CHICAGO — Roughly 300 Illinois National Guard members, activated by the Trump administration as part of the Operation Midway Blitz deportation raids and over the objections of Democratic Gov. JB Pritzker, have spent more than a month housed not at a federal installation but at a state-owned National Guard training site — an arrangement that comes as determining precise costs for the Guard deployments in Illinois and across the nation remains a moving target.

Despite Pritzker’s opposition to the deployments as a whole, he’s allowed the federalized Illinois National Guard troops to be stationed at the Illinois Army National Guard training area in Marseilles, about 75 miles southwest of Chicago.

Republican President Donald Trump activated the troops earlier in the fall to ostensibly assist and protect U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Border Patrol agents while they carried out immigration raids in the Chicago region. Unlike the Illinois troops, about 200 Texas National Guard troops that Trump federalized and sent to Illinois were stationed at the federal U.S. Army Reserve training center in Elwood near Joliet.

Other than for a single day in October, all of the troops stayed on the sidelines amid numerous court battles and judicial rulings. The troops from Texas left Illinois last week, but the Illinois troops remain at Marseilles, state officials confirmed to The Chicago Tribune.

The lack of any substantive work by Guard troops on the streets of Illinois has ramped up criticism that the Trump deployments in Illinois were a waste of money. But determining how much has been spent remains elusive.

In addition to deploying troops to Illinois, Trump also claimed he needed to federalize Guard troops in Los Angeles, Washington, D.C., Portland, Oregon, and Memphis, Tennessee, to assist with immigration raids, crack down on protests or assist in deterring crime. The costs for all those deployments were estimated at about $473 million by the progressive-leaning Institute for Policy Studies, which derived its figures from public records and the news website The Intercept.

Most of that came from spending in L.A. and Washington, but the portion spent for Illinois and Texas Guard member deployments to the Chicago area was estimated to cost $12.8 million — which includes $8.15 million for the 300 Illinois troops from Oct. 4 through Nov. 15 and about $4.66 million for the 200 Texas troops from Oct. 10 through Nov. 15, according to the study.

Citing figures from the Army, Democratic Illinois U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin’s office said the expected operations, maintenance and personnel costs for federalizing all 500 National Guard soldiers in Illinois for a full two months was $19.4 million, which works out to $323,333 per day.

At an unrelated news conference in Chicago on Friday, Durbin said the Trump administration has thrown money away with its National Guard deployments, considering a very small percentage of the people arrested by immigration officers during Operation Midway Blitz had criminal histories.

“Ninety-eight percent of that money was wasted, wasted to create a reign of fear and terror in this Chicago community,” Durbin said. “If you want to help and reduce crime, and we all do, invest in law enforcement that is in the community and effective and it shows results. This moving National Guardsmen from Texas and other states is a waste of money for taxpayers.”

“I don’t want to take anything away from the National Guard. They’re wonderful people. I work with them all the time. And they responded as they were required to do under law,” he said. “But when it came to actual results to justify the money spent, I’m sorry, it just wasn’t there.”

David Harris, who once served as the Illinois National Guard’s adjutant general, questioned the purpose of having state Guard members activated by the federal government.

“The frustrating thing in my mind as the former adjutant general is the fact that they’ve been taken away from their families, they’ve been taken away from their jobs and put in a situation where they’re just sitting and doing routine training operations that really didn’t need to occur,” said Harris, who is now director of the Illinois Department of Revenue. “If I were still the adjutant general, I would generate a bill to send to the federal government, saying ‘you, the federal government, are using one of my state facilities and I need to be reimbursed for the additional expense.'”

Spokespeople for the White House, Pentagon, Texas National Guard and the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office either did not respond to inquiries about National Guard costs or could not provide any figures.

Pritzker, a chief Trump rival and potential 2028 White House contender, vehemently opposed the deployment of all Guard troops, calling it unnecessary and part of a Trump political stunt to force Guard members to work as essentially police officers.

“I refuse to stay silent about this and let the slow encroachment of our freedoms and liberties continue unabated,” Pritzker said days before the Trump administration formally deployed the Guard in early October. “The state of Illinois and all of us will continue to fight this with everything we have.”

