Federal law enforcement officers push protesters away from an ICE processing facility in Broadview, Illinois, on September 19. The Trump Administration has vowed for more than a month to bring a show of federal force to Chicago, America’s third-largest city, to crack down on illegal immigration. Photo / Jamie Kelter Davis, The New York Times
The Trump Administration has vowed for more than a month to bring a show of federal force to Chicago, the third-largest United States city, to crack down on illegal immigration.
This week, the Administration has visibly followed through.
On Sunday local time, federal officers in camouflage patrolled tourist-heavy areas of downtown Chicago in a conspicuous pack, attracting stares and taunts, including from a bicyclist the agents tried to chase.
The next day US military officials said that 100 National Guard troops would be deployed to Illinois to protect federal facilities, a mobilisation that is expected in the coming days.
And on Tuesday local time, federal agents, using drones, helicopters, trucks and dozens of vehicles, conducted a middle-of-the-night raid on a rundown apartment building on the South Side of Chicago, leaving the building mostly empty of residents by morning and neighbours stunned.
“It felt like we were under siege,” said one bystander, Darrell Ballard, 63, showing videos on his cellphone of officers entering the apartment building in the dark.
A US Border Patrol official involved with the operation, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said that the effort involved nearly 300 federal agents from various agencies. The agents came from various directions around the building.
The operation that night targeted an apartment complex that federal officials said was frequented by members of the Tren de Aragua gang. The Border Patrol official said that snipers rappelled down from helicopters on top of the apartment complex, as a precaution from potential violence. Federal authorities said that at least 37 people without legal immigration status were arrested, including some with criminal records.
Since early September, when the Trump Administration announced the immigration crackdown in the Chicago area, calling it Operation Midway Blitz, agents have arrested more than 800 people, the Department of Homeland Security said.
“The Trump Administration will not allow violent criminals or repeat offenders to terrorise our neighbourhoods or victimise our children and innocent Americans,” said Tricia McLaughlin, assistant secretary for public affairs for the department.
Activists and lawyers for some of those arrested in recent weeks said that the Administration has rounded up people, including some US citizens, with no history of violence in its sweeps.
Homeland Security officials acknowledged that four children who are US citizens were taken into custody amid the operation at the apartment complex until they could be placed in the care of guardians.
Governor JB Pritzker of Illinois and Mayor Brandon Johnson of Chicago have condemned the push from US President Donald Trump, saying that the Trump Administration was militarising the city without making residents safer.
Pritzker, a Democrat, said the effort was calculated to damage and intimidate Chicago, calling the federal officers “jackbooted thugs roaming around a peaceful downtown”. He added that parents were afraid to send children to school and that small businesses were suffering.
“Get out of Chicago,” he said this week. “You are not helping us.”
Democrats in Illinois have also spoken out against Trump’s plan, which he revealed while speaking to a roomful of military leaders, to use Chicago and other American cities as “training grounds” for future wars.
“We’re going to straighten them out one by one, and this is going to be a major part for some of the people in this room,” Trump said.
Johnson said in a statement that he rejects any attempt to militarise American cities.
“Chicagoans are not test subjects for the president to train our military,” he said. “The brave men and women who sign up to serve our country do not want to be deployed against their neighbours.”
The Trump Administration’s crackdown had some defenders, including Darren Bailey, a Republican former state senator who is running for governor.
“It is a shame that the federal Government has to send the military into Chicago just to protect ICE officers,” he said, referring to Immigration and Customs Enforcement. “This is what failed leadership looks like.”
Raymond Lopez, a City Council member, cheered the immigration operation, saying on social media that the people who were arrested “will not be missed”.
It is not yet clear where National Guard troops will be sent, but one potential location could be an immigrant processing centre in Broadview, Illinois, a small suburb west of Chicago.
Clashes have broken out at the facility between protesters and ICE officers in recent weeks, as protesters have tried to block government vehicles from entering or leaving the facility, and officers have responded forcefully with tear gas and other chemical agents.
Some residents said they were rattled by the sight of groups of federal agents making arrests downtown and questioned the motives of Trump, who has criticised Chicago and its Democratic leadership for years.
Concerns about crime run deep in Chicago, which has higher rates of gun violence than other major cities its size but lower rates than many smaller cities such as Memphis, Tennessee, or Detroit.
In the last several years, crime has decreased sharply in Chicago, with double-digit drops in shootings, robberies, burglaries, and car thefts. Murders have dropped nearly 50% in the last four years, police statistics show.
National Guard troops are expected to be focused on protecting federal immigration facilities, not working with police on crime-fighting efforts.
Hundreds of demonstrators amassed in downtown Chicago to protest against the increase in activity by ICE, marching up one of the most recognisable streets in the city, Michigan Avenue.
Chuck Mackie, a 68-year-old marketing writer from the North Side of Chicago, said he felt as if there has been a gradual build-up of ICE activity to deliberately condition the public.
“It’s a continued breakdown of norms and constitutional protections,” he said, calling Trump’s request of 100 National Guard troops “unnecessary”.
Mona Obregon-Cech, 70, a retired hospital administrator from Berwyn, Illinois, said she was worried that Trump was trying to normalise a military presence in American cities.
“People need to study and see how things in the past happened in other countries,” she said.
The operation has faced opposition since it began. The National Immigrant Justice Centre and the American Civil Liberties Union of Illinois filed a legal challenge last week against the arrests of 35 people, including three US citizens, that they argue had violated a prior consent decree limiting ICE from conducting warrantless arrests and traffic stops.
In one predawn operation, which Kristi Noem, the Homeland Security Secretary, personally oversaw and later posted to her social media account, a helicopter and tens of federal officers wearing military-style tactical gear with high-powered rifles and flash-bang grenades descended on a home in Elgin, Illinois.
Inside, a man was getting ready for work when he “saw red lasers all over the kitchen and the front door”, and suddenly heard an explosion, according to the filing contesting the 35 arrests.
The Government has not responded to the filing yet. McLaughlin has said the agency does not “arrest or deport citizens” and described its operations as “highly targeted”.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
Written by: Julie Bosman, Hamed Aleaziz and Robert Chiarito
Photograph by: Jamie Kelter Davis
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