Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Juliana Stratton unveiled her campaign’s first TV ad Thursday, a controversial half-minute spot that includes six people, including incumbent U.S. Sen. Tammy Duckworth, hurling an expletive at President Donald Trump.
The ad begins with three people repeating the phrase, “F−−− Trump. Vote Juliana,” followed by Stratton, the current two-term lieutenant governor, saying, “They said it. I didn’t.”
In her U.S. Senate campaign’s first TV commercial, Juliana Stratton features six people — including U.S. Sen. Tammy Duckworth — exclaiming “F— Trump,” as Stratton, Illinois’ lieutenant governor, runs in the March 17 Democratic primary. Gov. JB Pritzker, who endorsed Stratton, makes a cameo in the ad. (Juliana for Illinois)
In her U.S. Senate campaign’s first TV commercial, Juliana Stratton features six people — including U.S. Sen. Tammy Duckworth — exclaiming “F— Trump,” as Stratton, Illinois’ lieutenant governor, runs in the March 17 Democratic primary. Gov. JB Pritzker, who endorsed Stratton, makes a cameo in the ad. (Juliana for Illinois)
In her U.S. Senate campaign’s first TV commercial, Juliana Stratton features six people — including U.S. Sen. Tammy Duckworth — exclaiming “F— Trump,” as Stratton, Illinois’ lieutenant governor, runs in the March 17 Democratic primary. Gov. JB Pritzker, who endorsed Stratton, makes a cameo in the ad. (Juliana for Illinois)
In her U.S. Senate campaign’s first TV commercial, Juliana Stratton features six people — including U.S. Sen. Tammy Duckworth — exclaiming “F— Trump,” as Stratton, Illinois’ lieutenant governor, runs in the March 17 Democratic primary. Gov. JB Pritzker, who endorsed Stratton, makes a cameo in the ad. (Juliana for Illinois)
In her U.S. Senate campaign’s first TV commercial, Juliana Stratton features six people — including U.S. Sen. Tammy Duckworth — exclaiming “F— Trump,” as Stratton, Illinois’ lieutenant governor, runs in the March 17 Democratic primary. Gov. JB Pritzker, who endorsed Stratton, makes a cameo in the ad. (Juliana for Illinois)
In her U.S. Senate campaign’s first TV commercial, Juliana Stratton features six people — including U.S. Sen. Tammy Duckworth — exclaiming “F— Trump,” as Stratton, Illinois’ lieutenant governor, runs in the March 17 Democratic primary. Gov. JB Pritzker, who endorsed Stratton, makes a cameo in the ad. (Juliana for Illinois)
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In her U.S. Senate campaign’s first TV commercial, Juliana Stratton features six people — including U.S. Sen. Tammy Duckworth — exclaiming “F— Trump,” as Stratton, Illinois’ lieutenant governor, runs in the March 17 Democratic primary. Gov. JB Pritzker, who endorsed Stratton, makes a cameo in the ad. (Juliana for Illinois)
Then in the ad, Stratton speaks about how she will stand up to Trump in Washington, D.C., and closes with another three people, including Duckworth, saying, “F−−− Trump,” before Gov. JB Pritzker appears briefly to say, “Vote Juliana.”
The campaign said a version of the ad that bleeps out the “F” word was being sent for broadcast TV stations to air. But an unredacted version was sent to reporters and appears on the campaign’s “YouTube” website. The campaign did not say if the unbleeped version would be used on cable or digital platforms.
The ad is the first produced and paid for by Stratton’s own campaign, though her candidacy has been bolstered by millions of dollars in ads from an allied political action committee largely funded by Pritzker, the billionaire heir to the Hyatt Hotels fortune.
While potentially attention-grabbing for its shock value, its use of repeated profanity raises questions about how effective it will be with Democratic voters in the March 17 primary as she faces two main rivals, U.S. Reps. Raja Krishnamoorthi of Schaumburg and Robin Kelly of Lynwood.
U.S. Reps. Robin Kelly, from left, Raja Krishnamoorthi and Lt. Gov. Juliana Stratton debate for the U.S. Senate Democratic nomination at WGN-Ch. 9, Feb. 19, 2026, in Chicago. (John J. Kim/Chicago Tribune)
All three candidates have sought to portray themselves as the strongest contender to take on the Trump administration if elected in November. But Krishnamoorthi, a prolific fundraiser, has spent millions on advertising since July and had the TV airwaves to himself until the Stratton-aligned Illinois Future PAC began advertising in mid-January. Kelly has not aired any TV ads and has been relying on social media.
Federal Communications Commission rules and communications law generally prevent licensed broadcast TV stations from editing or censoring political advertising content from legally qualified federal candidates unless it is legally obscene or violates a felony statute.
The new ad served as the backdrop for the latest debate among the three Democratic contenders vying for the seat being vacated by retiring U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin in January. The hour-long debate, hosted by WGN Ch.-9, was also broadcast statewide on Nexstar-owned stations in Champaign, Rockford, Peoria, the Quad Cities, St. Louis and the Terre Haute, Indiana, market.
Stratton defended the ad in the debate, saying, “It captures exactly what people are feeling right now.”
“They feel like, look at Washington. People aren’t happy with what’s happening in Congress. They’re wondering why nothing is changing in their lives,” she said. “Everything is getting more expensive and here they are wondering, ‘When are we going to stand up and not let this president just get away with what he’s doing?’”
Asked by moderator Micah Materre what happened to former First Lady Michelle Obama’s 2016 admonition that “when they go low, we go high,” Stratton responded, “Well, we’re not talking about a normal president. We’re not even talking about a normal person.”
Kelly, in her 13th year in the House, added her own colorful language to the debate as she explained to voters she was running to make life more affordable.
“Frankly, it pisses me off that Donald Trump and his billionaire, millionaire friends have only gotten richer, while others have struggled and are being squeezed. It also pisses me off to be seeing millionaires and billionaires are trying to buy this election and that should piss you off too,” she said.
All three of the candidates said they would support efforts to see Trump impeached for a third time.
“When the president said the other day that the only thing that’s holding him in check is his own morality, we know that we’re in trouble,” Krishnamoorthi said. “He doesn’t have morality. He doesn’t have a moral compass. He’s about himself. He’s about putting his private, personal interests above those of the public.”
“We can start working on his secretaries, whether it’s (Attorney General) Pam Bondi, Kristi Noem, (Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F.) Kennedy — all the incompetent leaders that he has surrounded himself with,” Kelly said. “But yet, he definitely is worthy of impeachment because of all the things that he’s doing.”
Kelly and Stratton said they supported efforts to enact Medicare-for-All legislation, with the lieutenant governor saying she wanted to make sure “people understand that health care is a way that we can address affordability and we need to be bold and courageous in pushing to make sure that happens.”
Krishnamoorthi said Medicare-for-All was “an excellent goal” and would vote for it if a bill were presented but said there was a more immediate need in restoring Trump cuts in Medicaid funding and the elimination of tax subsidies for people under the Affordable Care Act.
“Right now we have a five-alarm fire that’s consuming our health care system that we need to address,” he said, citing the eventual loss of health care insurance for 17 million people.
On foreign policy, Kelly was the only one of the three who said she believed the killing of Palestinians by Israeli military forces in their effort to remove Hamas after the group’s deadly Oct. 7, 2023, attack constituted genocide.
“It may not have started off being like that, but I believe that is what it turned into,” Kelly said.
Stratton said what happened in Gaza was “horrific and the devastation and the suffering that we have seen is terrible.” Krishnamoorthi said he feared that supporting a resolution to label the Palestinian deaths “genocide” could “get in the way of progress right now in this fragile ceasefire.”
“If that gets in the way of progress, then we’re going to go back to war and we can’t let that happen,” Krishnamoorthi said. “That would be the worst outcome right now.”
All three agreed a Trump military strike in Iran over that nation’s nuclear program would be illegal without the invocation of the War Powers Act by Congress.
“I actually feel like he’s looking for trouble and that he wants to get us into some type of arms issue, because it’s a distraction for the things that he’s not doing in his own country,” Kelly said. “American people are sick of our soldiers dying overseas.”
Prior to the debate, Kelly announced the backing of several congressional colleagues, including U.S. Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey.
The action has drawn mixed reaction. Some people were celebrating as others gathered Saturday evening at a protest downtown Chicago.
Democrats are condemning the attack and capture of Maduro, because they say it was done without congressional approval, while Republicans are applauding the action, deeming it a win in the war on drug trafficking.
The entirety of Federal Plaza in the Loop was packed with large crowds of protesters pushing back against the Trump administration. They say this is another unnecessary act of war while demanding an end to the use of tax payer dollars for international affairs.
The fiery crowd in downtown Chicago spoke out against the U.S. attacks on Venezuela as President Maduro and his wife were taken into custody by U.S. forces. Anti-war activists say the U.S. has been down this road before.
A large protest was held dowtown Chicago after President Donald Trump said the U.S. attacked Venezuela and captured Pres. Nicolás Maduro.
“Whether it’s Saddam Hussein in Iraq or the Taliban in Afghanistan, Panama, Libya , you name it… whenever the U.S. attacks another country like this, it’s the people of those countries who suffer the most,” said Andy Thayer with the Chicago Committee Against War and Racism.
While many Venezuelan nationals are happy to see the regime removed, there are growing concerns in the Chicago area over how all of this was carried out as Congress was not notified of the operation.
“An open violation of international and U.S. law, invading a sovereign country, kidnapped their president, kidnapped their first lady, and call this just,” Alderman Byron Sigcho-Lopez said.
Protesters continue to demand the Trump administration to focus on issues in the U.S.
“The people of Chicago oppose this because our public infrastructure is underfunded it’s failing we don’t have social programs people are facing homelessness,” said Caeli Kean, Anti-War Committee of Chicago Co-Chair. “And meanwhile are tax payer dollars are going to bomb people in Venezuela.”
President Trump said Saturday that a team of U.S. officials will help run Venezuela during this transition.
Thomas Mockaitis, a history professor at DePaul University, is worried about the precedent this sets for other international affairs.
“If the United States can get away with doing this, how do we look Vladimir Putin in the eye and say, ‘You can’t invade another country. You can’t replace somebody just because you don’t like him,’” Mockaitis said. “He’s gonna look at us and say, ‘Why can’t we?’”
Political leaders in Illinois and Indiana are weighing in on the overnight strike in Venezuela and capture of the country’s ousted leader. Democrats are saying the attack was done without Congress’ knowledge or approval.
Congressman Brad Schneider (D-IL) serves on the House Committee on Foreign Affairs.
“To be clear, there has been no communication from the [Trump] administration. The [Trump] administration did not notify anyone in Congress,” Rep. Schneider said. “We’ve been trying to understand what the attacks in the Caribbean and the Atlantic were about. If they were about drug smuggling, this is a president who just pardoned one of the most serious drug traffickers in the world.”
Illinois Senator Dick Durbin said in a statement, “Nicolas Maduro repeatedly denied the will of the Venezuelan people,” but went on to say the Trump administration “MUST provide briefings for all Members of Congress as soon as possible this week.”
Durbin’s Indiana counterparts, Republican senators Jim Banks and Todd Young, are supporting the military operation.
Banks said “Maduro turned Venezuela into a narco-state. A drug cartel posing as a government and killing Americans. Let this be a warning to every narcoterrorist in the Western Hemisphere,” while Young said “This should be an opportunity to bring Maduro to justice for his many crimes and a day of new hope for the Venezuelan people.”
Both Illinois and Indiana governors are split on the strike, too.
Illinois Governor JB Pritzker is calling the military action “unconstitutional,” saying it puts American troops, “in harm’s way with no long-term strategy.”
Indiana Governor Mike Braun says he stands with President Trump, saying that, “Indiana families have paid too high a price for the deadly drugs pushed by criminal regimes.”
Illinois Governor JB Pritzker posted the following statement on social media: “Donald Trump’s unconstitutional military action in Venezuela is putting our troops in harm’s way with no long-term strategy. “The American people deserve a President focused on making their lives more affordable.”
Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson issued the following statement: “The Trump administration’s military action in Venezuela violates international law and dangerously escalates the possibility of full-scale war. The illegal actions by the Trump administration have nothing to do with defending the Venezuelan people; they are solely about oil and power. “As we have said for the past two years, the dehumanization of migrants from Venezuela, and of immigrants generally, by the Far Right has laid the groundwork for military action in Central and South America. I strongly condemn the Trump administration’s inhumane treatment of migrants in our country and this illegal regime change abroad. “In Chicago, we will continue to uphold the values of peace, diplomacy, and mutual respect for all people.”
U.S. Senator Dick Durbin (D-IL) posted the following statement on social media: “Nicolás Maduro repeatedly denied the will of the Venezuelan people, including when two thirds of them voted for an end to decades of political & economic ruin and criminality. “However, I disagree with President Trump’s use of U.S. military forces without Congressional approval & worry deeply about this Admin’s follow through on foreign policy interventions. “The Trump Admin MUST provide briefings for all Members of Congress as soon as possible this week.”
U.S. Senator Tammy Duckworth (D-IL) issued the following statement: “The American people believed Donald Trump when he promised on the campaign trail that he would get our nation out of foreign wars, but this morning we awoke to another stark reminder that he is-and has always been-a liar who has never cared about keeping his promises. The Constitution requires the American people, through their elected representatives in Congress, to authorize any President to engage in acts of war-because they will be the ones to live with the consequences of the decision-and it is unacceptable for this President to deny them that responsibility. “While Trump-whose love of country is best measured by the number of times he dodged the draft during Vietnam-may believe that war is ‘like watching a TV show’ as he said this morning, he has never understood or appreciated that the true costs of war are measured not only in dollars and cents, but in the blood, sweat and sacrifices of our troops and our military families. Sadly, our troops understand all too well just how costly it can be when our nation engages in war without a plan for what comes next, destabilizing an entire region. “Donald Trump’s reckless and unconstitutional operations in Venezuela-including this morning’s arrest of a foreign leader-are not about enforcing law and order because if they were, he wouldn’t hide them from Congress. Maduro was unquestionably a bad actor, but no President has the authority to unilaterally decide to use force to topple a government, thrusting us and the region into uncertainty without justification, a defined end-state or a real plan for preventing the instability that could come next. His actions continue putting American troops, personnel and citizens at risk both in the region and around the globe. None of that serves our nation’s interests.”
Indiana Governor Mike Braun posted the following statement on social media: “By arresting Nicolás Maduro, POTUS is cutting off narcoterrorism at the source and helping save Hoosier lives. Indiana families have paid too high a price for the deadly drugs pushed by criminal regimes, and we stand with President Trump in holding them accountable.”
U.S. Senator Todd Young (R-IN) posted the following statements on social media: “I commend the bravery and professionalism of U.S. personnel who carried out a successful mission in Venezuela. This should be an opportunity to bring Maduro to justice for his many crimes and a day of new hope for the Venezuelan people. I look forward to hearing more about the Administration’s plans for a positive transition in the days ahead.” “I appreciate POTUS briefing the American people this morning about the successful operation in Venezuela. We still need more answers, especially to questions regarding the next steps in Venezuela’s transition. As Congress returns to Washington next week, I am eager to work with members of the Trump Administration to bring clarity to the situation.”
U.S. Senator Jim Banks (R-IN) posted the following statements on social media: “Maduro turned Venezuela into a narco-state. A drug cartel posing as a government and killing Americans. Let this be a warning to every narcoterrorist in the Western Hemisphere. President Trump is doing exactly what Americans elected him to do, protect America and keep our people safe.” “Proud of our brave service members who got the job done and sacrifice everyday to keep America safe. The United States military is the strongest fighting force on Earth. God bless our troops.”
When Ana Gil García heard about the United States’ capture of Venezuela’s president, she felt a sense of cautious optimism.
But the cofounder of the Illinois Venezuelan Alliance said she knows the future of the country and her son who lives in Caracas hang in the balance. She’s also wary of a foreign government intervening in the South American country. Venezuelans should decide their own destiny, she said.
“We don’t know what could be the immediate consequences to the country,” Gil said. “What we know is that we cannot accept civilians being killed … we are against any intervention in which civilians will suffer more than what they have already suffered.”
The Trump administration’s capture of Nicolás Maduro and his wife early Saturday morning brought up complicated emotions for some Venezuelan community leaders. Some groups and elected officials categorically opposed the stunning operation, calling it government overreach. Others, like Gil, said there’s some hope in being rid of a leader most human rights organizations describe as a dictator.
The U.S. flew Maduro out of Venezuela in an extraordinary military operation that plucked a sitting leader from office. Maduro and his wife arrived in New York to face prosecution by the Justice Department after a grand jury indicted them on narco-terrorism conspiracy charges.
President Donald Trump insisted the U.S. government would run the country at least temporarily and would tap Venezuela’s vast oil reserves to sell “large amounts” to other countries. The legal authority for the operation was not immediately clear, though the Trump administration described it — and earlier deadly strikes on boats in the Caribbean Sea — as necessary to stem the flow of dangerous drugs.
Gov. JB Pritzker, however, called it an “unconstitutional military action” in a statement, and said Trump is putting troops in danger with “no long-term strategy.”
“The American people deserve a President focused on making their lives more affordable,” he said.
Meanwhile, hundreds gathered downtown Saturday evening to protest the operation. Carrying signs that said, “No War on Venezuela,” and chanting, “No war, no coup, Donald Trump shame on you,” protesters criticized American “forever wars.” They also said it’s immoral for the government to profit from Venezuelan oil.
“Every single time the United States attacks another country, regardless of what the political color of that regime in power, the people of those countries suffer immeasurably,” activist Andy Thayer said.
“However impoverished they were before, they were greatly more impoverished afterwards,” he added.
Demonstrators gather for a protest against the U.S. military strike in Venezuela, at Chicago’s Federal Plaza, Jan. 3, 2026. (John J. Kim/Chicago Tribune)
In addition to Pritzker, several local elected officials condemned the action. U.S. Sen. Tammy Duckworth called it “reckless and unconstitutional,” while Mayor Brandon Johnson said it “violates international law” and “dangerously escalates the possibility of full-scale war.”
“As we have said for the past two years, the dehumanization of migrants from Venezuela, and of immigrants generally, by the Far Right has laid the groundwork for military action in Central and South America,” Johnson said in a statement.
