National guard begins Memphis patrols as senators in Illinois are turned away from Ice facility

As national guard troops patrolled in Memphis – Tennessee’s second-largest city – for the first time on Friday, Democratic US senators Dick Durbin and Tammy Duckworth said they had been barred from visiting an immigration enforcement building near Chicago.

The senators stopped by the facility in suburban Broadview on Friday, requesting a tour of the Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (Ice) facility and to deliver supplies to protesters who have been demonstrating at the site for weeks.

Their visit coincides with a ruling that the fencing installed at the site must be taken down. A federal judge late Thursday ordered Ice to remove an 8ft-tall (2.4 meters) fence outside the Broadview facility after the Village of Broadview said it illegally blocks a public street.

Both senators spoke to the local NBC News affiliate while there and have pushed for answers and called for oversight into the conditions inside the facility.

“We just want to go in and look at the facility and see what the conditions are and they would not let us in. It is shameful,” Duckworth said.

“They’ve refused to tell us this information,” Durbin stated. “I’ve done this job for a few years now, I’ve never had this stonewalling by any presidential administration.”

“What are you afraid of?” Duckworth said to reporters, referring to the government. “You don’t hide, you don’t run away when you’re proud of what you’re doing.”

The senators said they have congressional oversight authority.

“Something is going on in there they don’t want us to see,” Durbin said. “I don’t know what it is.”

To the south, in Tennessee, at least nine armed guard members began their patrol at the Bass Pro Shops located at the Pyramid, a Memphis landmark, about a mile (1.6km) from historic Beale Street and FedExForum, where the NBA’s Grizzlies play.

Members of the national guard patrol on 11 October 2025 in Memphis. Photograph: Brett Carlsen/Getty Images

They also were at a nearby tourist welcome center along the Mississippi River. Wearing guard fatigues and protective vests labeled “military police”, the troops were escorted by a local police officer and posed for photos with visitors.

Trump has sent or discussed sending troops to other cities as well, including Baltimore; the District of Columbia; New Orleans; and the California cities of Oakland, San Francisco and Los Angeles. The federal government says the troops support immigration agents and protect federal property.

The guard troops in Memphis remain under the command of the Republican governor, Bill Lee, who supports their use to further a federal crackdown on crime.

By contrast, Trump has attempted to deploy national guard troops – including some from Texas and California – in Portland and Chicago after taking control of them himself, over objections from state and local leaders who say such interference violates their sovereignty and federal law. Federal courts in Illinois and Oregon this week blocked Trump’s efforts to send troops out in those cities.

The US district judge April Perry in Chicago said the Trump administration had violated the 10th amendment, which grants certain powers to states, and the 14th amendment, which assures due process and equal protection, when he ordered national guard troops to that city.

In a written order Friday explaining her rationale, Perry noted the nation’s long aversion to having military involvement in domestic policing.

“Not even the Founding Father most ardently in favor of a strong federal government” – referring to Alexander Hamilton – “believed that one state’s militia could be sent to another state for the purposes of political retribution,” Perry wrote.

“The court confirmed what we all know: there is no credible evidence of a rebellion in the state of Illinois. And no place for the national guard in the streets of American cities like Chicago,” the Illinois governor, JB Pritzker, said.

An earlier court battle in Oregon delayed a similar troop deployment to Portland. The 9th US circuit court of appeals heard arguments in that case Thursday.

Lt Cmdr Teresa Meadows, a spokesperson for US northern command, said the troops sent to Portland and Chicago are “not conducting any operational activities at this time”.