When confronted with assertions from Trump administration officials regarding Chicago (it’s a “war zone,” a “hellhole,” etc.), most of us who live here understand that the picture being painted of our city bears little resemblance to reality.

That doesn’t stop President Donald Trump and lieutenants such as Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem from reiterating these demeaning untruths. What most of us understand is that Trump views Chicago through the lens of his personal animosity toward Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker and Mayor Brandon Johnson, both of whom are caustically demeaning of Trump in response.

But it’s one thing to hold forth on Fox News. It’s quite another for the administration to have to back up its rhetoric and fact-challenged narrative in a court of law, where evidence and argument (usually) win the day.

So what transpired last week in the courtroom of U.S. District Judge April Perry was satisfying, at least insofar as reality was allowed at last to make an appearance. Perry questioned Justice Department attorney Eric Hamilton closely during the Thursday hearing, pressing him on exactly what the hundreds of National Guard troops in Chicagoland would be doing. Would they be patrolling streets? Making arrests? Stopping and searching people and vehicles?

Hamilton was unable to answer other than in generalities. “You’re the ones who are deploying them,” Perry said to him. “What are they being trained and deployed to do?”

That was, to say the least, a fair question. And if it couldn’t be answered in specific ways, which Hamilton was unable to do, it absolutely was the correct ruling to say a president shouldn’t send the U.S. military to our city to help police our own residents without the request or at least consent of the governor — a principle long established in federal law.

Perry’s ruling also hinged on who could be believed, the feds or local authorities. She pointed to multiple instances of Department of Homeland Security officials and Justice Department lawyers making claims that sounded as if agents were being mortally threatened only to see those assertions badly undermined when subjected to the scrutiny of the court system.

Those included the rare occurrence last week of a grand jury’s refusal to indict a Chicago couple on federal charges of assaulting and resisting officers at the Broadview immigration detention center that has been the site of frequent protests. Both were legally carrying handguns at the time of the alleged scuffle at Broadview, but neither was charged with gun-related offenses and neither was accused of displaying their weapons.

The Justice Department cited that example, among others, in trying to justify the need for National Guard troops, prompting Perry to query Hamilton on why the feds appeared to include an example where a grand jury didn’t believe prosecutors’ charges were valid.

In issuing her ruling orally Thursday, Perry summed up the situation well. Adding National Guard troops to the volatile mix created by “Operation Midway Blitz” — the Immigration and Customs Enforcement surge into the Chicago area to hunt down, detain and deport people in the country illegally, which began last month — “will only add fuel to the fire that defendants themselves have started,” she said.

And, just as importantly, she stated bluntly that the Trump administration’s “perception of events” in Chicago and Broadview over the past several weeks “are simply unreliable.”

In so doing, she was speaking for a majority of Chicagoans who see an administration claiming its agents are here to protect us from illegal immigrants with vicious criminal backgrounds and then seeing ICE officers detain tamale vendors who’ve long been selling their wares in Chicago neighborhoods and obviously pose an immediate threat to no one.

Chicago’s violent crime problems — and, yes, they are unacceptable even at the lower levels we’ve thankfully seen this year — are not due mainly to the presence of immigrants in the U.S. without legal permission. We all understand that.

The mayhem on Chicago streets, concentrated in certain neighborhoods, is the work mainly of U.S. citizens, we’re sad to say, many of them members of street gangs that for decades have been the primary source of gun violence in this city.

The battle against those gangs does indeed involve federal law enforcement, as Chicago police Superintendent Larry Snelling told us a few weeks ago, and those federal resources are indispensable. We were glad at the time to hear his reassurance that cooperation with city and federal law enforcement has continued uninterrupted even as the immigration crackdown persists.

If Trump truly were interested in helping improve public safety in Chicago, he would flow more FBI and Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives agents into Chicago to help CPD make even more progress.

Judge Perry’s ruling isn’t the final word, of course, and the Justice Department sent notice immediately that it would appeal her 14-day temporary restraining order to the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. But she was right in our view, and we hope the higher courts continue to limit when a president (named Trump or otherwise) can dispatch federalized military to a city in circumstances such as these, which are stressful but hardly constitute an emergency.

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