About 50,000 Venezuelan migrants have arrived in Chicago over the last several years as they fled political turmoil and extreme poverty in their home country. The Supreme Court last year allowed the Trump administration to strip legal protections for thousands of these migrants, some of whom were arrested in recent immigration enforcement operations.
Gil said, if anything, she hopes the military action helps people understand why swaths of immigrants fled Venezuela for better opportunities in the United States.
“When we left the country, we didn’t leave because we wanted to,” Gil said. “The people were forced to.”
Several Republicans had a more favorable reaction to the operation. Adam Kinzinger, a former congressman from Illinois, for example, said Maduro was never a “legitimate president” and that removing him without a massive military occupation is “how it should be done.”
“This was the right call,” he said on social media. “May Maduro face justice and the people of Venezuela be free.”
Luciana Díaz, the CEO of Panas en Chicago, a nonprofit that supports Venezuelan migrants, also said in a statement that they’re “deeply hopeful and encouraged for our community and for our country, after 28 years of dictatorship that forced thousands of Venezuelans many of whom are now asylum-seekers to rebuild their lives in cities like Chicago.”
“We have witnessed firsthand the human impact of this prolonged crisis. We trust that this moment will mark the beginning of a transition toward democracy, justice and the reunification of Venezuelan families,” Díaz said.
“God is with us. We continue to wait for a peaceful and genuine transition,” she added.
The U.S. Justice Department filed a lawsuit against Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker over new laws that aim to protect migrants from arrest at key locations, including courthouses, hospitals and day cares.
The lawsuit was filed on Monday, arguing that the new protective measures prohibiting immigration agents from detaining migrants going about daily business at specific locations are unconstitutional and “threaten the safety of federal officers,” the DOJ said in a statement.
The governor signed laws earlier this month that ban civil arrests at and around courthouses across the state. The measures also require hospitals, day care centers and public universities to have procedures in place for addressing civil immigration operations and protecting personal information.
The laws, which took effect immediately, also provide legal steps for people whose constitutional rights were violated during the federal immigration raids in the Chicago area, including $10,000 in damages for a person unlawfully arrested while attempting to attend a court proceeding.
The Trump administration filed a lawsuit against Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker over new laws that aim to protect migrants from arrest at key locations.(Getty Images)
Pritzker, a Democrat, has led the fight against the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown in Illinois, particularly over the indiscriminate and sometimes violent nature in which they are detained.
But the governor’s office reaffirmed that he is not against arresting illegal migrants who commit violent crimes.
“However, the Trump administration’s masked agents are not targeting the ‘worst of the worst’ — they are harassing and detaining law-abiding U.S. citizens and Black and brown people at daycares, hospitals and courthouses,” spokesperson Jillian Kaehler said in a statement.
Earlier this year, the federal government reversed a Biden administration policy prohibiting immigration arrests in sensitive locations such as hospitals, schools and churches.
The U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s “Operation Midway Blitz,” which began in September in the Chicago area but appears to have since largely wound down for now, led to more than 4,000 arrests. But data on people arrested from early September through mid-October showed only 15% had criminal records, with the vast majority of offenses being traffic violations, misdemeanors or nonviolent felonies.
Gov. JB Pritzker has led the fight against the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown in Illinois.(Kamil Krazaczynski/AFP via Getty Images)
Immigration and legal advocates have praised the new laws protecting migrants in Illinois, saying many immigrants were avoiding courthouses, hospitals and schools out of fear of arrest amid the president’s mass deportation agenda.
The laws are “a brave choice” in opposing ICE and U.S. Customs and Border Protection, according to Lawrence Benito, executive director of the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights.
“Our collective resistance to ICE and CBP’s violent attacks on our communities goes beyond community-led rapid response — it includes legislative solutions as well,” he said.
The DOJ claims Pritzker and state Attorney General Kwame Raoul, also a Democrat, violated the U.S. Constitution’s Supremacy Clause, which establishes that federal law is the “supreme Law of the Land.”
Border Patrol Commander Gregory Bovino leaves the Dirksen U.S. Courthouse in Chicago.(Brian Cassella/Chicago Tribune/Tribune News Service via Getty Images)
Raoul and his staff are reviewing the DOJ’s complaint.
“This new law reflects our belief that no one is above the law, regardless of their position or authority,” Pritzker’s office said. “Unlike the Trump administration, Illinois is protecting constitutional rights in our state.”
The lawsuit is part of an initiative by U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi to block state and local laws the DOJ argues impede federal immigration operations, as other states have also made efforts to protect migrants against federal raids at sensitive locations.
It’s a story repeating itself: Border Patrol agents flooding immigrant neighborhoods, showing dramatic force, storming Home Depot parking lots and preying on people at courthouses.
Those arrests erupted in Chicago. Then they were 750 miles away in Charlotte, North Carolina. And they will keep roving across the country.
But no matter where they go, Chicagoans will try to stop them.
As President Donald Trump’s ramped-up Border Patrol action hits city after city, Chicago’s immigration-focused community organizers are following. They aim to pass on what they learned to foster pushback in Operation Midway Blitz.
Chicago’s immigration advocacy groups, which played an integral role organizing on-the-ground rapid responders, are now sharing their information nationwide.
Veronica Castro, deputy director at the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights, said she has been in at least half a dozen calls with organizations, mutual aid groups and government entities outside of Chicago, including Boston and North Carolina on best ways to prepare for immigration enforcement.
“We definitely want to share information with other folks,” she said. Earlier in the year, Castro and her team reached out to Los Angeles and Washington, D.C., to prepare for the immigration crackdown in Chicago and is now circling back to them to “compare notes.”
Casa Central, a Hispanic social services agency in Chicago, is planning a conference call with 304 invited affiliates of Unidos US to discuss rapid response tactics and insights from immigration enforcement in Chicago, according to Unidos’ director of immigrant integration, Laura Vázquez.
The call will feature information on the long-lasting humanitarian impact of what happens to family members after some of them, often the primary income earners, are detained, said Vázquez.
“There is tremendous value in bringing people together so organizations can learn lessons and effective tactics,” said Vázquez, who noted interest went beyond North Carolina, from New Orleans to New York City, where threats of similar immigration operations loom.
The federal action centered in Charlotte last week, where Trump’s Border Patrol chief, Gregory Bovino, led a weeklong arrest spree that quickly started after agents left Chicago.
Pooja Ravindran, who lived for a decade in North Carolina and is now chief of staff for Chicago City Council’s Committee on Immigrant and Refugee Rights, once again couldn’t look away as the arrests hushed cherished hometown bakeries, coffee shops and an elementary school in Charlotte.
Ravindran has met online around 10 times with groups in Charlotte to present tactics learned organizing alongside Ald. Andre Vásquez, the committee’s chair.
“I can’t be at all places at once, I can’t be in all of the areas where I call home to prep everyone,” Ravindran said. “To see the resistance, but also the devastation, there is just a whirlwind of emotions.”
Earlier this week, Protect Rogers Park community organizer Gabe González said he planned to travel to Charlotte, where he was set to speak with hundreds to try to pass the information baton.
“We learned from Los Angeles and D.C. and it’s our turn to share what we learned with the cities facing it now,” said González, co-founder of Protect Rogers Park.
Just as González was preparing to discuss safe resistance techniques with the North Carolina crowd, Border Patrol reportedly ended its operations in Charlotte dubbed “Charlotte’s Web.” But González is skeptical that the actions will truly end.
“Today it’s in Charlotte, tomorrow it might be in New Orleans, and in March it might be back in Chicago,” said González, who is also in touch with community organizers in New Orleans and Memphis, Tennessee.
Chicago’s top elected leaders have gotten involved too, from the City Hall to Springfield.
Gov. JB Pritzker spoke to North Carolina’s Gov. Josh Stein about dealing with masked federal agents, tear gas deployment and documenting activity when rights were being violated, his office said in a statement.
The governor has stayed in touch with California, Oregon and other states in an effort to “push back against these authoritarian power grabs and curb normalizing the militarization of American communities,” the statement said.
On Friday, Beatriz Ponce de León, Chicago’s deputy mayor for immigrant, migrant and refugee rights, met with leaders in St. Paul, Minnesota, where federal agents arrested over a dozen people Tuesday at a manufacturing plant.
Ponce de León shared strategies Mayor Brandon Johnson’s administration has used to push back, like lawsuits, executive orders and close collaboration with community groups.
“Chicago clearly is front and center in the response to these militarized immigration tactics,” she said. “We are all in this together … Why would we not share what we learned?”
When other cities reach out, Ponce de León often offers advice she got from people in Washington, D.C.: “This is a moment to be very clear and bold and not to shrink away.”
The quick response from Charlotte community groups to respond to and document arrests occurred in part because of what people there learned from Chicago, she said. And someday, the connections made by City Hall now could shape its own response if federal agents return en masse.
“As the federal actions evolve, we all have to evolve and be as prepared as possible to maintain and to protect the things that are important to us and to our cities,” she said.
At the online meetings Ravindran helps organize, other cities are getting everything from advice on how to fight for more legal protection funds in budgets to tweakable scheduling documents for volunteer patrols outside schools.
“People were just so grateful that they didn’t have to think about protocol,” Ravindran said. “This documentation has created the opportunity for them to spend more time doing the actual recruitment of folks.”
It was an emotional homecoming for Ravindran, who first engaged in community organizing as a University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill student and then continued that work in Charlotte.
But the incremental progress does not erase what Ravindran has witnessed in one home, then another.
“It’s really hard to see, the detentions in your community, over and over again.”
As the Trump administration’s mass deportation raids begin their third month, their impact has stretched across the Chicago region and the nation.
Political tensions have deepened, hundreds of immigrants, protesters and bystanders have been detained or arrested during raids, and thousands have protested across Chicago and the suburbs, from Home Depot and Target parking lots to outside the two-story brick U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in suburban Broadview to the massive No Kings Rally downtown.
Here’s what we know about federal immigration enforcement in and around the city, as well as other immigration-related stories and the National Guard deployment.
Residents watch while Gregory Bovino, chief U.S. Border Patrol agent, second from left, and other federal officers finish their march along North Clark Street by the Newberry Library in Chicago’s Gold Coast on Sept. 28, 2025, as part of an immigration blitz show of force. (Brian Cassella/Chicago Tribune)
Protesters yell as U.S. Border Patrol agents depart Chicago’s Gold Coast in vehicles on Sept. 28, 2025, after walking through downtown as part of an immigration blitz show of force. (Brian Cassella/Chicago Tribune)
U.S. Border Patrol agents cross the street near the Newberry Library in Chicago’s Gold Coast area on Sept. 28, 2025, after walking through downtown as part of an immigration blitz show of force. (Brian Cassella/Chicago Tribune)
Federal agents march along North Clark Street by the Newberry Library in Chicago’s Gold Coast on Sept. 28, 2025, as part of an immigration blitz show of force. (Brian Cassella/Chicago Tribune)
Protesters yell and record U.S. Border Patrol agents as they leave in vehicles at the corner of Oak and Clark streets in the Gold Coast neighborhood on Sept. 28, 2025. (Eileen T. Meslar/Chicago Tribune)
U.S. Border Patrol agents talk to a man on a scooter near the Newberry Library in Chicago’s Gold Coast on Sept. 28, 2025, after walking through downtown as part of an immigration blitz show of force. (Brian Cassella/Chicago Tribune)
U.S. Customs and Border Protection boats head east along the Chicago River toward Lake Michigan on Sept. 25, 2025. (Antonio Perez/Chicago Tribune)
U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents ride east on the Chicago River toward the lake near the Michigan Avenue bridge in Chicago on Sept. 25, 2025. (Antonio Perez/Chicago Tribune)
Protesters record U.S. Border Patrol agents at the corner Oak and Clark streets in the Gold Coast neighborhood on Sept. 28, 2025. (Eileen T. Meslar/Chicago Tribune)
Gregory Bovino, chief U.S. Border agent, stands with other federal officers near the Newberry Library in Chicago’s Gold Coast on Sept. 28, 2025, after walking through downtown as part of an immigration blitz show of force. (Brian Cassella/Chicago Tribune)
A protester talks to U.S. Border Patrol agents near the Newberry Library in Chicago’s Gold Coast on Sept. 28, 2025, after they walked through downtown as part of an immigration blitz show of force. (Brian Cassella/Chicago Tribune)
U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents, including Border Patrol Sector Chief Greg Bovino in the bow, head east along the Chicago River toward Lake Michigan on Sept. 25, 2025. Four CBP boats were spotted traveling on the river before they docked just south of Navy Pier. (Antonio Perez/Chicago Tribune)
A U.S. Border Patrol boat emerges from under the Lake Shore Drive bridge and passes a tour boat after patrolling the Chicago River on Sept. 24, 2025. (Stacey Wescott/Chicago Tribune)
U.S. Customs and Border Protection boats make their way east along the Chicago River on Sept. 25, 2025. (Antonio Perez/Chicago Tribune)
U.S. Border Patrol agents walk along North Clark Street by the Newberry Library in Chicago’s Gold Coast on Sept. 28, 2025, as part of an immigration blitz show of force. (Brian Cassella/Chicago Tribune)
Gregory Bovino, chief U.S. Border Patrol agent, stands with other federal officers near the Newberry Library in Chicago’s Gold Coast on Sept. 28, 2025, after walking through downtown as part of an immigration blitz show of force. (Brian Cassella/Chicago Tribune)
People yell at U.S. Border Patrol agents near the Newberry Library in Chicago’s Gold Coast on Sept. 28, 2025, after walking through downtown as part of an immigration blitz show of force. (Brian Cassella/Chicago Tribune)
U.S. Border Patrol agents stand at the corner Oak and Clark streets in the Gold Coast neighborhood on Sept. 28, 2025. (Eileen T. Meslar/Chicago Tribune)
U.S. Border Patrol agents walk along North Clark Street by the Newberry Library in Chicago’s Gold Coast on Sept. 28, 2025, as part of an immigration blitz show of force. (Brian Cassella/Chicago Tribune)
Federal agents climb into a van after walking along North Clark Street by the Newberry Library in Chicago’s Gold Coast on Sept. 28, 2025, as part of an immigration blitz show of force. (Brian Cassella/Chicago Tribune)
A U.S. Border Patrol boat with armed federal agents head east toward Navy Pier after patrolling the Chicago River on Sept. 24, 2025. Passing behind is a sightseeing boat. (Stacey Wescott/Chicago Tribune)
Four U.S. Border Patrol boats dock south of Navy Pier after patrolling the Chicago River on Sept. 24, 2025. (Stacey Wescott/Chicago Tribune)
A U.S. Customs and Border Protection boat patrols the Chicago River while people eat lunch on Sept. 28, 2025. (Brian Cassella/Chicago Tribune)
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Residents watch while Gregory Bovino, chief U.S. Border Patrol agent, second from left, and other federal officers finish their march along North Clark Street by the Newberry Library in Chicago’s Gold Coast on Sept. 28, 2025, as part of an immigration blitz show of force. (Brian Cassella/Chicago Tribune)
President Donald Trump’s Department of Homeland Security announced Sept. 8 that it had begun a surge of immigration law enforcement in Chicago, dubbing it “Operation Midway Blitz” and claiming it would target “criminal illegal aliens” who have benefited from the city and state’s sanctuary policies.
The announcement came more than two weeks after the Republican president said he was planning to target Chicago because of the city’s crime rates, causing Democratic Gov. JB Pritzker and Mayor Brandon Johnson to warn residents of potential immigration sweeps.
“Let’s be clear, the terror and cruelty is the point, not the safety of anyone living here,” Pritzker said Sept. 2.
Trump set the stage for the operation with a social media post depicting military helicopters flying over the city’s lakefront skyline using the title “Chipocalypse Now.” “Chicago is about to find out why it’s called the Department of WAR,” Trump wrote, a day after signing an executive order to rename the Department of Defense to its pre-1949 title.
2.6% of ‘Operation Midway Blitz’ arrestees had criminal histories
U.S. Border Patrol agents exchange handcuffs for plastic zip-ties while transferring detainees in Niles on Oct. 31, 2025. The detainees were picked up while they were landscaping on Chicago’s Northwest Side. (Brian Cassella/Chicago Tribune)
The Trump administration on Nov. 14 released the names of 614 people whose Chicago-area immigration arrests may have violated a 2022 consent decree, and only 16 of them have criminal histories that present a “high public safety risk.”
The Department of Homeland Security has claimed since the outset of the operation that they were going after the “worst of the worst,” including convicted murderers, rapists and other violent offenders who were allegedly taking advantage of Illinois’ sanctuary policies to terrorize the citizenry. But the government’s own data appeared to show otherwise.
Among those on the list were several featured in stories by the Tribune, including a couple arrested by ICE in September while driving their eldest son to his university to drop off school materials and later meet the rest of the family in church. The couple, Moises Enciso Trejo and Constantina Ramírez Meraz, were released Thursday and reunited with their four children, according to their attorney, Shelby R. Vcelka.
Also on the list was Darwin Leal, a 24-year-old Venezuelan migrant arrested Sept. 14 while driving in Chicago’s Little Village neighborhood with his wife and two young kids. Leal, who is still detained in Texas, was classified by ICE as in the “low” public safety risk category.
A federal judge ruled all immigration enforcement agents must have body cameras and said she was particularly worried about alleged violations in recent clashes, including one in Chicago’s East Side neighborhood where agents used a controversial and potentially dangerous maneuver to disable a fleeing vehicle, then tear-gassed people during a tense gathering at the scene. Tear gas incidents from federal agents during immigration raids have escalated recently, from Little Village to Lakeview to Irving Park.
On Sept. 12, Trump’s immigration-enforcement push took a violent turn when agents fatally shot a man in Franklin Park after he allegedly tried to flee a traffic stop and struck the officer with his vehicle. The man who was killed was identified by federal officials as Silverio Villegas-Gonzalez, a 38-year-old single father with two young children. DHS said in a written statement that Villegas-Gonzalez is a citizen of Mexico and was in the U.S. illegally, though further details were not provided.
On Oct. 4, federal immigration authorities shot a Chicago woman who, according to federal authorities, had tried to impede them in Brighton Park. In the shooting’s wake, protesters quickly took to the intersection to confront the federal forces. Some threw water bottles as the agents tossed tear gas and flash-bang grenades at them on the residential street.
