America on edge as Texas ‘invades’ Illinois
INTERNATIONAL – USA
8 OCTOBER 2025
- In echoes of the 1861 Civil War, alarming talk of Texas invading Illinois erupted across America as a complement of 400 troops from the National Guard flew out of Fort Bliss in El Paso on US military transport plane C-17 Globemaster III for deployment in Chicago against the wishes of the state’s Democratic leaders and local officials.
- The 1861 Civil War saw an estimated 750,000 people die
- Republicans, who fought to abolish slavery in 1861 under Abraham Lincoln (who was from Illinois) and Southern Democrats, who defended slavery, have traded places amid fervid talk of a reverse invasion and a replay of 1861.
- The so-called “invasion” followed a federal judge in Illinois declining to immediately block the National Guard deployment while scheduling a full hearing, in contrast to another judge in Oregon who temporarily halted a deployment in Portland.
- Separately, president Trump warned he would use the Insurrection Act of 1807 if states and cities balked at the deployment.
- The Insurrection Act of 1807 is a federal law that grants the president the power to deploy the US military and/or federalise the National Guard to suppress civil disorder, insurrection, or rebellion.
- Civil liberties activists are horrified by the dramatic escalation in both rhetoric and enforcement over what is widely seen as endemic but localised crime and law and order issue in a few blocks of almost every US city that is usually the remit of local authorities.
- Trump has characterised this as an “invasion” by illegal aliens that requires enforcement by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), who in turn need protection of troops.
- He has also invoked vivid images of cities like San Francisco, Portland, and Chicago being “war-ravaged” and going up in flames even though crime and law-and-order issues are typically restricted to a few city blocks.
- Democrats say he is exaggerating the problem to demonise immigrants and minorities — their vote banks — and eventually disenfranchise them to take over American cities that typically tend to vote blue.
