As Chicago prepares for federal agents and soldiers to arrive in the city, a group of military veterans, attorneys and advocates urged service members to resist potentially unlawful orders from the Trump administration if deployed.
Veterans and lawyers from About Face: Veterans Against the War, the National Lawyers Guild and Movement Law Lab outlined options for National Guard members to follow their conscience in the face of what advocates and Democratic politicians say are illegal federal military operations.
“Service members signed up to uphold the Constitution,” Brad Thomson, a member of the National Lawyers Guild’s Military Law Task Force, said at a news conference Tuesday at Federal Plaza in the Loop. “Service members did not sign up to become pawns for a president trying to score political points against the opposing party.”
While Gov. JB Pritzker has previously called a potential National Guard deployment to Chicago “unlawful,” advocates asked him to increase his support for service members who resist Trump’s orders. Specifically, they said Pritzker should order Illinois National Guard members to resist federal orders if deployed in Chicago — in his capacity as their commander-in-chief — as well as lend state legal resources to aid service members who resist.
At the news conference, advocates said the Uniform Code of Military Justice establishes a right, and in some cases a responsibility, to refuse unlawful orders. That could include deploying to Chicago and performing domestic law enforcement functions without the consent of state and local authorities, Thomson said.
“You are not alone in thinking that this isn’t what you signed up for,” said About Face leader Daniel Lakemacher, a Navy veteran, who said he was a conscientious objector discharged in 2009. “You are not alone in questioning whether it’s moral, just right or in this case, even legal to follow these orders.”
On Tuesday morning, a federal judge in California ruled Trump’s deployment of the National Guard and Marines to Los Angeles in June was illegal under the Posse Comitatus Act, an almost 150-year-old law that limits when military personnel can be deployed for domestic law enforcement. Lawyers and veterans at Tuesday’s news conference said the decision means National Guard deployment to Chicago would likely be unlawful as well.
Beyond the legal and political consequences, deploying the Guard under unlawful orders could hurt service members themselves, Thomson said.
“Service members have ‘just followed orders’ and now decades later, dealt with those consequences on their own psyche, their own consequences,” Thomson said.
The National Lawyers Guild and GI Rights hotlines have been “overwhelmed” with calls from concerned service members amid the Trump administration’s military operations in LA and Washington, D.C., said Thomson and Aaron Hughes, another veteran and About Face member.
“We have forgotten about the people on the ground,” Hughes said. “And we’re asking people to center these service members and give them education on their rights.”