Border Patrol Cmdr. Gregory Bovino in court
A federal judge in Chicago on Nov. 6 issued a sweeping injunction that puts more permanent restrictions on the use of force by immigration agents, saying top government officials lied in their testimony about threats that protesters posed and that their unlawful behavior on the streets “shows no signs of stopping.”
“I find the government’s evidence to be simply not credible,” U.S. District Judge Sara Ellis said in an oral ruling from the bench, describing a litany of incidents where citizens were tear-gassed “indiscriminately,” beaten and tackled by agents and struck in the face with pepper spray balls.
Bovino said federal agents’ operations had been “going very violent” after the same day that his agents fired pepper balls at a moving vehicle in Gage Park and pointed rifles in Little Village as residents blew whistles, screamed at passing federal cars and followed their large convoy around the city’s Southwest Side. “We can operate with great skill, legally, ethically and morally,” he said during a brief stop in Gage Park.
Restaurants in immigrant neighborhoods are ‘dying a slow death’
Inocencio Carbajal monitors the entrance to Carnitas Uruapan in Chicago’s Little Village neighborhood during business hours on Oct. 25, 2025. Recent U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement actions in the area have resulted in Carbajal and his son, Marcos, keeping watch for activity by federal agents to protect worried customers and workers. (John J. Kim/Chicago Tribune)
Demonstrators march past Carnitas Uruapan on West 26th Street in the Little Village neighborhood to protest Immigration and Customs Enforcement actions in Chicago on Oct. 25, 2025. (John J. Kim/Chicago Tribune)
A megaphone sits ready, in case of Immigration and Customs Enforcement presence, next to the entrance as Inocencio Carbajal, right, talks with a customer at Carnitas Uruapan in Chicago’s Little Village neighborhood during business hours Oct. 25, 2025. (John J. Kim/Chicago Tribune)
Diners have a late lunch at Carnitas Uruapan, 3801 W. 26th St., in the Little Village neighborhood, on Oct. 25, 2025, in Chicago. (John J. Kim/Chicago Tribune)
Marcos Carbajal talks with diners at Carnitas Uruapan in the Little Village neighborhood Oct. 25, 2025, in Chicago. Recent Immigration and Customs Enforcement actions in the area have resulted in Carbajal and his father, Inocencio, keeping watch for federal agent activity to protect worried customers and workers. (John J. Kim/Chicago Tribune)
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Inocencio Carbajal monitors the entrance to Carnitas Uruapan in Chicago’s Little Village neighborhood during business hours on Oct. 25, 2025. Recent U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement actions in the area have resulted in Carbajal and his son, Marcos, keeping watch for activity by federal agents to protect worried customers and workers. (John J. Kim/Chicago Tribune)
Intense immigration enforcement continues to ripple across the Chicago area and the restaurant industry has been feeling the impact: Significantly fewer customers are dining in, owners are locking their doors when they feel unsafe and businesses are operating at a loss.
Since September, Little Village had largely avoided large-scale ICE raids. But on Oct. 22, the shrill sound of whistles filled the neighborhood as volunteers sprang into action, warning people to duck into stores or hide inside private properties.
“We are dying a slow death,” said Marcos Carbajal, owner of Carnitas Uruapan. Little Village and Pilsen, much like Devon Avenue’s Little India in Rogers Park or Greektown on Chicago’s Near West Side, are microeconomies that rely heavily on a shared culture to keep things moving.
What’s happening in Broadview?
Illinois State Police troopers attempt to detain a protester outside the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement holding facility in Broadview on Oct. 17, 2025. (Stacey Wescott/Chicago Tribune)
Protesters face off against Illinois State Police troopers outside the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement holding facility in Broadview on Oct. 17, 2025. (Stacey Wescott/Chicago Tribune)
Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers stand near concrete barriers where fences were taken down outside an ICE holding facility in Broadview late on Oct. 14, 2025. (Chris Sweda/Chicago Tribune)
Illinois State Police troopers outside the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement holding facility in Broadview on Oct. 14, 2025. (Eileen T. Meslar/Chicago Tribune)
A protester walks toward the protest zone outside the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement holding facility in Broadview on Oct. 14, 2025. (Eileen T. Meslar/Chicago Tribune)
Protesters stand at the corner of Lexington and Beach streets near the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement holding facility in Broadview on Oct. 14, 2025. (Eileen T. Meslar/Chicago Tribune)
A fence that a federal court has ordered the Trump administration to remove stands outside the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement holding facility Oct. 13, 2025, in Broadview. (Armando L. Sanchez/Chicago Tribune)
Illinois State Police troopers and Cook County sheriff’s deputies push protesters from the road near a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement holding facility on Oct. 10, 2025, in Broadview. (Armando L. Sanchez/Chicago Tribune)
Illinois State Police and Cook County sheriff’s deputies tussle with protesters in the designated protest zone a block from the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement holding facility on Oct. 10, 2025. (Stacey Wescott/Chicago Tribune)
Protesters raise a “No Troops in Our Streets” sign at the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in Broadview on Oct. 9, 2025. (E. Jason Wambsgans/Chicago Tribune)
Protesters recite the rosary outside the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in Broadview on Oct. 9, 2025. (E. Jason Wambsgans/Chicago Tribune)
Zully Sotelo, from left, Eileen Alvarez, Kate Madrigal and Yohanna Sotelo protest outside of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement holding facility in Broadview on Oct. 9, 2025. (Stacey Wescott/Chicago Tribune)
Texas National Guard members walk outside of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement holding facility in Broadview on Oct. 9, 2025. (Stacey Wescott/Chicago Tribune)
Protesters and journalists wait at the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in Broadview, Oct. 9, 2025. (E. Jason Wambsgans/Chicago Tribune)
A Broadview police officer moves protesters away from the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement holding facility, Oct. 8, 2025, in Broadview. (Armando L. Sanchez/Chicago Tribune)
Protesters gather outside the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement holding facility, Oct. 8, 2025, in Broadview. (Armando L. Sanchez/Chicago Tribune)
Protesters gather outside the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement holding facility on Oct. 8, 2025, in Broadview. (Armando L. Sanchez/Chicago Tribune)
State police troopers stand outside the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement holding facility, Oct. 8, 2025, in Broadview. (Armando L. Sanchez/Chicago Tribune)
A large bus arrives at the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement holding facility, Oct. 8, 2025, in Broadview. (Armando L. Sanchez/Chicago Tribune)
U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers join Cook County Sheriff’s deputies to monitor an entrance, Oct. 6, 2025, outside the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement holding facility in Broadview. (Brian Cassella/Chicago Tribune)
A protester sits outside, Oct. 6, 2025, at the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement holding facility in Broadview. (Brian Cassella/Chicago Tribune)
Illinois State Police move protesters back near the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in Broadview on Oct. 4, 2025. (Armando L. Sanchez/Chicago Tribune)
Illinois State Police move protesters off the road near the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement holding facility, Oct. 4, 2025, in Broadview. (Armando L. Sanchez/Chicago Tribune)
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement holding facility
Activists yell at the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement holding facility on Oct. 4, 2025, in Broadview. (Armando L. Sanchez/Chicago Tribune)
Illinois State Police hold a line near the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement holding facility in Broadview on Oct. 4, 2025. (Armando L. Sanchez/Chicago Tribune)
Illinois State Police move protesters off the road while they protest recent immigration enforcement actions near the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement holding facility in Broadview on Oct. 4, 2025. (Armando L. Sanchez/Chicago Tribune)
Protesters embrace near the U.S Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in Broadview, Oct. 3, 2025. (E. Jason Wambsgans/Chicago Tribune)
Illinois State Police move protesters off the road near the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility, Oct. 4, 2025, in Broadview. (Armando L. Sanchez/Chicago Tribune)
Illinois State Police and Cook County Sheriffs keep protesters from 25th Avenue near the U.S Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in Broadview, Friday, Oct. 3, 2025. (E. Jason Wambsgans/Chicago Tribune)
Illinois State Police troopers detain a protester who refused to back up as a vehicle passed along Harvard Street near the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement holding facility in Broadview on Oct. 3, 2025. (Stacey Wescott/Chicago Tribune)
Illinois State Police troopers detain a protester who refused to back up along Harvard near the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement holding facility in Broadview on Oct. 3, 2025. (Stacey Wescott/Chicago Tribune)
Illinois State Police troopers detain a protester who refused to back up near the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement holding facility in Broadview on Oct. 3, 2025. (Stacey Wescott/Chicago Tribune)
Protesters confront Illinois State Police troopers outside the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement holding facility in Broadview on Oct. 3, 2025. (Stacey Wescott/Chicago Tribune)
Federal agents ride an armored vehicle as protesters clash with federal agents and Illinois State Police troopers near the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement holding facility in Broadview on Oct. 3, 2025. (Antonio Perez/Chicago Tribune)
People sing and recite prayers during a Jewish prayer service near the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement holding facility in Broadview on Oct. 3, 2025. (Stacey Wescott/Chicago Tribune)
Dozens participate in Jewish prayer service near the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement holding facility in Broadview on Oct. 3, 2025. (Stacey Wescott/Chicago Tribune)
Protesters confront federal agents and Illinois State Police troopers near the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement holding facility in Broadview on Oct. 3, 2025. (Antonio Perez/Chicago Tribune)
A protester is detained near the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement holding facility in Broadview on Oct. 3, 2025. (Antonio Perez/Chicago Tribune)
Ald. Maria Hadden, 49th, records as protesters face off with federal agents and Illinois State Police troopers near the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement holding facility in Broadview on Oct. 3, 2025. (Antonio Perez/Chicago Tribune)
U.S. Border Patrol chief Gregory Bovino, right, warns protesters near the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement holding facility in Broadview on Oct. 3, 2025. (Antonio Perez/Chicago Tribune)
Protesters clash with federal agents and Illinois State Police troopers near the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement holding facility in Broadview on Oct. 3, 2025. (Antonio Perez/Chicago Tribune)
A federal agent watches from an armored vehicle near the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement holding facility in Broadview on Oct. 3, 2025. (Stacey Wescott/Chicago Tribune)
Illinois State Police troopers line up to prevent protesters from blocking traffic from the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement holding facility in Broadview on Oct. 3, 2025. (Stacey Wescott/Chicago Tribune)
Illinois State Police troopers line up along Harvard Street and prevent protesters from standing on the street and blocking federal vehicles moving to and from from the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement holding facility in Broadview on Oct. 3, 2025. (Stacey Wescott/Chicago Tribune)
Illinois State Police troopers line up along Harvard Street and prevent protesters from blocking federal vehicles moving to and from from the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement holding facility in Broadview on Oct. 3, 2025. (Stacey Wescott/Chicago Tribune)
Federal agents stand on the roof of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement holding facility in Broadview on Oct. 3, 2025. (Stacey Wescott/Chicago Tribune)
Illinois State Police troopers line up along Harvard Street near the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement holding facility in Broadview on Oct. 3, 2025. (Stacey Wescott/Chicago Tribune)
Illinois State Police troopers line up along Harvard Street and prevent protesters from standing on the street and blocking federal vehicles near the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement holding facility in Broadview on Oct. 3, 2025. Some troopers were armed with additional clubs, rifles, and shielded helmets. (Stacey Wescott/Chicago Tribune)
Broadview police hold back protesters from stopping vehicles at Harvard Street and 25th Avenue near the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement holding facility in Broadview on Oct. 3, 2025. (Stacey Wescott/Chicago Tribune)
A protester recovers after being sprayed in the face by a federal agent along the fence on Sept. 28, 2025, at the U.S. Immigration & Customs Enforcement facility in Broadview. (Brian Cassella/Chicago Tribune)
People pray on Sept. 28, 2025, near the U.S. Immigration & Customs Enforcement facility in Broadview. (Brian Cassella/Chicago Tribune)
Federal agents stand inside the fence on Sept. 28, 2025, at the U.S. Immigration & Customs Enforcement facility in Broadview. (Brian Cassella/Chicago Tribune)
Federal agents escort a detainee into the facility on Sept. 28, 2025, at the U.S. Immigration & Customs Enforcement facility in Broadview. (Brian Cassella/Chicago Tribune)
Protesters rally on Sept. 28, 2025, near the U.S. Immigration & Customs Enforcement facility in Broadview. (Brian Cassella/Chicago Tribune)
A protester wipes his eyes after being sprayed by a federal agent through a fence at the Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in Broadview on Sept. 27, 2025. (Dominic Di Palermo/Chicago Tribune)
U.S. Border Patrol Chief Greg Bovino leads detainees into the ICE facility in Broadview on Sept. 27, 2025. (Dominic Di Palermo/Chicago Tribune)
A protester yells at a federal agent attempting to enter the ICE facility in Broadview on Sept. 27, 2025. (Dominic Di Palermo/Chicago Tribune)
A protester gets treated after being sprayed by a federal agent through a fence at the ICE facility in Broadview on Sept. 27, 2025. (Dominic Di Palermo/Chicago Tribune)
A detainee is unloaded from a vehicle before being brought into the ICE facility in Broadview on Sept. 27, 2025. (Dominic Di Palermo/Chicago Tribune)
Logan Woodrum, of Pontiac, protests from the top of his car outside of the ICE facility in Broadview on Sept. 27, 2025. (Dominic Di Palermo/Chicago Tribune)
A protester and veteran who served in Iraq flies the American flag upside down during a protest at the ICE facility in Broadview on Sept. 27, 2025. (Dominic Di Palermo/Chicago Tribune)
A demonstrator adjusts a flag draped over her back depicting a combined U.S. and Mexico flag while standing outside a fenced-in ICE facility on Sept. 26, 2025, in Broadview. (John J. Kim/Chicago Tribune)
A protester is detained by ICE agents outside the ICE facility in Broadview, Sept. 26, 2025. (E. Jason Wambsgans/Chicago Tribune)
Protesters clash with federal agents outside the ICE facility in Broadview, Sept. 26, 2025. (E. Jason Wambsgans/Chicago Tribune)
Protesters clash with ICE agents outside the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement holding facility in Broadview, Sept. 26, 2025. (E. Jason Wambsgans/Chicago Tribune)
Protesters clash with ICE agents outside the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement holding facility in Broadview, Sept. 26, 2025. (E. Jason Wambsgans/Chicago Tribune)
ICE agents move back into the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement holding facility while facing off with protesters in Broadview, Sept. 26, 2025. (E. Jason Wambsgans/Chicago Tribune)
Federal agents escort a vehicle from the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement holding facility in Broadview, Sept. 26, 2025. (E. Jason Wambsgans/Chicago Tribune)
A U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent fires rounds at protesters on 25th Avenue near the holding facility in Broadview, Sept. 26, 2025. (E. Jason Wambsgans/Chicago Tribune)
Protesters flinch as ICE agents fire rounds at them in traffic on 25th Avenue near the holding facility in Broadview, Sept. 26, 2025. (E. Jason Wambsgans/Chicago Tribune)
An ICE agent chases a protester into residential yard near the ICE holding facility in Broadview, Sept. 26, 2025. (E. Jason Wambsgans/Chicago Tribune)
ICE agents help an injured colleague after chasing a protester through traffic on 25th Avenue and into a residential yard near the ICE holding facility in Broadview, Sept. 26, 2025. (E. Jason Wambsgans/Chicago Tribune)
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents help an injured colleague after chasing a protester through traffic on 25th Avenue and into a residential yard near the ICE holding facility in Broadview, Sept. 26, 2025. (E. Jason Wambsgans/Chicago Tribune)
A federal agent points his rifle of pepper balls at a protester near Harvard Street and 25th Avenue a block from the U.S. Immigration & Customs Enforcement facility on Sept. 26, 2025, in Broadview. (Stacey Wescott/Chicago Tribune)
Protesters chant as they walk across Harvard Street near the U.S. Immigration & Customs Enforcement holding facility on Sept. 26, 2025, in Broadview. (Stacey Wescott/Chicago Tribune)
A protester holds a sign as federal agents move toward demonstrators near the U.S. Immigration & Customs Enforcement facility in Broadview, Sept. 26, 2025. (Antonio Perez/Chicago Tribune)
Federal agents fire baton rounds at demonstrators near the U.S. Immigration & Customs Enforcement facility in Broadview, Sept. 26, 2025. (Antonio Perez/Chicago Tribune)
A protester runs away from federal agents firing chemical gas at him along Harvard Street near the U.S. Immigration & Customs Enforcement facility on Sept. 26, 2025, in Broadview. (Stacey Wescott/Chicago Tribune)
Baton rounds fired toward protesters outside the U.S. Immigration & Customs Enforcement facility in Broadview are seen Sept. 26, 2025. (Antonio Perez/Chicago Tribune)
A protester covers his face as chemical gas surrounds him along Harvard Street near the U.S. Immigration & Customs Enforcement facility on Sept. 26, 2025, in Broadview. (Stacey Wescott/Chicago Tribune)
Federal agents move toward protesters at 25th Street near the U.S. Immigration & Customs Enforcement facility in Broadview, Sept. 26, 2025. (Antonio Perez/Chicago Tribune)
Levi Rolles is seen with several bruises from baton shots outside the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement holding facility in Broadview, Sept. 26, 2025. (Antonio Perez/Chicago Tribune)
Protesters surround the SUV of a federal agent and try and prevent him from driving down Harvard Street to the U.S. Immigration & Customs Enforcement facility on Sept. 26, 2025, in Broadview. Protesters and federal agents faced off throughout the morning. Federal agents used several kinds of chemical gas, baton rounds, and arrested at least two people while protesters refused to clear the street. (Stacey Wescott/Chicago Tribune)
People pray outside the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement holding facility in Broadview, Sept. 26, 2025. (Antonio Perez/Chicago Tribune)
A federal agent points his rifle full of pepper balls at protesters along Harvard Street near the U.S. Immigration & Customs Enforcement facility on Sept. 26, 2025, in Broadview. (Stacey Wescott/Chicago Tribune)
A protester holds up her phone and backs away from federal agents shooting chemical gas at protesters along Harvard Street near the U.S. Immigration & Customs Enforcement facility on Sept. 26, 2025, in Broadview. Federal agents used several kinds of chemical gas, baton rounds and arrested at least two people after protesters refused to clear the street. (Stacey Wescott/Chicago Tribune)
Federal agents surround and arrest two protesters along Harvard Street near the U.S. Immigration & Customs Enforcement facility on Sept. 26, 2025, in Broadview. (Stacey Wescott/Chicago Tribune)
Protesters lock arms and block Harvard Street while federal agents stand guard at a gate leading to the U.S. Immigration & Customs Enforcement facility on Sept. 26, 2025, in Broadview. Protesters and federal agents faced off throughout the morning. (Stacey Wescott/Chicago Tribune)
Protesters gather outside the U.S. Immigration & Customs Enforcement facility in Broadview, Sept. 26, 2025. (Antonio Perez/Chicago Tribune)
Broadview police officers move protesters as they try and clear a path for federal agents to exit Harvard Street near the U.S. Immigration & Customs Enforcement facility on Sept. 26, 2025, in Broadview. (Stacey Wescott/Chicago Tribune)
A protester holds up a sign in the early hours of the morning before the start of confrontations with federal agents along Harvard Street near the U.S. Immigration & Customs Enforcement facility on Sept. 26, 2025, in Broadview. (Stacey Wescott/Chicago Tribune)
Curtis Evans, of Evanston, carries a U.S. flag through gas deployed by federal officers as they clear protesters from the entrance of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in Broadview on Sept. 19, 2025. Evans said he was a Marine during President Ronald Reagan’s term. (Stacey Wescott/Chicago Tribune)
A chemical agent canister sits on the ground after being used on protesters outside the Immigration and Customs Enforcement building on Sept. 19, 2025, in Broadview. (Armando L. Sanchez/Chicago Tribune)
A protester is shot with a pepper ball outside the Immigration and Customs Enforcement building on Sept. 19, 2025, in Broadview. (Armando L. Sanchez/Chicago Tribune)
Federal law enforcement officers detain a protester outside the Immigration and Customs Enforcement building on Sept. 19, 2025, in Broadview. (Armando L. Sanchez/Chicago Tribune)
A protester who was shot with pepper balls while blocking a federal law enforcement vehicle leans against a fence outside the Immigration and Customs Enforcement building on Sept. 19, 2025, in Broadview. (Armando L. Sanchez/Chicago Tribune)
Federal agents stand on the roof of the Broadview Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility and watch protesters below on Sept. 19, 2025, in Broadview. (Stacey Wescott/Chicago Tribune)
Federal officers clear protesters from the entrance of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement holding facility in Broadview, Sept. 19, 2025. (Stacey Wescott/Chicago Tribune)
Federal agents attempt to clear protesters from the street to make way for vehicles and officers to enter an Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility, Sept. 12, 2025, in Broadview. (Armando L. Sanchez/Chicago Tribune)
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Illinois State Police troopers attempt to detain a protester outside the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement holding facility in Broadview on Oct. 17, 2025. (Stacey Wescott/Chicago Tribune)
Confrontations between federal agents and people protesting “Operation Midway Blitz” have put the tiny suburb, and the first Black woman to lead it, in the national spotlight.