Pritzker, days later, even helped spearhead a state lawsuit to prevent Guard troops from being deployed onto the streets. Nevertheless, after the Illinois National Guard troops were federalized, the governor allowed them to use the state facility in Marseilles.

In a statement last week, a Pritzker spokesperson said the use of the Marseilles training ground ensured the federalized Illinois troops had enough room to be accommodated, allowed them to stay “close to home,” and provided them access to “appropriate facilities,” which included functioning showers, internet access and a small United Service Organization center for recreational activities.

“Governor Pritzker has always prioritized the wellbeing of Illinois’ soldiers and their families, and has long advocated for President Trump to stop using the brave men and women of our military as political pawns,” Pritzker’s office said in the statement. “These service members may be under federal orders, but they are still Illinoisians, and the Governor is committed to making sure they are treated with dignity.”

The governor’s office added that the use of the Marseilles site and other associated costs, such as meals and lodging, “are either directly paid by the federal government or 100 percent federally reimbursed. The Illinois Army National Guard and U.S. Army North are responsible for coordinating the payment and reimbursement process.”

The Illinois National Guard members were called up after U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth issued a memo on Oct. 4 announcing their deployment for at least 60 days to protect ICE agents and other federal government personnel “at locations where violent demonstrations” would take place in the Chicago area against the administration’s efforts to deport en masse immigrants in the U.S. without legal permission. The Texas Guard members were called up around the same time but they were deployed for only 41 of those days before being sent home. The Trump administration is still overseeing the federalized Illinois Guard troops.

Despite often tense clashes between federal immigration enforcement officers and protesters, including during regular protests outside an ICE processing facility in west suburban Broadview, the Illinois National Guard members were never deployed to Broadview or the other locations of protests, as they were kept off the streets because of the ongoing legal dispute between the state of Illinois and the Trump administration, which is now before the U.S. Supreme Court.

While the National Guard has at times been called out against the wishes of a governor, such as during the civil rights clashes of the 1960s, this is the first time in history that the National Guard has been called to Illinois against the wishes of its governor, a former commander of the Illinois National Guard said.

The effort to deploy the National Guard with federal immigration agents puts soldiers in a sticky situation, said retired Maj. Gen. Richard Hayes Jr., who commanded the Illinois National Guard under Republican Gov. Bruce Rauner from 2015 to 2019.

“Politics is not a matter for the military,” Hayes said. “Soldiers didn’t sign up to be in the middle of the politics of this, I guarantee you.”

Soldiers love to serve, he said, as when the Guard responded to help victims of Hurricane Katrina. Hayes said Guard members are trained to respond to local disasters such as flooding, foreign deployments for war, and civil disturbances. Most are not trained in law enforcement, he said.

Despite the court order temporarily prohibiting deployment of the National Guard in Illinois, state Guard members continue to serve worldwide, he said. Roughly 800 soldiers were deployed this fall, carrying out security missions, making infrastructure improvements and handling logistics from the Middle East to Poland and Africa.

At any time, Guard members may be training as snipers, combat medics, safely containing explosive substances, serving on a counterdrug task force, or training with foreign allies, and running a quasi-military camp for at-risk high school-age kids. All this from a force that is more than 80% part time, serving one weekend a month and two weeks a year.

But the deployment of the Texas National Guard in Illinois was another matter.

“I call you up, we ship you to (near) Joliet, you sleep in a construction trailer away from your job and family — that’s not what I would like,” Hayes said.

At a news conference this fall with Pritzker, former Illinois National Guard commander Maj. Gen. William Enyart spoke out against the deployments.

Enyart served 35 years in the military and led the Guard’s deployment against Mississippi River flooding in 2011 before becoming a one-term Democratic downstate congressman in 2013.

He is also a member of the nonprofit, nonpartisan National Security Leaders for America, which opposed recent National Guard deployments and condemned Trump’s call to use cities as training grounds for troops.

Enyart called it “offensive” for immigration enforcement officers to be dressed and armed like soldiers while arresting detainees, arguing it confuses the public’s distinction between police and the military.

“They signed up to be part-time soldiers, not part-time policemen,” Enyart said of the Guard troops.

(Chicago Tribune’s Dan Petrella contributed.)

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