The former leader of the Illinois National Guard is highly critical of the prospect of President Donald Trump ordering Guard members to Chicago to control crime.
Bill Enyart, former adjutant general of Illinois and a former Democratic congressman who lives in Belleville, said an order like that would not only be a “terrific misuse” of the Guard but also pose serious legal concerns.
“The core mission is the defense of the United States of America in battling overseas adversaries,” Enyart said of the National Guard. “It's not in providing domestic law enforcement.”
Trump’s border czar, Tom Homan, said there will be a post-Labor Day deportation campaign in Chicago. The Chicago Sun-Times also reports a Naval station in the area could possibly house National Guard troops in September.
Enyart spoke recently with St. Louis Public Radio Metro East reporter Will Bauer. The following conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
Bauer: When you first heard that President Trump was planning to send National Guard troops to Chicago, what went through your mind?
Enyart: The National Guard is not a law enforcement organization. It is a military reserve organization. The core mission is the defense of the United States of America in battling overseas adversaries. It's not in providing domestic law enforcement.
There is a secondary mission to the National Guard, and that is to provide a force for the governors of the states to use under the governor's command and control for emergencies such as hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, blizzards. Occasionally, the governors also use us for, it's called civil disturbance, or sometimes newspapers call it riot control. But it's civil disturbance. But that's pretty infrequent compared to all of our other uses.
Bauer: As someone who led the Illinois National Guard, can you walk me through what the process may look like if someone like Trump gives those orders to deploy to Chicago — but then someone like Gov. JB Pritzker says, ‘No, I'm not interested in that.’ What do you do?
Enyart: First of all, you need to understand the legal authorities for mobilizing the National Guard — and there are three different statuses that a National Guard person can be serving on duty.
The first is state active duty. That is purely controlled by the governor, and it is purely paid for with state dollars. So state active duty can be things like floods, blizzards and hurricanes.
The second is what's called Title 32. Title 32 is where you are once again reporting to the governor, but the difference is that it is paid for with federal dollars. And Title 32 duty can be for training. It can be for emergency disasters — the hurricanes, tornadoes, etc. But both state active duty and Title 32 you’re subject to control by the governor — not by the president of the United States.
The third possibility is what's called Title 10 orders. Title 10 orders are the orders that govern active duty military. And if you are ordered to Title 10 duty, then you are placed on active status of the United States military. In order for the president to assume control of the National Guard, these soldiers really must be in Title 10 orders. Otherwise the command and control flows through the governor. Certainly the most common way to be placed on Title 10 orders is to be assigned to a mission or to training outside the United States of America.
Then, there is also the Insurrection Act, which is very similar, and it requires either a foreign invasion or that something be out of the control of local authorities. It also requires that constitutional rights of citizens are being impaired and the state is not willing or able to take control of the situation. I don't think any of those authorities apply to Chicago, or, for that matter, to Washington, D.C. But Washington, D.C., is an entirely different subject because Washington, D.C., is a federal enclave, and the president controls the National Guard there — not the governors.
Military soldiers are not trained to observe the constitutional rights of citizens. They're not trained to make legal arrests. They're not trained to do legal searches and seizures. They are trained to break things and kill people. Now, the Pentagon hates it when I say that, but that's what we're trained to do: break things and kill people. So you are taking a blunt-force object — you are taking a sledgehammer to do work that is not appropriate for a sledgehammer. We've all seen the photographs and the video of National Guardsmen in Washington, D.C., picking up litter, spreading mulch and having selfies taken with tourists in front of the Washington Monument. That's not what the National Guard does. They signed up to help their neighbors, help their friends, help their communities and defend this nation from foreign attack. They didn't sign up to police their fellow citizens.
Bauer: Given that Chicago isn't a federal district like Washington, D.C., and there are no riots or protests — however you want to phrase it — like there were in LA, is getting the National Guard deployed to Chicago a much harder legal problem to solve for the Trump administration?
Enyart: Well, the Supreme Court in 1837 said that the president has virtually unfettered discretion in using the Insurrection Act. So, he could certainly declare the Insurrection Act is in effect and take the Illinois National Guard under Title 10 orders and send them in. But that is subject to, if you will, post-action review, and it could be found that the president was unauthorized in doing so.
Now the other thing is, that even though the president has unfettered discretion to send the guard in or active duty military in, he risks exposing those soldiers to legal jeopardy because when you're on active duty, when you're in Title 10 status, you are still subject to the laws of the United States — subject to the Constitution. If you as a soldier were to do something that violates a citizen's constitutional rights, if you were to do an illegal search and seizure, an illegal arrest or, God forbid, kill somebody or injure someone, then you do face both criminal and civil liability for those actions.
Bauer: Throwing the legality aside, what do you make of the prospect of National Guard troops being deployed to Chicago to control crime?
Enyart: The National Guard, as I put forth, is not trained or qualified to perform a civilian law enforcement mission. We have talked about the legalities of it, but let's talk about the morale factors. Let's talk about the impact on the individual soldier. Let's say you're taking a soldier from Mascoutah, Illinois, here in the metro area, and you're sending him up to Chicago. Number one, you're taking him away from his family. How do you think a spouse or kids or parents are going to feel when they're watching their soldier scatter mulch around trees on the lakefront in Chicago, instead of doing what they're supposed to do?
It's one thing to get called away to deal with an earthquake or a hurricane. It's a whole lot different to get called away to foster some politicians' video games. That is not fair to the soldier, and it's a good way to wreck unit morale. It's a good way to really adversely impact retention and recruitment. You get sent away on fruitless missions like this a couple of times, you're going to seriously consider whether or not you're going to stay in for another hitch, and it's sure going to impact the way you talk about being in the National Guard to your buddies who might sign up.