Bowing to a court-ordered deadline, crews tore down the controversial security fence outside the facility on Oct. 14. Federal officials erected the 8-foot-high fence three weeks earlier . In turn, Broadview officials immediately pushed back, saying it was “illegally built,” and demanded that the Department of Homeland Security take it down.
“It has really become a prison,” U.S. District Judge Robert Gettleman said. “The conditions would be found unconstitutional even in the context of prisons holding convicted felons, but these are not convicted felons. These are civil detainees.”
Chicago takes action
Informational booklets and whistles in bags are passed out by Erin Tobes, left, and Audra Wunder, outside Chappell Elementary School in Chicago on Oct. 14, 2025, following a tip of possible ICE agents returning to the neighborhood. (Antonio Perez/Chicago Tribune)
Evelyn Medina, owner of Espacio 3628, holds a whistle in a bag outside her business in Logan Square on Oct. 7, 2025. Medina passes out whistles, N95 masks and “Know Your Rights” cards outside her business, which is next to Funston Elementary School. (Eileen T. Meslar/Chicago Tribune)
Evelyn Medina stands outside her business, Espacio 3628, passing out whistles, N95 masks and “Know Your Rights” cards when school is dismissed at nearby Funston Elementary, Oct. 7, 2025. (Eileen T. Meslar/Chicago Tribune)
Baltazar Enríquez, center, president of the Little Village Community Council, hands out whistles for attendees to use if they see ICE agents during the Pilsen Mexican Independence Day Parade on Sept. 6, 2025. (Armando L. Sanchez/Chicago Tribune)
Mayor Brandon Johnson greets residents while distributing “no trespassing” signs at Ald. Byron Sigcho-Lopez’s 25th Ward office on Oct. 11, 2025, in Chicago. The signs inform Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents they are not welcome or allowed on their property. (John J. Kim/Chicago Tribune)
Area residents stand in line to receive “no trespassing” signs at Ald. Byron Sigcho-Lopez’s 25th Ward office on Oct. 11, 2025, in Chicago. The signs inform Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents they are not welcome or allowed on their property. (John J. Kim/Chicago Tribune)
Ismael Cordová-Clough sits in his car at Clock Tower Plaza at 4:55 am and sifts through messages from residents about potential ICE activity in Elgin on Sept. 19, 2025. From the messages he receives, he and a team of patrollers head to a location to verify it, sometimes following suspicious vehicles and thwarting the efforts of ICE agents to detain people. They often shout or use their horns, whistles and bullhorns to alert people in the area to stay inside. (Stacey Wescott/Chicago Tribune)
Whistles and information are available for customers at Vanessa Aguirre-Ávalos’ Luna y Cielo Play Cafe in Chicago’s Logan Square neighborhood. (Chris Sweda/Chicago Tribune)
Informational booklets and whistles are handed out outside Chappell Elementary School in Chicago on Oct. 14, 2025, following a tip of possible ICE agents returning to the neighborhood. (Antonio Perez/Chicago Tribune)
Informational booklets and whistles in bags are passed out by CPS special education teacher Alese Affatato, as dozens of parents, residents and school staff form a protective perimeter to keep a watch for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents outside Chappell Elementary School in Chicago on Oct. 14, 2025. (Antonio Perez/Chicago Tribune)
Ald. Rossana Rodriguez-Sanchez, 33rd, keeps watch for ICE outside Carl Von Linné School in the Avondale neighborhood during dismissal with community members on Oct. 8, 2025. (E. Jason Wambsgans/Chicago Tribune)
Community organizer Nino Brown holds a stack of “no trespassing” signs to distribute at Ald. Byron Sigcho-Lopez’s 25th Ward office on Oct. 11, 2025, in Chicago. The signs inform Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents they are not welcome or allowed on their property. (John J. Kim/Chicago Tribune)
Vanessa Aguirre-Ávalos, owner of Luna y Cielo Play Café in Chicago’s Logan Square neighborhood, pictured on Oct. 16, 2025, provides whistles and information to customers for use to protect the community against ICE. (Chris Sweda/Chicago Tribune)
Ald. Michael Rodriguez, 22nd, speaks at the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights headquarters in the Loop on Sept. 28, 2025. (Eileen T. Meslar/Chicago Tribune)
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Informational booklets and whistles in bags are passed out by Erin Tobes, left, and Audra Wunder, outside Chappell Elementary School in Chicago on Oct. 14, 2025, following a tip of possible ICE agents returning to the neighborhood. (Antonio Perez/Chicago Tribune)
Border Patrol agents detain painter Krzysztof Klim while verifying his identification on Oct. 31, 2025, next to Halloween decorations outside a house in Chicago’s Edison Park neighborhood. Klim, originally from Poland and now a U.S. citizen, was briefly detained and then released. (Brian Cassella/Chicago Tribune)
Border Patrol officers detain a person in the Albany Park neighborhood on Oct. 31, 2025, in Chicago. (Armando L. Sanchez/Chicago Tribune)
Members of the community yell at U.S. Border Patrol officers while they detain a person in the Albany Park neighborhood on Oct. 31, 2025, in Chicago. (Armando L. Sanchez/Chicago Tribune)
Border Patrol officers detain a person in the Albany Park neighborhood on Oct. 31, 2025, in Chicago. (Armando L. Sanchez/Chicago Tribune)
Border Patrol Cmdr. Gregory Bovino makes small talk with a concrete worker after his agents questioned the man for his citizenship documents, Oct. 31, 2025, in Chicago’s Edison Park neighborhood. (Brian Cassella/Chicago Tribune)
Members of the community film Border Patrol officers while they detain a person in the Albany Park neighborhood on Oct. 31, 2025, in Chicago. (Armando L. Sanchez/Chicago Tribune)
Border Patrol officers stand in the street while detaining a person in the Albany Park neighborhood on Oct. 31, 2025, in Chicago. (Armando L. Sanchez/Chicago Tribune)
A Chicago Police officer stops people from walking in the street after Border Patrol officers detained a person in the Albany Park neighborhood on Oct. 31, 2025, in Chicago. (Armando L. Sanchez/Chicago Tribune)
Members of the community film Border Patrol officers while they detain a person in the Albany Park neighborhood on Oct. 21, 2025, in Chicago. (Armando L. Sanchez/Chicago Tribune)
Members of the community yell at Border Patrol officers after they detained a person in the Albany Park neighborhood on Oct. 31, 2025, in Chicago. (Armando L. Sanchez/Chicago Tribune)
A Chicago Police officer tries to clear people from walking in the street after Border Patrol officers detained a person in the Albany Park neighborhood on Oct. 31, 2025, in Chicago. (Armando L. Sanchez/Chicago Tribune)
Members of the community film Border Patrol officers while they detain a person in the Albany Park neighborhood on Oct. 31, 2025, in Chicago. (Armando L. Sanchez/Chicago Tribune)
U.S. Border Patrol agents detain a man they found in an H Mart parking lot in Niles on Oct. 31, 2025, during immigration enforcement operations. (Brian Cassella/Chicago Tribune)
U.S. Border Patrol agents transfer a man they took from an H-Mart parking lot into a van in a Niles on Oct. 31, 2025, during immigration enforcement operations. (Brian Cassella/Chicago Tribune)
A landscaper is detained by U.S. Border Patrol agents during immigration enforcement operations on Oct. 31, 2025, in Chicago’s Edison Park neighborhood. (Brian Cassella/Chicago Tribune)
Border Patrol agents question painter Krzysztof Klim for his identification on Oct. 31, 2025, next to Halloween decorations outside a house in Chicago’s Edison Park neighborhood. Klim, originally from Poland and now a U.S. citizen, was briefly detained in handcuffs and then released. (Brian Cassella/Chicago Tribune)
U.S. Border Patrol agents question and detain a man they found painting a house in Chicago’s Edison Park neighborhood on Oct. 31, 2025, during immigration enforcement operations. (Brian Cassella/Chicago Tribune)
A neighbor yells as U.S. Border Patrol agents detain a man they found painting a house in Chicago’s Edison Park neighborhood on Oct. 31, 2025, during immigration enforcement operations. (Brian Cassella/Chicago Tribune)
Border Patrol officers transfer a person to a van after he was detained while conducting immigration enforcement actions in the area on Oct. 31, 2025, in Niles. (Armando L. Sanchez/Chicago Tribune)
Border Patrol officers question a man about his immigration status while conducting immigration enforcement actions in the Edison Park neighborhood on Oct. 31, 2025, in Chicago. (Armando L. Sanchez/Chicago Tribune)
U.S. Border Patrol agents watch the street while others question and detain a man they found painting a house in Chicago’s Edison Park neighborhood on Oct. 31, 2025, during immigration enforcement operations. (Brian Cassella/Chicago Tribune)
U.S. Border Patrol agents transfer detainees into a van in a Niles parking lot after taking them from job sites in Chicago’s Edison Park neighborhood on Oct. 31, 2025, during immigration enforcement operations. (Brian Cassella/Chicago Tribune)
Neighbor Charity Hines yells as U.S. Border Patrol agents detain a man they found painting a house in Chicago’s Edison Park neighborhood on Oct. 31, 2025, during immigration enforcement operations. (Brian Cassella/Chicago Tribune)
U.S. Border Patrol agents leave after detaining a man working near Frederick Stock Public School during immigration enforcement operations on Oct. 31, 2025, in Chicago’s Edison Park neighborhood. (Brian Cassella/Chicago Tribune)
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Border Patrol agents detain painter Krzysztof Klim while verifying his identification on Oct. 31, 2025, next to Halloween decorations outside a house in Chicago’s Edison Park neighborhood. Klim, originally from Poland and now a U.S. citizen, was briefly detained and then released. (Brian Cassella/Chicago Tribune)
In Albany Park, they fired pepper-spray balls to disperse an angry crowd and arrested two U.S. citizens. In Evanston, one repeatedly pointed his weapon at protesters while another knelt on a man’s back and punched him in the head.
They grabbed workers at an apartment complex in Hoffman Estates, landscapers, house painters and laborers in Edison Park, Skokie and Niles.
Despite pleas from Gov. JB Pritzker to pause federal immigration enforcement operations while children celebrate Halloween, teams of Border Patrol agents — including one led by Cmdr. Greg Bovino — tore through Chicago’s Northwest Side and nearby suburbs, sparking violent clashes with community members throughout the day.
Could the National Guard be next?
Texas National Guard members walk outside of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement holding facility in Broadview on Oct. 9, 2025. (Stacey Wescott/Chicago Tribune)
National Guard members walk around outside of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement holding facility in Broadview on Oct. 9, 2025. (Stacey Wescott/Chicago Tribune)
Texas National Guard members arrive Oct. 7, 2025, at the Army Reserve Training Center in Elwood. (Brian Cassella/Chicago Tribune)
Members of the Texas National Guard carry luggage after arriving Oct. 7, 2025, at the Army Reserve Training Center in Elwood. (Brian Cassella/Chicago Tribune)
Members of the Texas National Guard arrive Oct. 7, 2025, at the Army Reserve Training Center in Elwood. (Brian Cassella/Chicago Tribune)
Members of the Texas National Guard arrive Oct. 7, 2025, at the Army Reserve Training Center in Elwood. (Brian Cassella/Chicago Tribune)
Members of the Texas National Guard at the Army Reserve Training Center in Elwood, Oct. 8, 2025,. (Brian Cassella/Chicago Tribune)
Members of the Texas National Guard carry shields while running run drills on Oct. 8, 2025, at the Army Reserve Training Center in Elwood. (Brian Cassella/Chicago Tribune)
Members of the Texas National Guard stand at an entrance Oct. 8, 2025, at the Army Reserve Training Center in Elwood. (Brian Cassella/Chicago Tribune)
Members of the Texas National Guard arrive Oct. 7, 2025, at the Army Reserve Training Center in Elwood. (Brian Cassella/Chicago Tribune)
Members of the Texas National Guard assemble at the Army Reserve Training Center in Elwood, a far southwest suburb of Chicago, on Oct. 7, 2025. (Brian Cassella/Chicago Tribune)
Erin Gallagher, from Will County, protests the arrival of members of the Texas National Guard on Oct. 7. 2025, at the Army Reserve Training Center in Elwood. (Dominic Di Palermo/Chicago Tribune)
Members of the Texas National Guard at the Army Reserve Training Center in Elmwood, Oct. 7. 2025. (Dominic Di Palermo/Chicago Tribune)
Members of the Texas National Guard assemble in Elwood at the Army Reserve Training Center in the southwest suburb of Chicago on Oct. 7, 2025. (Brian Cassella/Chicago Tribune)
Members of the Texas National Guard assemble at the Army Reserve Training Center in Elwood, a far southwest suburb of Chicago, on Oct. 7, 2025. (Brian Cassella/Chicago Tribune)
Members of the Texas National Guard assemble at the Army Reserve Training Center in Elwood, a far southwest suburb of Chicago, on Oct. 7, 2025. (Brian Cassella/Chicago Tribune)
Members of the Texas National Guard assemble in Elwood at the Army Reserve Training Center in the southwest suburb of Chicago on Oct. 7, 2025. (Brian Cassella/Chicago Tribune)
Members of the Texas National Guard assemble at the Army Reserve Training Center in Elwood, a far southwest suburb on Oct. 7, 2025. (Brian Cassella/Chicago Tribune)
Members of the Texas National Guard assemble at the Army Reserve Training Center in Elwood, a far southwest suburb of Chicago, on Oct. 7, 2025. (Brian Cassella/Chicago Tribune)
Members of the Texas National Guard assemble at the Army Reserve Training Center in Elwood on Oct. 7, 2025, southwest of Chicago. (Brian Cassella/Chicago Tribune)
Members of the Texas National Guard assemble at the Army Reserve Training Center in Elwood, a far southwest suburb of Chicago, on Oct. 7, 2025. (Brian Cassella/Chicago Tribune)
Members of the Texas National Guard assemble at the Army Reserve Training Center in Elwood on Oct. 7, 2025, southwest of Chicago. (Brian Cassella/Chicago Tribune)
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Texas National Guard members walk outside of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement holding facility in Broadview on Oct. 9, 2025. (Stacey Wescott/Chicago Tribune)
Gov. JB Pritzker has repeatedly called out the Trump administration for defending its decision to deploy National Guard troops to Chicago as necessary to fight violent crime in the city, even though the federal government has emphasized in court and Pentagon memos that the mission is mainly to protect federal immigration enforcement agents and federal property.
Appearing on ABC’s “This Week,” Pritzker on Oct. 13 said President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance’s ultimate goal is to bring in the National Guard to cities like Chicago and Portland, Oregon, to militarize the country’s Democratic-controlled enclaves as a form of political payback.
“They just want troops on the ground because they want to militarize, especially blue cities and blue states,” he said.
Trump has discussed the potential of invoking the two-century-old Insurrection Act as a way to get around judicial orders blocking guard deployment. The Insurrection Act is an exception to the Posse Comitatus Act and would allow the U.S. military to be actively involved in law enforcement to put down a “rebellion” or when enforcing federal law becomes “impractical.”
Federal agents released preschool teacher Diana Patricia Santillana Galeano on Wednesday night, freeing the beloved local educator whose arrest at a North Center day care made international news.
Diana Santillana Galeano, who was detained by federal agents at Rayito de Sol Spanish Immersion Early Learning Center on the North Side of Chicago. (Hughes Socol Piers Resnick & Dym., Ltd.)
