The Texas National Guard has arrived in the Chicago area despite the repeated objections of Illinois officials, who have rejected President Donald Trump’s pledge to deploy the military domestically in response to increasingly heated immigration crackdown protests here and in other Democratic-run cities across the country,
The Chicago Tribune reports.
Tribune journalists saw multiple military members, dressed in camouflage and carrying long guns, on federal property in Elwood, a far southwest suburb that is home to a U.S. Army Reserve training center. Soldiers, who wore “T” patches on their arms identical to the ones shown in a picture tweeted by Texas Gov. Greg Abbott on Monday, could be seen walking in and out of mobile sleeping units on the site.
On Monday, a defense contractor told the Tribune that he was setting up sleeper units, showers and a dining hall for 250 people at the makeshift base.
The troops’ arrival angered Will County Executive Jennifer Bertino-Tarrant, a Democrat who oversees the state’s fourth most populous county. Bertino-Tarrant said her office had not been told about plans to garrison the Texas Guard at the training center, a 3,600-acre site that was previously part of the Joliet Army Ammunition Plant property.
