This doesn’t end in a courtroom.

That thought simply wouldn’t disappear Monday. No matter which elected officials spoke at which news conference, no matter how many updates came from trusted reporters transcribing and contextualizing the words of a federal judge, there is an underlying reality:

The federal government is conducting Immigration and Customs Enforcement operations in Illinois. There has been physical conflict between federal agents and the public, from organized protestors to spontaneous intervenors. The White House wants to send National Guard troops to Chicago. The state and city sued to stop that mobilization.

I wish readers could’ve watched me type that last paragraph. It took probably 15 minutes spread over two sessions as I labored over nearly every word, trying to find the most neutral terms possible to recount undisputed facts, or adding and removing data points that seemed both essential and extraneous.

It seems important to scrub emotion. Not political leanings, but anecdotes or observations: My wife and I ran errands to Menards and Home Depot this weekend, and on Monday afternoon, social media indicated ICE was operating at those same locations. This was less surprising than being told Friday night’s high school football game could be affected. I fully intend to be parked on the couch watching today’s Cubs game and will surely wonder how many of the 40,000 attendees have any connection to other current events.

Does reading those sentences move any needles? Have you decided the rest of the column isn’t worth reading? Do you wish I’d share more details and perspective?

Hannah Meisel and Brenden Moore of Capitol News Illinois reported from the courtroom of U.S. District Judge April Perry Monday. Read the full piece at tinyurl.com/CNIdeployment, and consider this excerpt:

“Perry said she was ‘very troubled’ by the Justice Department’s attorneys’ inability to answer her questions about where the guardsmen would be deploying and what exactly they’d be doing. ‘If I were the federal government, I’d strongly urge holding off until Thursday,’ she said of the plan to activate troops. But she added, it’s ‘up to them.’ ”

A federal judge in Oregon ruled against a mobilization there, but troops are moving anyway. Disputes over the legality of the way ICE operates here predated weekend deployment news and will persist unless the agency withdraws entirely, but that outcome seems unlikely given the administration’s consistent endorsement and highly produced promotion of arrest footage.

As I wrote Aug. 30, our tax dollars pay for whatever happens. Illinois is no stranger to civil unrest; each new day contributes to the next chapter. Courtrooms will be relevant settings as the situation develops, but whatever this becomes won’t end via gavel. We all know well enough to believe otherwise.

• Scott T. Holland writes about state government issues for Shaw Local News Network. He can be reached at sholland@shawmedia.com.