Santillana will return to Rayito De Sol Spanish Immersion Early Learning Center on Friday morning, where members of the community have rallied to show her support
“I am so grateful to everyone who has advocated on my behalf, and on behalf of the countless others who have experienced similar trauma over recent months in the Chicago area,” Santillana Galeano said in a statement released by her lawyers. “I love our community and the children I teach, and I can’t wait to see them again.”
Santillana’s case has generated widespread backlash. In a video circulated online, federal agents are seen pulling the screaming woman, a mother of two from Colombia, through the glass vestibule at the Rayito de Sol Spanish Immersion Early Learning Center in North Center, in the early morning hours of Nov. 5.
School officials said Santillana, who cares for infants, had authorization to work in the day care and had undergone a background check. An agent did not present a warrant when he entered the building, the school’s staff said.
In a statement, the Department of Homeland Security said Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents targeted her in a traffic stop as she and an unidentified male passenger were driving early Wednesday.
It said she illegally entered the U.S. on June 26, 2023, and “was encountered by Border Patrol,” and that “the Biden administration released her into the U.S.”
Fox News’ “Gutfeld!” panel criticized MSNBC host Nicolle Wallace and Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker on Tuesday after they claimed no Democrats had ever compared President Donald Trump to Adolf Hitler.
Gutfeld opened the segment by airing a clip of Pritzker’s appearance on Wallace’s “The Best People” podcast on Monday, where the two agreed that no Democrat has ever called Trump Hitler and that Republicans make such claims as a smear tactic.
“Wow, if only we had this thing called the internet,” Gutfeld ribbed before playing a compilation of Democrats comparing the president to Hitler.
Nicolle Wallace speaks onstage during Former FBI Director James Comey In Conversation With MSNBC’s Nicolle Wallace at 92NY on May 30, 2023, in New York City.(Dia Dipasupil/Getty Images)
Gutfeld then introduced a video compilation that included prominent Democrats such as former Vice President Kamala Harris and Texas Rep. Jasmine Crockett, who in a clip from July 19, called Trump “wannabe Hitler.”
Mocking Wallace’s producers for failing to inform her about “something called reality,” he quipped that, via a quick search on the internet, these instances would be readily available to them.
During his interview with Wallace on Monday, Pritzker articulated a distinct line between drawing historical parallels in policy and comparing Trump to Hitler directly.
“I’m not suggesting, I haven’t suggested Donald Trump is Hitler,” Pritzker said.
“I don’t think any Democrat has,” Wallace said. “And I actually think it’s a smear that they project back onto critics. But JD Vance called Donald Trump ‘cultural heroin.’ He called him ‘America’s Hitler.’ I mean, the attacks on Donald Trump as a fascist came from three generals who worked for him.”
Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker speaks at the office of The Center for American Progress event on March 18 in Washington, D.C. (Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)
However, the record shows that many prominent Democrats, and Wallace herself, have drawn parallels between Trump and Hitler.
After Trump drew cheers from a crowd as he embraced the word “nationalist” during a 2018 event, she replied, “I watch enough History Channel to know that they cheered at Hitler, too.”
Fox News’ Kat Timpf chimed in with her thoughts on Pritzker’s claim, noting that the governor claimed he never even “suggested” that Trump was Hitler and “set the bar very low for himself.”
“So, when you were saying that the way Trump’s immigration policy is — is a precursor to the Holocaust, what were you suggesting that makes Trump in those circumstances?” Timpf questioned. “I would love to hear his answer.”
“Because if he would have said I never directly called [Trump] Hitler, maybe that’s true. But what did you mean when you mean by all the stuff — you certainly suggested it,” she added.
President Donald Trump speaks to a gathering of top U.S. military commanders at Marine Corps Base Quantico, Tuesday, Sept. 30, 2025, in Quantico, Va.(Evan Vucci/AP Photo)
Pritzker, who created the Illinois Accountability Commission to track ICE agents’ conduct, insisted there are instances of misconduct “all the time.”
The vocal Trump critic has compared the president’s ICE crackdown to Nazi Germany and called ICE agents Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem’s “thugs.”
Gov. JB Pritzker signed an executive order on Thursday aimed at addressing federal enforcement in Illinois, telling CBS News that his newly created Illinois Accountability Commission will serve as a permanent record of alleged civil rights abuses by federal agents in Chicago.
Pritzker told CBS News, in an exclusive interview, the state is documenting “unlawful attacks” by ICE and U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers under Operation Midway Blitz.
“They are attacking people on the ground — ICE, CBP — going after people just because they’re Brown or Black,” Pritzker said. “No one above them is holding them responsible. Greg Bovino, who is running the operation in Chicago, isn’t holding them accountable. No one is. So we’re going to have to keep a record.”
Pritzker’s office said the task force will consist of nine people appointed by him to capture and create a public record of federal law enforcement, ultimately recommending actions to hold the federal government accountable for operations taking place here.
“The commission will be charged with three core missions. One, creating a public record of the abuses; two, capturing the impact on families and communities; and three, recommending actions to prevent further harm and pursue justice,” Pritzker said at a press conference announcing his executive order.
He said members will be supported by the Department of Human Rights, and he expects hearings to launch “several weeks from now.”
“Since this began, I have encouraged the people of Illinois to use their phones and to record everything they are witnessing and post it on social media,” Pritzker said. “We have a duty to ensure that the truth is preserved.”
The governor said hundreds of videos and firsthand accounts have already been collected and will be preserved for use in future legal proceedings.
“These people need to be held accountable,” he said. “And they will be — by the judiciary now, and by Congress or the next administration later.”
Former Chief Judge of the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, Ruben Castillo, will lead the commission as chair.
“This commission is about civil rights. This commission is about the Constitution. This commission ultimately about human rights, Castillo said.
Pritzker emphasized that Illinois is not waiting for Washington to act, pointing to recent legal victories against federal enforcement actions.
“We’ve won at the circuit court level. We’ve won at the appeals court level. We are taking action now. But it’s appalling that the people committing these crimes are still on the job,” Pritzker said. “Let’s be clear: Congress isn’t doing anything right now. They’ve become sycophants to the President. They’re not holding hearings or asking questions.”
He described reports of Black Hawk helicopters, military-style weapons, and the mass detention of civilians, including children being zip-tied.
“There are people who just don’t believe it until they see it,” he said. “We’ve seen pastors hit with pepper balls while praying outside ICE facilities. Peaceful protesters tackled or shot with tear gas and rubber bullets for exercising their First Amendment rights. … That’s why we’re telling everyone: record it, document it, send it in.”
In his interview with CBS News, Pritzker detailed the timeline on these accountability efforts.
“We are taking those cases to court, and again we are winning. So we’re taking action now. I don’t want to make it seem like nothing is happening,” he said.
The governor said they’re taking cases to court now, but other actions could take years, when there’s a change in administration at the White House.
“Someone’s got to hold them accountable, and whether it’s the courts now or the elected officials later, we’ve got to make sure we have a record to show,” he said.
Pritzker said a report will be issued this January related to the work of the commission. They’ve created a website people can use to track this work and to report activity at ilac.illinois.gov.
“The courts have done a very good job stopping the worst offenses, but I’m disturbed that the Supreme Court might allow federalized National Guard troops when there is no insurrection, no rebellion,” he said.
Pritzker said he welcomes help from the FBI, DEA, and ATF to combat illegal guns and drugs, but rejected any military-style presence.
When asked what he’d say directly to CBP Chief of Patrol Bovino, who oversees the federal operation, Pritzker offered a pointed message: “Follow the law. Follow your own protocols. Do right by the citizens of the United States who live here in Illinois. And, finally, pronounce the name of our state correctly. It’s Illinois, not Illinoise.”
Bovino defends enforcement actions, claiming “absolute chaos in the streets”
On Thursday, Bovino also talked with CBS News and pushed back on Pritzker’s claims.
“Pritzker probably ought to set a hotline up for himself, for all the abuses that illegal aliens perpetrate on American citizens,” Bovino said, accusing him and other Democratic leaders of spreading “fake news” about racial profiling. He denied that CBP agents have targeted neighborhoods by race or acted outside policy.
“We’ve arrested individuals from 30 non-Latino countries,” he said. “We go where the threat is.”
Bovino defended his agency’s tactics, saying federal agents in Chicago have made nearly 2,700 arrests since Sept. 6 and used “exemplary” force amid what he called “absolute chaos in the streets.”
“We’ve arrested a lot of very bad individuals: Latin Kings members, bona fide terrorists, and things like that,” Bovino told CBS News.
Bovino said roughly 70% of arrests nationwide involve people with “criminal or immigration history,” though he declined to provide specific figures for Chicago, when pressed repeatedly. Earlier this month, CBS News Chicago dug into the data behind the arrests, and found some of the numbers reflected people arrested outside of Illinois.
Bovino also defended agents seen deploying tear gas and pepper balls at protesters outside the Broadview detention facility, despite a federal court order restricting chemical agents.
“The use of force I’ve seen has been exemplary, the least amount necessary to accomplish the mission,” he said. “Those protesters were trespassing and had been given multiple warnings. That was absolutely in line with policy.”
Bovino dismissed concerns that agents fired from elevated positions or above the waist, insisting, “It doesn’t matter where you fire from. That’s not a violation of policy.”
Asked if any agents had been disciplined for excessive force, Bovino said, “To my knowledge, no.”
He also defended the possible deployment of National Guard troops to Chicago, saying they would guard federal facilities, not patrol city streets.
“That was fake news,” he said. “It was never the intention for National Guard to be on the streets.”
Bovino described Chicago as a “model” for nationwide immigration enforcement and said CBP’s mission will continue until “we arrest them all or they self-deport.”
“We’re here to protect taxpayers from violence and crimes by illegal aliens,” Bovino said. “We’ve had enough, and we’re not going anywhere.”
CBS News Chicago reached out to the Department of Homeland Security for comment and is waiting to hear back. This story will be updated if we receive a response.
Illinois VGT businessman Rick Heidner is running for governor
Heidner has supported Democrats and Republicans, but will run as a Republican
Gov. JB Pritzker is the early 2026 front-runner
One of Illinois’ most successful businessmen, whose wide-ranging interests include a major stake in the state’s slot-like video gaming terminals (VGT) industry, is seeking to replace one of the state’s wealthiest citizens as the top lawmaker in the Land of Lincoln.
Illinois businessman Rick Heidner is seeking to run on the Republican ticket to oust JB Pritzker as governor. Much of Heidner’s wealth stems from his video gaming terminal business, Gold Rush Gaming. (Image: Rick for Illinois)
Illinois is one of only 13 states without term limits on governors. Gov. JB Pritzker (D), whose mass wealth stems from his family’s ownership of the Hyatt Hotels Corporation, plans to seek a third term in 2026.
Pritzker, worth an estimated $4 billion, will eagerly await his opponent as the Republican Primary plays out. The latest to throw his name in the GOP gubernatorial pool is Rick Heidner, 65, whose business empire includes Gold Rush Gaming.
Founded in 2012, Gold Rush Gaming operates over 700 VGT locations in Illinois, distributing thousands of the slot-like gaming terminals. The VGT host businesses include liquor stores, truck stops and gas stations, hotels, restaurants and bars, and fraternal organizations.
In a D-I Statement of Organization filing made public this week by the Illinois State Board of Elections, Heidner registered a new political action committee to support his candidacy to become governor.
Gaming Magnate Has Various Businesses
Heidner’s Gold Rush is the third-largest VGT operator in Illinois. As of September, the Illinois Gaming Board said there were 8,758 VGT establishments with a combined 49,552 machines. Accel Entertainment is by far the largest VGT firm in Illinois, with 2,775 locations.
Along with Gold Rush, Heidner’s business conglomerate entails managing over 280 commercial properties in the US. He also owns Prairie State Energy and Ricky Rockets Fuel Centers.
Heidner’s betting big that his next venture will be in an elected position. His state campaign filing for “Rick for Illinois” shows the committee was formed with a $1 million contribution from Heidner. He lists his occupation as “real estate developer – entrepreneur.”
Heidner hasn’t yet responded to numerous media inquiries for comment.
In the past, Heidner has given money to both Democrats and Republicans. He contributed to Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson’s 2023 election and the Democratic campaigns for Illinois Senate President Don Harmon and Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle.
Heidner also supported Republican Richard Irvin’s failed 2022 gubernatorial bid. Irvin was the mayor of Aurora from 2017 through May 2025.
GOP Faces Long Odds in Illinois
Pritzker is expected to run unchallenged on the Democratic ticket. Along with Heidner, the 2026 Illinois Republican Primary pool includes declared candidates Darren Bailey, a former state senator, and DuPage County Sheriff James Mendrick.
Whomever is the GOP nominee will face long odds of upsetting the incumbent. Since 2003, Republicans have occupied the governor’s office for just four years (Gov. Bruce Rauner, January 2015 – January 2019).
Illinois hasn’t voted for a Republican presidential candidate since 1988.
Anish Kapoor’s Cloud Gate, better known as the Bean. Photo: Christa Terry for Observer
I was going to kick this off with a fun anecdote about my daughter walking into my office to ask whether I knew there was a guy trapped inside the Bean, followed by my inevitable dive into the Man in Bean movement (including Sarah Cascone’s wild dissection). Anish Kapoor’s Cloud Gate is the kind of artwork people love to hate while still lining up to slap their greasy palms on it to get the same warped selfie everyone takes. And while I usually enjoy a good dunk on that sort of thing, it feels a little tone-deaf given what’s happening in the Windy City right now—from ICE patrols to the arrival of National Guard troops.
The idea that Trump could deploy those troops in Chicago—invoking the Insurrection Act in the process—feels dystopian and doesn’t track with my experience of the city at all. Does Chicago have crime? Yes, Chicago has crime. So does every city. More people, more problems. Is Chicago, as the president has claimed, the “world’s most dangerous city”? Please. Not even close. It’s just a city—and from everything I saw during a trip that took me from the Loop to Streeterville, from East Village to Washington Park and the Fulton Market District—it’s a pretty chill one. Sure, I only saw a sliver, but to echo the words of U.S. District Judge April Perry, I saw nothing resembling a “danger of rebellion.”
What I do see while I’m here for Chicago Exhibition Weekend (CXW) is beautiful in the way most urban places are beautiful—full of hard edges paired with softness and united by the widely held conviction that art is the solution to a range of challenges. Chicago’s artists—and their champions, from patrons to gallerists to curators—are as open as they are unfiltered. When I ask Scott Speh, founder of Western Exhibitions, what makes the Chicago art scene different from, say, New York or L.A., he’s quick to tell me how much he hates that question, then launches into a perfectly clear-eyed answer: “I think everywhere, people want to put on good shows. It doesn’t matter what city they’re in, they want to put forward interesting artists.”
Alexander Calder, Flying Dragon, 1975. Photo: Christa Terry for Observer
That’s what he’s been doing for 21 years (“Chicago would be a far less interesting art city if Scott wasn’t doing what he was doing,” artist Stan Shellabarger told The Chicago Reader in 2024), and he’s in good company. Speh might resist boiling it all down, but if I had to try, I’d say Chicago’s is a scene grounded in and by the people who are in the thick of it. “In Chicago, there’s a really good ecosystem because it’s not too small and it’s not too big either,” Sibylle Friche, Document gallery partner, tells me. “You don’t get bored—there’s always enough going on.”
Enough, and then some—as is the case with Chicago Exhibition Weekend, now in its third year. Around 50 galleries and creative spaces citywide mounted shows and everything from panel discussions and artist meet-and-greets to collector tours and an art-and-tennis mixer. The whole thing is the brainchild of Abby Pucker, Gertie founder and Pritzker family scion—yes, that Pritzker family. But despite her association with big bucks and big names (Illinois Governor JB Pritzker is a cousin), Pucker is—as I find out in conversation after conversation, including with the woman herself—simultaneously down-to-earth and committed to lifting others up.
I’m here for CXW, of course, but also to figure out what makes Chicago’s art world tick. Pucker deserves serious credit for rallying next-gen patrons and collectors through Gertie’s EarlyWork program of curated cultural events. Still, she’s one voice in a glorious chorus of artists, curators and civic-minded supporters—all of whom, it seems, are ready to invite outsiders like me in.
Day 0
It’s just around lunchtime when I touch down at O’Hare, but I’m thrilled to find my room at Chicago Athletic Association already ready when I arrive after an uneventful ride on the Blue Line. I can see Cloud Gate from here, or at least glints of it between the leaves of Millennium Park’s many trees, which means I’m also near Jaume Plensa’s ever-smiling crowd-pleaser, Crown Fountain. It’s hours before I need to be anywhere, and my home base is just steps from the Art Institute of Chicago (the second-largest art museum in the United States, after New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art), which feels like the perfect way to start an unfamiliar city fling with art.
The Stephen Alesch painting in my hotel room. Photo: Christa Terry for Observer
In the elevator, someone cheerfully asks if I’m headed out to see the Bean. “Sure am,” I answer—and I guess I’m just that suggestible because suddenly I feel compelled to make that my first stop. Close up, it’s filthy, covered in smeary handprints and streaks, but from a distance, framed by the city skyline, it’s pure sculpture drama. I take selfies from afar but resist the urge to touch it since I left my sanitizer back in the room—rookie mistake.
Marc Chagall’s America Windows at the Art Institute of Chicago. Photo: Christa Terry for Observer
On a normal trip, I’d budget at least five hours for the Art Institute, but this isn’t a normal trip, so I decide to focus on the heavy hitters: Edward Hopper’s Nighthawks. Van Gogh’s The Bedroom. Seurat’s A Sunday on La Grande Jatte. Grant Wood’s American Gothic. My all-time favorite Cézanne, Basket of Apples. I’m waylaid early on by the Elizabeth Catlett show, “A Black Revolutionary Artist and All That It Implies,” a fantastic career survey on view through early next year and absolutely worth the flight alone. In Gallery 262, everyone is clustered around Nighthawks, which is probably among the least interesting paintings there—though it’s definitely bigger than you’d expect. Far more captivating are Peter Blume’s weirdly brilliant The Rock (commissioned for Fallingwater but rejected for being too big) and Kay Sage’s deliciously desolate In the Third Sleep. There’s even an early cubist-expressionist Pollock, which feels like spotting a celebrity before their glow-up.
