Chicago, and instead wants more civilian law enforcement.

“I refuse to pretend that any of this is normal,” Pritzker said. “I refuse to concede that the abject cruelty that we are seeing play out with the execution of Trump and [White House Deputy Chief of Staff] Stephen Miller’s policies are okay or justified.”

Breyer’s ruling this week on the deployment of troops to Los Angeles found that the administration violated the Posse Comitatus Act in using troops in standoff roles, such as traffic enforcement. But if the National Guard is deployed in another state with governor’s authorization, they could perform law enforcement missions while operating under Title 32 of federal law.

“We’re making a determination now,” Trump said. “Do we go to Chicago, or do we go to a place like New Orleans where we have a great governor, Jeff Landry, who wants us to come in and straighten out a very nice section of this country that’s become quite — you know, quite tough, quite bad.”