Kay Sage, In the Third Sleep, 1944. Oil on canvas. Photo: Christa Terry for Observer
And so it goes. The Art Institute of Chicago is home to paintings we’ve all seen a hundred times on mugs, tote bags and in movies—you can absolutely have your Ferris Bueller moment in front of the Seurat—but it’s the lesser-known gems that really sparkle. There’s a stellar selection of Georgia O’Keeffe’s works (Ballet Skirt or Electric Light is a standout) and Alma Thomas’ Starry Night with the Astronauts. Other highlights: William Zorach’s Summer, Marsden Hartley’s Movement, Elizabeth Sparhawk-Jones’ Shop Girls and Mary Cassatt’s The Child’s Bath.
Elizabeth Catlett, Head of a Negro Woman, 1946. Photo: Christa Terry for Observer
Time-bound as I am, I feel like I’m jogging through the galleries. (Fun fact: Large as the museum is, less than 20 percent of the collection is on display at any given time.) I pause for a late lunch at the café—great food—and sit in the garden for a charming little reset before diving back in. Monet’s stacks of wheat remind me what repetition can achieve. There are Van Goghs here you haven’t seen on a million mugs, but don’t skip the Pissarros. I breeze through the Greek, Etruscan, Roman and Egyptian galleries but somehow miss the entire Asian art collection. I cap off my visit at Marc Chagall’s America Windows and leave feeling artistically overfed yet hungry for more.
Andi Crist’s Precautionary Measures. Photo: Christa Terry for Observer
After a stop back at the hotel, where I freshen up and check out Andi Crist’s Precautionary Measures, a site-specific installation that transforms symbols of caution and containment into a new visual language (then installed at Chicago Athletic Association), I hop on the train toward 400 N. Peoria. It’s the hub of CXW and the site of “Over My Head: Encounters with Conceptual Art in a Flyover City, 1984–2015,” a special exhibition curated by Gareth Kaye and Iris Colburn and presented by Abby Pucker’s Gertie.
The weather is perfection—so close to ideal it’s practically invisible. But I’m off to an inauspicious start. My GPS goes haywire, and I’m spinning around River North in a mild panic, trying to figure out where the hell I am. And once I do, I’m unfashionably early—as in, they’re-still-setting-up-the-bar early. But someone lets me in, and the bartenders take pity on me, which is how I score a private preview of the show. I spend an embarrassingly long time standing in the room where Jordan Wolfson’s hypnotic Perfect Lover (2007), one of my favorite works, is playing on a loop.
An installation view of “Over My Head: Encounters with Conceptual Art in a Flyover City, 1984–2015 ” at 400 N. Peoria. Photo: Christa Terry for Observer
As the gallery fills, I’m still feeling untethered. I spot Tony Karman. I eavesdrop on conversations, playing a game of Artist, Collector or Scenester? I linger by Wendy Jacob’s Untitled (1988), watching it breathe, then lose myself in Rashid Johnson’s Remembering D.B. Cooper (2013), until Ellen Kaulig, chief of staff at the Chicago Reader, saves me from myself by introducing me to Pucker. In a relatively quiet spot under the stairs, she tells me how Chicago Exhibition Weekend evolved over three years and where the idea for “Over My Head” came from.
“It’s a bit of a double entendre—being a flyover city, right? People don’t often attribute movements like conceptual art to Chicago, but it is an amazing nerve center of that,” she says, calling the planning phase a whirlwind. “We talked to these absolute icons. People like Karsten Lund, Helen Goldenberg, Laura Paulson, John Corbett and Jim Dempsey… just people who have been integral to this area for so many years.” Chicago’s art elite were, she said, excited to share, and the resulting show collected work from Molly Zuckerman-Hartung, Dara Birnbaum, Rosemarie Trockel, Martin Puryear, Tony Lewis and others.
“They don’t think so highly of themselves that they’re detached from reality,” she adds. “They’re around. I think sometimes that might work to our detriment, because it’s hard to brand something as cool when it’s so inviting—but it’s fucking cool to be invited.”
Rashid Johnson, Remembering D.B. Cooper, 2013. Photo: Christa Terry for Observer
That word—invited—comes up again when I talk to Chanelle Lacy, Gertie’s director of art initiatives, about the crossover between CXW and EarlyWork: “We want to lower barriers to entry. We try to demystify things because once you actually get into it, it’s not that scary. The art world just looks a little intimidating from the outside. We want to expose people to the finer side of things and be a lifeline. And everything is very serious—it’s just about making it more approachable, so people feel invited into the experience.”
The exhibition dinner is where I meet Friche, along with Carla Acevedo-Yates (if the name’s familiar, it’s because she’s on the documenta 16 curatorial team), several dealers and a cadre of arts-friendly businesspeople and politicians. I stay and schmooze for as long as I can before exhaustion sets in.
Molly Zuckerman-Hartung, Notley, 2013. Photo: Christa Terry for Observer
Day 1
I’d planned to follow one of the curated routes that the CXW team had Chicago artists, gallerists and creatives put together, but last night Friche hand-drew me a one-of-a-kind mapped itinerary—and really, how could I possibly say no to that? But Chicago’s art museums don’t open until 10 a.m., and the galleries open even later, so I decide to wander toward Lake Michigan. I get sidetracked by the absolute unit of a fountain in the distance—it’s Clarence F. Buckingham Memorial Fountain—and I start heading that way, thinking it can’t be too far. And it’s not, technically, but its sheer scale plays tricks on your senses. I know I’m close when I pass Turtle Boy and Dove Girl and the North Rose Garden, which must be stunning at the height of summer, and then I keep going for a quick peek at Magdalena Abakanowicz’s leggy Agora.
Clarence F. Buckingham Memorial Fountain. Photo: Christa Terry for Observer
I haven’t even officially started my day, but I’ve already clocked more than a mile—according to Friche’s map, in the wrong direction. After an about-face, I get plenty of lake views on my three-mile walk to the MCA Chicago, which is showing “City In A Garden: Queer Art and Activism” and “Wafaa Bilal: Indulge Me,” along with “Collection in Conversation with Pablo Helguera” across all three floors of the museum’s stairwell galleries. Like the Art Institute, MCA Chicago is a feast, but a much more digestible one. You can see everything in a couple of hours, which is ideal because my weekend itinerary is threatening to become an endurance sport.
Nick Cave’s Sound Suit (2008) in “City in a Garden: Queer Art and Activism in Chicago” at MCA Chicago. Photo: Christa Terry for Observer
First stop: Patron Gallery for Bethany Collins’s “DUSK,” which is nuanced but underwhelming as presented—or maybe I’m just too overstimulated post-museum to process it properly. Next up: Western Exhibitions, Document, Volume Gallery and David Salkin Creative, which all share a floor at 1709 West Chicago Avenue. Friche is in, and she tells me the neighborhood is a hub for emerging contemporary art, but you’ll also find heavy-hitters like Mariane Ibrahim Gallery and Corbett vs. Dempsey. “It definitely concentrates a lot of the scene,” she says. “And it feels pretty supportive—we each have our own identity. I think it’s hard to find programs in Chicago that resemble each other. I’m not saying anything negative about New York, but sometimes you go to Chelsea and see the same kind of painting shows over and over. I feel like here, you don’t have that.”
Journie Cirdain’s Chandelier Dewdrops (2025), part of “The Gloaming” at Western Exhibitions gallery. Photo: Christa Terry for Observer
Unlike Scott Speh, she’s more than happy to talk about what makes Chicago’s art scene unique: “Because our overhead is manageable, it’s more accessible to open spaces and experiment. Eventually, you get a bit more constrained by the commercial aspects—if you want longevity, you do need to sell some art. That affects your choices. But there’s still a bit more breathing room here than in the coastal cities, given how unaffordable things have become in San Francisco and New York.”
Kiah Celeste’s Four Shores (2025) at Document. Photo: Christa Terry for Observer
I linger over Kiah Celeste and Gordon Hall’s work at Document and Journie Cirdain’s “The Gloaming” at Western Exhibitions before briefly popping into “Porfirio Gutiérrez: Modernism” at Volume Gallery. Then I’m back out on the streets, where I’m spoiled for choice but already flirting with art fatigue. Sadly, Monica Meloche gallery isn’t opening its Luke Agada and Braxton Garneau show until tomorrow, so I make my way to Mariane Ibrahim for “Yukimasa Ida: Flaming Memory.” It is, in a word, transcendent. I stand for a long time in front of each painting, hypnotized by the massive brushstrokes and thick layers of paint that blur into half-remembered faces—like fragments of a dream fading faster than I can hold on.
I think about squeezing in a few more galleries, but once again, I’ve grossly underestimated Chicago’s distances—and I’m hitting the wall. In a way, it’s a happy accident: I return to my hotel to the news that the iconic Agnes Gund has passed away, and her obit is waiting in my production queue. I edit, publish and then dash out to gape at the Chicago Picasso before hopping on the train to yet another neighborhood: Washington Park.
Darius Dennis, SEEN. Photo: Christa Terry for Observer
I’m here to see a different side of the art scene and join the large crowd gathered at the Green Line Performing Arts Center for a tour of the imagined Washington Park Public Art Corridor. In several batches, a trolley ferries us to Amanda Williams’Other Washingtons at 51st and S. King Drive, the future site ofBreath, Form & Freedom, created by the Chicago Torture Justice Memorials Foundation to honor victims of police torture, and Arts + Public Life’s Arts Lawn for a preview of Yvette Mayorga’s City Lovers in Paradise. I learn more about Chicago’s recent history in a few hours than I could’ve gleaned from a week of reading—and not all of it’s pretty. Back at the arts center, there’s live music, dance and collaborative art-making with artist and teacher William Estrada, who’s brought his Mobile Street Art Cart Project to the Art Lawn.
When I ask Estrada about the art scene, he’s frank. “There are a lot of spaces where not everyone is welcome, and that’s the worst part of it,” he says. “But the best part is that there’s a lot of art in Chicago, and you can see it across 77 neighborhoods. That’s the part I get really excited about—because you get to experience different art in different communities, and actually engage in conversations about what that art means and who made it with the folks who are being affected by it or get to experience it directly.”
Jaume Plensa’s Crown Fountain. Photo: Christa Terry for Observer
And that’s exactly why I’m here—not just for CXW (which is fantastic) or the city’s world-class museums (also fantastic) but to understand what makes Chicago’s art pulse so distinct. Back in the Loop, I stroll around Millennium Park waiting for a text from Wilma’s letting me know my barbecue is ready. The evening is gorgeous—warm, breezy and humming with life. Kids are splashing in Crown Fountain, musicians are playing on the sidewalks, and the whole scene radiates that beautiful combination of grit and charm. I can see why so many people love it here.
Day 2
If you have limited time in Chicago—say, you’re breezing in for a weekend of art and, like me, you’ll be operating without wheels—you need to think hyper-locally. This is a city of neighborhoods, each with its own cultural flavor and art offerings. Hyde Park has the Smart Museum of Art, the Renaissance Society, Hyde Park Art Center and the Logan Center Gallery (plus the Griffin Museum of Science and Industry, the Institute for the Study of Ancient Cultures Museum and the DuSable Black History Museum in nearby Washington Park). Lincoln Park has the DePaul Art Museum and Wrightwood 659. Ukrainian Village and West Town boast a cluster of commercial galleries, along with the Ukrainian Institute of Modern Art and Intuit Art Museum.
The Chicago Picasso. Photo: Christa Terry for Observer
If there are specific museums or galleries you’re determined to hit, book a spot somewhere central. Because if you’re coming from New York and assuming you’ll just zip between neighborhoods like you’re downtown, you’re in for a rude awakening. Chicago is about ten times the size of Manhattan in terms of land area—which is why, during my final hours in town, I’m speedwalking the South Loop’s Wabash Arts Corridor. (Sidenote: I consider myself a hotel gym connoisseur, but I racked up so many steps during my two-day stay that I never once made it to the Chicago Athletic Association gym. No regrets.)
Crisscrossing streets so eerily empty of cars they feel post-apocalyptic, I admire murals not just on walls but also on doors, alleyways and parking lots. Initiated by Columbia College Chicago in 2013, the Wabash Arts Corridor project has brought more than 100 murals to the neighborhood, including We Own the Future by Shepard Fairey. I’m especially charmed by Marina Zumi’s Impossible Meeting and the candy-colored Moose Bubblegum Bubble by Jacob Watts, and wish I had more time to wander—but I need to get back to Chicago Athletic Association for my final art experience of the trip: the “City as Platform” breakfast conversation.
Jacob Watts’s Bubblegum Moose Bubble, one of the Wabash Art Corridor Murals. Photo: Christa Terry for Observer
On my straight-line power walk back to my hotel, I marvel at Chicago’s abundant parking—a downright shocking sight for a New Yorker—and pause to peer into the windows of Elephant Room Gallery, one of many I didn’t make it to, which is showing Darin Latimer’s solo exhibition “Rhinoceros.” Other things I don’t do in Chicago: participate in the “Throw your phone into a body of water!” activation by Weatherproof, which invited art lovers to toss their phones into any handy body of water on September 19, 20 or 21 whenever the numbers on a clock added up to four in military time (e.g. 0400 or 2200)—though I was sorely tempted. Attend the Improvised Sound Making at The Franklin. See “Alex Katz: White Lotus” at GRAY. Visit the National Museum of Mexican Art and the National Veterans Art Museum.
Cheri Lee Charlton’s Curious Bunny. Photo: Christa Terry for Observer
Before the talk—an engaging conversation between Kate Sierzputowski (artistic director of EXPO CHICAGO), Nora Daley (co-chair of the Chicago Architecture Biennial), Christine Messineo (Frieze director of Americas) and, no surprise, Abby Pucker, who greets me warmly, by name, when I check in. As Sierzputowski notes when the convo kicks off, the panel “reflects the best of what Chicago has to offer: collaboration across sectors, deep civic commitment and a shared mission to place the city’s cultural work on a global stage.” Daley calls CXW a “cultural palooza” and declares that “Chicago shows up,” which is something I see in action, over and over, during my short time here. “I think it’s who’s in the room at these dinners is what makes this work,” Sierzputowski agrees—whether that’s gallerists, artists, curators, museum directors and civic leaders or, as Pucker reminds us, engaged corporate entities committed to supporting the arts in Chicago.
“City as Platform,” one of the Chicago Exhibition Weekend talks. Photo: Christa Terry for Observer
“The creative economy contributes massively to city revenues, yet the people in power often don’t see or understand it,” she says. “We’ve seen perception hurt Chicago. Every city has problems—but if the media only amplifies those, we lose people. Art and culture can bring them back.”
Ironically, the end of the conversation marks the close of my 48 hours of art in Chicago. As I ride the Blue Line back to O’Hare, mulling over everything I’ve experienced, it hits me: as thrilling as it is to be here during Chicago Exhibition Weekend, there’s just too much on the CXW agenda and not enough time to do it. What I experienced in two days was barely a teaser of what this city has to offer. So with that in mind, Abby, if you’re reading this, I have three words for you: Chicago Exhibition Week. Think about it.
Strreet art by Doc Mosher. Photo: Christa Terry for Observer
A hearing in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois began at 11 a.m. CT. Judge April M. Perry has set strict limits on the structure of the proceedings: each side will get 10 minutes for their opening statements, then she will get to ask questions, and then each side will be given 15 minutes for closing arguments before she makes her ruling.
CBS News Chicago Legal Analyst Irv Miller said there are three likely possible outcomes for the hearing. First, the judge could tell the government they can’t deploy the National Guard and have to leave. Second, the judge could rule the president was acting within his power and the guard can stay and do what they wish. Third, she could rule the guard can stay temporarily, but place major restrictions on their actions and autonomy.
Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul argues in the suit, filed Monday, that “Defendants’ deployment of federalized troops to Illinois is patently unlawful.” He continues, “Plaintiffs ask this court to halt the illegal, dangerous, and unconstitutional federalization of members of the National Guard of the United States, including both the Illinois and Texas National Guard.”
The judge initially declined to grant an emergency temporary restraining order in the hours after the lawsuit was filed, instead giving the federal government until Wednesday at 11:59 p.m. CT to file their response.
They did so with moments to spare, in a 59-page filing that argues President Trump has the legal authority to deploy the troops and that state objections should not block the operation.
Attorneys for the federal government also argued the courts should be “highly deferential” when reviewing a president’s judgment, saying it’s within the scope of the authority the executive branch is given by the Constitution and statutes.
Raoul said in a Monday news conference following the filing of the lawsuit that the only situation in the city or state that is “out of control” are the ICE agents themselves, whose overreach he said creates pretext for military deployment, and cited Mr. Trump’s own statements that he wants to use American cities as military training grounds and said Chicago “is about to find out why it’s called the Department of War.”
Sara Tenenbaum is the Senior Digital Producer for CBS News Chicago covering breaking, local and community news in Chicago. She previously worked as a digital producer and senior digital producer for ABC7 Chicago.
A protester is helped after inhaling tear gas outside a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in the western suburbs of Chicago.
Xinhua/Sipa USA
Wednesday morning, Donald Trump escalated his war of words with Democratic officials in Illinois with a Truth Social post stating: “Chicago Mayor should be in jail for failing to protect Ice Officers! Governor Pritzker also!”
There’s no evidence that either Mayor Brandon Johnson or Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker has done anything but follow the law and exercise their constitutional rights in opposing Trump’s immigration offensive in Chicago which now includes Texas National Guard troops.
But there is a growing body of evidence that Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers are abusing their power so boldly that in a just world, they’d go to jail.
This morning, there is video of an ICE security officer shooting a peaceful protesting priest in the head with some kind of crowd control munition, possibly a pepper ball. News reports haven’t yet confirmed the events yet, but I have confirmed the video is of an ICE location in Illinois. In any case, the abusive act is akin to a host of events fueling growing outrage in the city.
On Tuesday, the Chicago Tribune reported that a masked federal agent pointed his assault rifle at a neighborhood activist for merely recording his actions, something any American is allowed to do under well-established First Amendment law.
Those guns are going off as well. Last week, Border Patrol agents claimed they shot an unarmed woman after she rammed their car with hers, but her defense attorney says he will release body camera footage that shows the Border Patrol car veered into her.
Last month, ICE agents shot and killed a man they said had “seriously injured” injured another ICE officer, but now there is body cam footage of the officer saying his injuries were “nothing major.”
And the ICE raids in Illinois seem as if they are provoking the very warlike atmosphere that Trump has used to justify his National Guard deployment over the objections of Gov. Pritzker. In one case, hundreds of federal agents swarmed an apartment building, including rappelling from Black Hawk helicopters onto the roof to arrest dozens of residents without regard to whether they were U.S. citizens or not, and holding them zip-tied for hours before releasing them.
I have written that Trump was elected to take a tough stand on undocumented immigration. Arresting and deporting millions of people here illegally is well within his rights. Indeed, it his duty to protect the country, but that does not justify the wholesale abrogation of U.S. citizens’ rights.
Just as Trump has the right as president to order aggressive immigration enforcement, U.S. citizens have the right to sleep in their beds at night without fear of federal agents invading their apartment with no warrant and no justification just because they live near undocumented immigrants.
U.S. citizens have the right to protest and pray in opposition to Trump’s immigration crackdown, just as millions of U.S. citizens voted for Trump to undertake the effort.
Journalists and everyday Americans have a First Amendment right to document what is happening in their neighborhoods, without being threatened by deadly violence by masked men acting on the president’s orders.
What is happening in Illinois won’t stay in Illinois. Undocumented immigrants live all over the country, many in places that are not sanctuary cities that have invited Trump’s scrutiny.
If Trump is sincere about his plan to purge undocumented immigrants from the country and these are the tactics he intends to deploy to make that happen, then we can expect what is happening in the streets of Chicago and its suburbs to come to neighborhoods near our own.
Then Trump will have made all of America a war zone. He was not elected to do that.
A protester throws a canister of teargas back at Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers in the western suburbs of Chicago Sept. 26. Xinhua/Sipa USA
Related Stories from Fort Worth Star-Telegram
David Mastio, a former deputy editorial page editor for the liberal USA TODAY and the conservative Washington Times, has worked in opinion journalism as a commentary editor, editorial writer and columnist for 30 years. He was also a speechwriter for the George W. Bush administration.
President Donald Trump on Wednesday said the Illinois governor and Chicago mayor, both Democrats, should be jailed as they oppose his deployment of National Guard troops for his immigration and crime crackdown in the nation’s third-largest city. The officials said they would not be deterred.The Republican president made the comment in a social media post, the latest example of his brazen calls for his opponents to be prosecuted or locked up — a break from longtime norms as the Justice Department traditionally has strived to maintain its independence from the White House.Trump wrote on Truth Social that Mayor Brandon Johnson and Gov. JB Pritzker “should be in jail for failing to protect Ice Officers!” It was a reference to the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.It was not immediately clear what Trump was objecting to.Johnson, in a post on X, said, “This is not the first time Trump has tried to have a Black man unjustly arrested. I’m not going anywhere.” Pritzker, also on X, said” I will not back down. Trump is now calling for the arrest of elected representatives checking his power. What else is left on the path to full-blown authoritarianism?”White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson, when asked what crimes the president believed Pritzker and Johnson had committed, failed to identify any, but she said they “have blood on their hands” and pointed to Chicago Police Department reports that at least five people were killed and 25 shot over the weekend.”Instead of taking action to stop the crime, these Trump-Deranged buffoons would rather allow the violence to continue and attack the President for wanting to help make their city safe again,” Jackson said.National Guard troops from Texas are positioned outside Chicago despite a lawsuit by the state and city to block the deployment.The troops’ mission is not clear but the Trump administration has undertaken an aggressive immigration enforcement operation in Chicago.Trump has called Chicago a “hell hole” of crime, even though police statistics show significant drops in most crimes, including homicides. Protesters have skirmished with agents outside a detention center in the village of Broadview, outside Chicago.A woman in Chicago was shot by a Border Patrol agent over the weekend after she and a man were accused of using their vehicles to strike and then box in the agent’s vehicle. The agent then exited his car and fired five shots at Marimar Martinez, 30.Martinez and Anthony Ruiz, 21, are charged with forcibly assaulting a federal officer and were ordered to be released Monday pending trial. Martinez’s lawyer, Christopher Parente, claimed body camera footage contradicts the federal government’s narrative of her actions.Trump’s comment came as former FBI Director James Comey appeared in a Virginia courtroom, pleading not guilty in a case that has intensified concerns about Justice Department’s efforts to target Trump adversaries.When Trump was campaigning for the White House in 2024 at a time he faced criminal and civil investigations, he told supporters, “I am your retribution.”The Justice Department has also opened criminal investigations this year against California Sen. Adam Schiff, New York Attorney General Letitia James and former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who is running for New York City mayor. The three, all Democrats, have all denied wrongdoing and say the investigations are politically motivated.Pritzker, one of Trump’s fiercest critics, has called the president a “wannabe dictator,” comparing his leadership to that of Russian President Vladimir Putin and joking that the Republican “doesn’t read” anything. The governor has suggested that Trump, who has threatened Chicago with apocalyptic force, suffers from dementia.Pritzker, eyed as a potential 2028 White House contender, has strongly fought against any federal intervention along with Johnson, saying it is not wanted or needed in Illinois or Chicago.”Certainly there’s a lot more going on in the world than for him to send troops into Chicago,” Pritzker told The Associated Press in August during a visit to a South Side neighborhood where a campaign videographer was also in tow. “He ought to be focused on some of the bigger problems.”Pritzker alleges that Trump is trying to militarize cities to affect the outcome of the 2026 election by impeding voting efforts in Democratic strongholds like Chicago.The heir to the Hyatt Hotel fortune is seeking a third term as governor next year and has sidestepped questions about higher ambitions. Pritzker was among the finalists considered as a running mate for Democratic Kamala Harris’ presidential run in 2024.Trump has often singled out Chicago and Illinois because they have some of the country’s strongest immigrant protections. Both are “sanctuary” jurisdictions, which limit cooperation between police and federal immigration agents.Johnson, a first-term mayor, has strengthened those protections even further with executive orders, including one that bars immigration agents from using city-owned land as staging areas for operations. He calls Trump’s actions unconstitutional.Johnson has accused Trump of waging a war on Chicago and having an “animus” toward women and people of color. Nearly one-third of Chicago’s 2.7 million are Black and roughly one-third are Hispanic.”He’s a monster,” Johnson told reporters in May. “Period.”___Tareen reported from Chicago. Associated Press writer Christine Fernando in Chicago contributed to this report.
WASHINGTON —
President Donald Trump on Wednesday said the Illinois governor and Chicago mayor, both Democrats, should be jailed as they oppose his deployment of National Guard troops for his immigration and crime crackdown in the nation’s third-largest city. The officials said they would not be deterred.
The Republican president made the comment in a social media post, the latest example of his brazen calls for his opponents to be prosecuted or locked up — a break from longtime norms as the Justice Department traditionally has strived to maintain its independence from the White House.
Trump wrote on Truth Social that Mayor Brandon Johnson and Gov. JB Pritzker “should be in jail for failing to protect Ice Officers!” It was a reference to the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
It was not immediately clear what Trump was objecting to.
Johnson, in a post on X, said, “This is not the first time Trump has tried to have a Black man unjustly arrested. I’m not going anywhere.” Pritzker, also on X, said” I will not back down. Trump is now calling for the arrest of elected representatives checking his power. What else is left on the path to full-blown authoritarianism?”
White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson, when asked what crimes the president believed Pritzker and Johnson had committed, failed to identify any, but she said they “have blood on their hands” and pointed to Chicago Police Department reports that at least five people were killed and 25 shot over the weekend.
“Instead of taking action to stop the crime, these Trump-Deranged buffoons would rather allow the violence to continue and attack the President for wanting to help make their city safe again,” Jackson said.
National Guard troops from Texas are positioned outside Chicago despite a lawsuit by the state and city to block the deployment.
The troops’ mission is not clear but the Trump administration has undertaken an aggressive immigration enforcement operation in Chicago.
Trump has called Chicago a “hell hole” of crime, even though police statistics show significant drops in most crimes, including homicides. Protesters have skirmished with agents outside a detention center in the village of Broadview, outside Chicago.
A woman in Chicago was shot by a Border Patrol agent over the weekend after she and a man were accused of using their vehicles to strike and then box in the agent’s vehicle. The agent then exited his car and fired five shots at Marimar Martinez, 30.
Martinez and Anthony Ruiz, 21, are charged with forcibly assaulting a federal officer and were ordered to be released Monday pending trial. Martinez’s lawyer, Christopher Parente, claimed body camera footage contradicts the federal government’s narrative of her actions.
Trump’s comment came as former FBI Director James Comey appeared in a Virginia courtroom, pleading not guilty in a case that has intensified concerns about Justice Department’s efforts to target Trump adversaries.
When Trump was campaigning for the White House in 2024 at a time he faced criminal and civil investigations, he told supporters, “I am your retribution.”
The Justice Department has also opened criminal investigations this year against California Sen. Adam Schiff, New York Attorney General Letitia James and former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who is running for New York City mayor. The three, all Democrats, have all denied wrongdoing and say the investigations are politically motivated.
Pritzker, one of Trump’s fiercest critics, has called the president a “wannabe dictator,” comparing his leadership to that of Russian President Vladimir Putin and joking that the Republican “doesn’t read” anything. The governor has suggested that Trump, who has threatened Chicago with apocalyptic force, suffers from dementia.
Pritzker, eyed as a potential 2028 White House contender, has strongly fought against any federal intervention along with Johnson, saying it is not wanted or needed in Illinois or Chicago.
“Certainly there’s a lot more going on in the world than for him to send troops into Chicago,” Pritzker told The Associated Press in August during a visit to a South Side neighborhood where a campaign videographer was also in tow. “He ought to be focused on some of the bigger problems.”
Pritzker alleges that Trump is trying to militarize cities to affect the outcome of the 2026 election by impeding voting efforts in Democratic strongholds like Chicago.
The heir to the Hyatt Hotel fortune is seeking a third term as governor next year and has sidestepped questions about higher ambitions. Pritzker was among the finalists considered as a running mate for Democratic Kamala Harris’ presidential run in 2024.
Trump has often singled out Chicago and Illinois because they have some of the country’s strongest immigrant protections. Both are “sanctuary” jurisdictions, which limit cooperation between police and federal immigration agents.
Johnson, a first-term mayor, has strengthened those protections even further with executive orders, including one that bars immigration agents from using city-owned land as staging areas for operations. He calls Trump’s actions unconstitutional.
Johnson has accused Trump of waging a war on Chicago and having an “animus” toward women and people of color. Nearly one-third of Chicago’s 2.7 million are Black and roughly one-third are Hispanic.
“He’s a monster,” Johnson told reporters in May. “Period.”
___
Tareen reported from Chicago. Associated Press writer Christine Fernando in Chicago contributed to this report.
In a Truth Social post on Wednesday, President Trump said Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson and Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker “should be in jail.”
“Chicago Mayor should be in jail for failing to protect Ice [U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement] Officers!” Mr. Trump posted. “Governor Pritzker also!”
Pritzker issued a statement on X in response to President Trump’s post.
“I will not back down. Trump is now calling for the arrest of elected representatives checking his power. What else is left on the path to full-blown authoritarianism?” Pritzker wrote.
Pritzker continued in a thread of X posts: “His masked agents already are grabbing people off the street. Separating children from their parents. Creating fear. Taking people for ‘how they look.’ Making people feel they need to carry citizenship papers. Invading our state with military troops. Sending in war helicopters in the middle of the night. Arresting elected officials asking questions.”
Mayor Johnson also posted to X.
“This is not the first time Trump has tried to have a Black man unjustly arrested,” he wrote. “I’m not going anywhere.”
The order prohibits federal authorities from using city-owned or controlled parking lots, vacant lots and garages as staging areas, processing locations or operations bases for civil immigration enforcement activity.
Meanwhile, Pritzker has taken Mr. Trump to task repeatedly for his use of federal forces, and most recently for deploying National Guard troops to Illinois. The deployment comes amid clashes between demonstrators and federal agents outside an ICE processing facility in Broadview, Illinois, where, within the past couple of weeks, over a dozen protesters were arrested.
On Tuesday night, Pritzker also denounced federal immigration enforcement in Chicago.
“It is striking fear in the hearts of everybody in Chicago, and we have residents — this isn’t just about undocumented people,” Pritzker said Tuesday night during a discussion in Minnesota with that state’s governor, Tim Walz. “U.S. citizens who are brown or Black are being stopped only for that reason, and asked for identification that proves they’re a U.S. citizen.”
Both governors said they believe the Trump administration is targeting blue states.
Pritzker is also calling for governors nationwide to denounce the National Guard deployments. In a statement on social media, he said Illinois could withdraw from the National Governors Association over the issue.
“If the National Governors Association chooses to remain silent, Illinois will have no choice but to withdraw from the organization,” Pritzker wrote. “We should be standing as one against the idea that Donald Trump can call up the National Guard against our will.”
The National Governors Association represents governors from all 50 states and across the political spectrum. California Gov. Gavin Newsom also made the same threat.
CBS News Chicago has reached out to both Mayor Johnson and Gov. Pritzker’s offices for further comment about Mr. Trump’s post.
Members of the Texas National Guard have begun arriving at a U.S. Army Reserve facility in Chicago’s far southwestern suburbs, where they’re expected to participate in training before they are sent on their assignments to protect U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents and facilities.
On Tuesday afternoon, CBS News Chicago crews spotted National Guard troops dressed in camouflage with Texas National Guard patches walking around the U.S. Army Reserve Training Center in Elwood, near Joliet, about 50 miles southwest of Chicago.
Several trailers have been set up as temporary living quarters. Several soldiers were seen moving in with bags of belongings; some holding rifles and carrying folding chairs, possibly for meetings or other trainings. Fencing was also put up around the facility late Tuesday.
Retired U.S. Army Maj. Gen. Richard Hayes was the highest-ranking member of the Illinois National Guard. In his 30-plus-year career, he said he’s never seen a National Guard from a different state federalized and then sent to another state.
“This is novel. It doesn’t mean it’s necessarily illegal, it’s just different,” he said. “As far as the soldiers are concerned, the Illinois National Guard, even the Texas National Guard, they don’t get a say in whether they go or not go. It’s not a political organization, they’re just here to do what they’re being asked to do.”
State Representative Larry Walsh Jr. said he got word late Monday that the Elwood site would be the home base for the troops.
“This is a lot of political theater,” he said. “There’s a whole communication disconnect between the federal and local governments.”
If federalized, the National Guard would take their orders from the federal government and not the state.
“If the courts later say it’s not proper or not legal, then they’ll stand down,” Hayes said.
“I would ask the federal government and the administration, come on… let’s just start working as adults,” Walsh Jr. said.
Roughly 200 members of the Texas National Guard will deploy to Chicago this week, sources familiar with the operation told CBS News.
Members of the Texas National Guard are expected to begin their assignments in Chicago as soon as Wednesday, after receiving an operational brief, ahead of a federal court hearing on Thursday on a lawsuit filed by the state of Illinois and city of Chicago, which are seeking to block the troop deployment.
Military personnel in uniform, with the Texas National Guard patch on, are seen at the U.S. Army Reserve Center, Tuesday, Oct. 7, 2025, in Elwood, Ill., a suburb of Chicago.
Erin Hooley / AP
State and local leaders said they have largely been left in the dark about the troop deployment and given no details on the troops’ mission.
Will County Executive Jennifer Bertino-Tarrant, a Democrat, said her office was not notified by the Trump administration about the National Guard deployment in Elwood, including how many troops were being stationed there or how long the operation would last.
“The arrival of the National Guard by the Trump Administration is an aggressive overreach. Our federal government moving armed troops into our community should be alarming to everyone,” she said in a statement. “I will be coordinating with local leaders to make sure we are doing everything in our power to protect the rights of our residents and the safety of everyone. Hopefully, the federal court hearing on Thursday will end this attack on our community.”
The Illinois National Guard has also been ordered to report for training on Tuesday, although it’s unclear if they’ll also be stationed in Elwood.
The Trump administration has said members of the National Guard will be assigned to the protection of federal facilities and federal law enforcement personnel, including the ICE facility in the west Chicago suburb of Broadview, and in downtown Chicago.
On Monday evening, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott posted a photo to X with a caption reading, “The elite Texas National Guard. Ever ready. Deploying now.” The photo shows Texas National Guard members boarding a plane.
On Sunday evening, Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker said President Trump had ordered National Guard members from Texas to be deployed to Illinois.
In a statement, Pritzker said 400 members of the Texas National Guard will be deployed to Illinois, Oregon, and other locations within the U.S.
As members of the Texas National Guard were arriving in Illinois, Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson – who has vehemently opposed the deployment – was asked about their mission.
“There is a process that the National Guard goes through before they’re actually released into the streets of Chicago or anywhere,” he said. “But what’s really disturbing about all of this is that the National Guard, they have no policing authority or any policing powers. It’s not what they’re trained to do.”
While a West Coast federal judge approved a temporary restraining order blocking Texas National Guard troops from deploying to Portland, Oregon, a federal judge in Chicago declined to immediately grant a similar request on Monday to halt the deployment in Illinois. The judge has scheduled a hearing for Thursday to rule on the request to block the deployment.
On Sunday, a memo obtained by CBS News from the Pentagon called for hundreds of National Guard troops to be sent to Illinois. Pritzker on Saturday said that the Trump administration intended to federalize 300 Illinois National Guard members after he was offered an ultimatum on troop deployment. The ultimatum by the Trump administration, according to Pritzker, was “call up your troops, or we will.”
The Illinois National Guard members were not expected to be ready to deploy prior to Thursday’s court hearing, sources said. Those personnel will undergo additional training, including civil disturbance training in the coming days, and be assigned necessary protective equipment.
“Bringing in Texas National Guard is really a vast overreach of the federal government here,” former Illinois National Guard Adj. Gen. William Enyart said.
Enyart said that without roots in Chicago and a nuanced understanding of the area, troops from another state would be at a severe disadvantage.
“To bring in someone from 1,000 miles away, who doesn’t have any of those contacts, who doesn’t have any of that network developed, is absolutely a hazard to public safety,” he said.
Pritzker has repeatedly declined to call up the guard during the period of increased immigration enforcement, which the federal government has dubbed “Operation Midway Blitz.” Pritzker has also accused the Trump administration, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and Customs and Border Protection Commander Gregory Bovino of intentionally sowing chaos in order to justify the deployment.
The Illinois Attorney General’s team and Chicago city attorneys will be back in federal court this coming Thursday in an effort to stop the mobilization of troops.
Meanwhile, attorneys for the Village of Broadview, home of an ICE processing center that has drawn heated protests and confrontations, were to appear in front of a judge on Tuesday to argue for the removal of a fence the federal government put up outside an ICE facility on Beach Street in Broadview.
They said the federal government did not get a permit for the fence and that it is illegal to block a public street. The judge in the case said they would rule on the village’s bid to take down the fence in the next couple of days.
Broadview Mayor Katrina Thompson could also see legal action soon regarding a protest curfew she enacted Monday night. She said village resources cannot keep up with repeated demonstrations outside the ICE processing center, so she is limiting gatherings there to be between the hours of 9 a.m. and 6 p.m.
“Let me be clear, I will always support the First Amendment and right of people to peacefully protest,” Thompson said Monday. “But as mayor, I must also balance the right with the safety and well-being of Broadview residents and the businesses.”
Gov. Tim Walz says he anticipates President Trump will send the National Guard to Minnesota.
Walz attended the North Star Summit for a panel with Gov. JB Pritzker of Illinois to discuss state and federal leadership.
“I think it’s logical for them to come here,” said Walz. “We fall into exactly what they’re trying to target, blue cities, in places that he wants to make an impact.”
The moderator asked Walz whether he was preparing for a possible deployment.
“We’re preparing for it. We’re preparing to use the court. We’re preparing to follow all the laws as they’re written to challenge them on this,” said Walz. “But I think it’s really important for the citizens to see this is not normal.”
Walz also said he began to think about the possibility of troops being sent to Minnesota months ago.
“Prior to last year, we started to think about what would happen. Governors were talking together about what the implications look like,” said Walz.
“You do your job, and we’ll do ours. And the fact of the matter is we’re doing ours. I don’t have to remind you; the government is shut down,” said Walz. “So yes, we’re preparing for it. But the challenge for governors is, we have to simultaneously deliver and do the services. And right now there is no desire in the federal government to do that. They’re not fulfilling their obligations, they’re not getting the work done, they’re not doing any of that.”
Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker said on Sunday evening that President Donald Trump has ordered National Guard members from Texas to be deployed to Illinois.
In a post on X, Pritzker said that 400 members of the Texas National Guard will be deployed to Illinois, Oregon, and other locations within the U.S.
“No officials from the federal government called me directly to discuss or coordinate. We must now start calling this what it is: Trump’s Invasion. It started with federal agents, it will soon include deploying federalized members of the Illinois National Guard against our wishes, and it will now involve sending in another state’s military troops.”
Pritzker said he called Texas Gov. Greg Abbott to immediately withdraw any support for and to refuse to coordinate.
“There is no reason a President should send military troops into a sovereign state without their knowledge, consent, or cooperation. The brave men and women who serve in our national guards must not be used as political props. This is a moment where every American must speak up and help stop this madness.” Pritzker said.
This comes after a memo obtained by CBS News from the Pentagon called for hundreds of National Guard troops to be sent to Illinois. Pritzker on Saturday said that the Trump administration intended to federalize 300 Illinois National Guard members after he was offered an ultimatum on troop deployment. The ultimatum by the Trump administration, according to Pritzker, was “call up your troops, or we will.”
The possible arrival of National Guard members comes amid clashes between demonstrators and federal agents in Broadview, Illinois, where, within the past couple of weeks, over a dozen protesters were arrested.
Further protests against federal agents led to a woman being shot by an agent in Brighton Park on Saturday. She, along with another man, were charged with forcibly assaulting, impeding, and interfering with a federal law enforcement officer after the Department of Homeland Security said they rammed and boxed in the vehicle of federal agents. No agents were hurt in that incident, according to DHS.
It is unclear when or where specifically the National Guard will arrive in Illinois.
According to the Associated Press, President Trump is federalizing up to 400 from the Texas National Guard for Oregon, Illinois, and beyond, per Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s memo in a court filing. Less than an hour later, a federal judge temporarily blocked the administration from deploying any National Guard troops in Oregon, which also includes the California National Guard.
Jeramie Bizzle is a web producer for CBS Chicago. Jeramie began working with CBS Chicago as an intern in 2017 and returned as a full-time Web Producer in 2021. He has previously written for the Austin Weekly Newspaper, OakPark.com and Sportskeeda.
President Donald Trump’s administration plans to deploy 300 Illinois National Guard troops to the Chicago region for at least 60 days, according to a memo from Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to Illinois National Guard leadership and obtained by the Tribune.
In addition, likely hundreds of National Guard members from Texas were preparing to be sent to Illinois, Gov. JB Pritzker said late Sunday.
“This evening, President Trump is ordering 400 members of the Texas National Guard for deployments to Illinois, Oregon, and other locations within the United States,” Pritzker said, adding that the Illinois National Guard was informed of the Texas deployments and that no officials from the federal government had called him directly to discuss or coordinate. “We must now start calling this what it is: Trump’s Invasion. It started with federal agents, it will soon include deploying federalized members of the Illinois National Guard against our wishes, and it will now involve sending in another state’s military troops.”
The developments capped a weekend of rapid-fire moves by the Trump administration as it escalated its immigration enforcement actions in Illinois and in Oregon, where Trump moved to send National Guard troops from California to evade a federal judge’s temporary restraining order. Late Sunday, that same judge during an emergency hearing again blocked Trump’s efforts, issuing a ruling to stop the president’s deployment of California National Guard troops to Portland.
In his memo to the Illinois National Guard issued Saturday, Hegseth informed Guard leadership that up to 300 of its members will be called into federal service “effective immediately” for a two-month period.
The president called on guard members to protect U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the Federal Protective Service and other federal government personnel “who are performing Federal functions, including the enforcement of Federal law, and to protect Federal property, at locations where violent demonstrations against these functions are occurring or are likely to occur based on current threat assessments and planned operations,” the memo stated.
Much of the historic move to federalize Illinois National Guard troops — over Pritzker’s objections — was laid out by Pritzker on Saturday and was soon defended by the White House, while Democrats slammed it as a power grab by the president to sow fear and division.
Saying the Trump administration issued him an ultimatum to “Call up your troops, or we will,” Pritzker said on Saturday that he would not deploy the state’s National Guard and contended a federal deployment over his objection is illegal. He has also vowed to go to court to stop it, previously citing the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878, which prohibits the military from conducting law enforcement activities on U.S. soil.
A spokesperson for Pritzker said Sunday that the governor has not communicated with Trump administration officials regarding the Illinois deployment.
“The Governor did not receive any calls from any federal officials. The Illinois National Guard communicated to the Department of War that the situation in Illinois does not require the use of the military and, as a result, the Governor opposes the deployment of the National Guard under any status,” the governor’s spokesperson said in an emailed response.
The White House said the troops were needed ostensibly to ensure the safety of federal agents and facilities that are part of Trump’s immigration enforcement surge that has hit the Chicago area for the past month.
The Hegseth memo didn’t specify exactly where the deployments would take place, but said the chief of the National Guard Bureau, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the commander of U.S. Northern Command would coordinate details about the mobilization with the Illinois National Guard.
The White House confirmed on Sunday evening that the National Guard troops being called up to the Chicago area would be working without pay until the ongoing federal government shutdown, which began on Wednesday, is resolved.
Trump’s moves in Illinois occurred while Judge Karin Immergut — whom Trump appointed to the U.S. District Court in Oregon — on Saturday night blocked the president’s mobilization of 200 Oregon National Guard members in Portland. On Sunday, Trump sought to circumvent the temporary restraining order in Oregon by federalizing 300 National Guard members from California for deployment in Portland but late Sunday Immergut blocked that move as well.
“How could bringing in federalized National Guard from California not be in direct contravention of the (decision) I issued yesterday?,” Immergut asked a Trump administration lawyer during a hearing on Sunday night.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom had called Trump’s effort to send California troops to Oregon a “breathtaking abuse of power.”
“The Trump Administration is unapologetically attacking the rule of law itself and putting into action their dangerous words — ignoring court orders and treating judges, even those appointed by the President himself, as political opponents,” Newsom said.
Hours later, Pritzker said Trump was trying to do much of the same by likely sending hundreds of Texas National Guard members to Illinois.
“I call on Governor Abbott to immediately withdraw any support for this decision and refuse to coordinate,” Pritzker said of Texas’ Republican governor, who has long bickered with Pritzker. “There is no reason a President should send military troops into a sovereign state without their knowledge, consent, or cooperation.
“The brave men and women who serve in our national guards must not be used as political props. This is a moment where every American must speak up and help stop this madness,” Pritzker said.
Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul did not have specific plans to file new lawsuits against the Trump administration following news of the Illinois National Guard deployment and the issuance of the Oregon temporary restraining order.
Annie Thompson, a spokesperson for Raoul, said in a statement Sunday that the attorney general “is firmly committed to upholding the Constitution and defending the rule of law.”
“Our office will not hesitate to take legal action in the event of any unlawful deployment anywhere in Illinois,” Thompson said.
A spokesperson for Democratic Oregon Attorney General Dan Rayfield, who filed suit seeking to block the Oregon National Guard deployment, said the office has “been in touch and coordinating” on legal strategy with Raoul’s office.
Rayfield spokesperson Jenny Hansson also said Democratic attorneys general “have been working closely since January to hold the line on this administration.”
Speaking Sunday outside the White House as he prepared for a naval celebration in Norfolk, Virginia, Trump intimated that Pritzker was opposing efforts to bring in the National Guard to Illinois because it would anger opponents of immigration enforcement efforts, adding that protesters in Chicago and Portland are “paid people.”
He also said Pritzker was “afraid for his life,” apparently contending the governor does not want to run afoul of organizations and networks the administration alleges are behind the protests over enhanced immigration enforcement in the Chicago area.
Repeating as he often does basic Chicago police blotter statistics about murders and shootings and lauding his federalization of law enforcement in Washington, D.C., Trump criticized Pritzker, a major critic of the president, for saying “what a wonderful place” Chicago is when “they need help.”
“I believe the politicians are under threat, because there’s no way somebody can say that things are wonderful in Chicago,” Trump said. “There’s no city in the world like that. We’re going to straighten it out. And I think that Pritzker, he’s not a stupid person. I think that Pritzker is afraid for his life.”
Pritzker, speaking on CNN’s “State of the Union,” said it was the Trump administration and federal agents participating in the raids who “are the ones that are making it a war zone.”
“They want mayhem on the ground. They want to create the war zone so that they can send in even more troops,” Pritzker said.
U.S. Sen. Tammy Duckworth, an Iraq War veteran who retired as a lieutenant colonel in the Illinois Army National Guard, sought to downplay potential confrontations with the Trump-ordered deployment of Illinois National Guard members.
“So they’ll be homegrown Illinoisans, and they’re our brothers and sisters, our neighbors. I probably served with quite a number of them, certainly the leadership. And, you know, they’ll be home. We’ll welcome them,” Duckworth, an Illinois Democrat, said on CBS News’ “Face the Nation.”
“It’s a misuse of the National Guard. They’re not needed, but we’re going to welcome them, because they’re our brothers and sisters, and we’re proud of our National Guard,” she said.
Trump’s National Guard plans also drew opposition from a coalition of business and civic groups.
Troop deployment could harm the “meaningful progress” being made to make Chicago safer by sowing “fear and chaos,” according to a statement from the Chicagoland Chamber of Commerce, Civic Committee of the Commercial Club of Chicago and Civic Federation. The statement touted the work already underway to address violence in the city and described Trump’s plans as a threat to “our businesses’ bottom lines and our reputation.”
In his comments outside the White House, Trump criticized Judge Karin Immergut — whom he appointed to the U.S. District Court in Oregon — for blocking the deployment of Oregon National Guard troops in Portland. Trump did not at that time mention his plans to send California National Guard members to the city.
Immergut said Trump’s basis for deploying the guard in Portland was “simply untethered to the facts” and that historic tradition “boils down to a simple proposition: this is a nation of Constitutional law, not martial law.” Allowing the troops to be deployed risk “blurring the line between civil and military federal power — to the detriment of this nation,” Immergut wrote.
Trump acknowledged appointing the judge but said, “I wasn’t served well.”
“Portland is burning to the ground. You have agitators, insurrectionists. All you have to do is look at that, look at the television,” Trump said. “That judge ought to be ashamed.”
Immergut, in the ruling, also noted that “state and local law enforcement will need to expend additional resources to quell increased civil unrest that is likely to result from the Guard’s mobilization.”
In addition to sending guard troops to Washington, Trump previously federalized guard troops in Los Angeles after sporadic anti-ICE protests in June, a move a federal judge said was illegal for domestic law enforcement. That ruling was stayed pending an appeal, and troops have remained deployed in Southern California. Newsom said those are the troops being sent to Oregon. Trump has also announced he was deploying the guard to Memphis with the support of Tennessee GOP Gov. Bill Lee.
CHICAGO (WLS) — The Trump administration federalizing 300 members of the Illinois National Guard, Gov. JB Pritzker said in a statement on Saturday.
The White House later confirmed that President Donald Trump has “authorized 300 national guardsmen to protect federal officers and assets” amid ongoing ICE raids in the Chicago area.
Pritzker said the Department of War gave him an ultimatum, telling him to call up the troops himself.
“This morning, the Trump Administration’s Department of War gave me an ultimatum: call up your troops, or we will,” Pritzker said, in part. He said the administration intends to federalize hundreds of National Guard troops “in the coming hours.”
A White House spokesperson shared a statement with ABC7 Chicago Saturday night, saying, “Amidst ongoing violent riots and lawlessness, that local leaders like Pritzker have refused to step in to quell, President Trump has authorized 300 national guardsmen to protect federal officers and assets. President Trump will not turn a blind eye to the lawlessness plaguing American cities.”
The announcement came after a federal judge in Oregon temporarily blocked Trump’s deployment of the National Guard in Portland for at least 14 days. Oregon’s governor, said in a statement, “justice has been served, and the truth has prevailed.”
The concern over a deployment of Illinois National Guard members prompted an emergency motion filed by Broadview leaders Saturday. The village is seeking the removal of the fence erected by federal authorities around the ICE facility amid ongoing demonstrations.
The village has called the fence illegal and a safety hazard, asking for a judge to grant the motion pending a Tuesday hearing on the village’s lawsuit against the Department of Homeland Security.
DHS responded to that motion in its own court filing, saying there’s no need for a hearing before Tuesday, bringing up the possibility of a settlement on Monday.
Amid the announcement of the federalization of the National Guard in Illinois, confrontations seemed to arise again Saturday in Broadview between demonstrators and Illinois State Police throughout the day.
“It’s a continuing overreach by the president because the governor is responsible for calling up the troops when they think it’s necessary,” demonstrator Tony DiBenedetto said.
A crowd of anti-ICE demonstrators cheered on at least four people ABC7 saw detained by Illinois State Police as they were walked into a Cook County Sheriff’s Office van in handcuffs. They were taken down as troopers were clearing the street outside the ICE detention center in Broadview, backing protesters into designated zones, feet from the immigration building and surrounded by concrete barriers. Federal agents were on the other side of the fence with their flying drone above it all.
“I’m not here to deal with the State Police. I’m here to deal with the kidnapping that ICE is doing, and it’s immensely disappointing that State Police are putting themselves between us and ICE,” demonstrator Will Creutz said.
Tensions continued throughout the night Saturday between Illinois State Police and demonstrators.
The Cook County Sheriff’s Office said at least five people were arrested during those clashes. They are facing charges such as resisting, obstruction and aggravated battery to a police officer.
That clash came after Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and Border Patrol Commander Greg Bovino were seen on the ICE facility’s roof just before 8 a.m. They were accompanied by several armed agents, cameras and a production crew.
President Donald Trump has previously threatened to send the National Guard to Chicago to combat crime, and even said earlier this week that the city could become a training ground for the military.
Full Saturday statement from Pritzker: “This morning, the Trump Administration’s Department of War gave me an ultimatum: call up your troops, or we will. It is absolutely outrageous and un-American to demand a Governor send military troops within our own borders and against our will.
In the coming hours, the Trump Administration intends to federalize 300 members of the Illinois National Guard. They will pull hardworking Americans out of their regular jobs and away from their families all to participate in a manufactured performance — not a serious effort the protect public safety. For Donald Trump, this has never been about safety. This is about control.
This demand follows unprecedented escalations of aggression against Illinois citizens and residents. Yesterday, Kristi Noem’s and Greg Bovino’s masked agents threw chemical agents near an elementary school, arrested elected officials exercising their First Amendment rights, and raided a Wal-Mart. None of it was in pursuit of justice, but all of it was in pursuit of social media videos.
I want to be clear: there is no need for military troops on the ground in the State of Illinois. State, county, and local law enforcement have been working together and coordinating to ensure public safety around the Broadview ICE facility, and to protect people’s ability to peacefully exercise their connotational rights. I will not call up our National Guard to further Trump’s acts of aggression against our people.
In Illinois, we will do everything within our power to look out for our neighbors, uphold the Constitution, and defend the rule of law.”
Statement from Lt. Gov. Juliana Stratton: “Donald Trump intends to federalize 300 members of the Illinois National Guard and deploy them to Chicago without the consent of Governor Pritzker or our administration. These are Illinoisans who will be ripped away from their families to serve in Trump’s political stunt. We have warned that this has been their plan all along, and now it’s here.
Our city is not a sandbox for Donald Trump to play dictator. It’s intentional cruelty that will devastate families and scar our communities.
Let me be clear: the only emergency in Chicago is the chaos that Donald Trump and his administration are deliberately fueling in our streets. Journalists targeted and shot at, peaceful residents dragged from their homes, women and children zip-tied in the streets, families torn apart and stuffed into U-Hauls. This is unacceptable, reprehensible, and not what we stand for in Illinois.
“I have spent my career working to make communities safer and lead on public safety for our administration. Not a single violence-prevention expert I have worked with has ever said the answer is to flood our neighborhoods with federal troops. This move will only serve to spread fear, escalate conflict, and undermine the trust that keeps communities safe.
To the people of Illinois: know that Governor Pritzker and I will use every tool at our disposal to defend our city, protect our residents, and resist this reckless, authoritarian power grab.”
