Trump administration says it launches ICE crackdown in Illinois

CHICAGO: After weeks of vowing to deploy National Guard troops to fight crime in Chicago, the Trump administration said on Monday (Sep 8) it had launched a deportation crackdown in Illinois targeting hardened criminals among immigrants in the United States without legal status.

The US Department of Homeland Security said in an online statement that "Operation Midway Blitz" was being conducted by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, but details about its scope and nature were not immediately made clear.

It remained to be seen whether President Donald Trump would send National Guard soldiers into Chicago to accompany ICE and other federal law enforcement officers, as he has in and around Los Angeles and the District of Columbia.

Illinois Governor JB Pritzker and Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson, both Democrats, each said their offices had received no official notice from federal authorities about the operation, which they decried as a political stunt designed to intimidate.

Trump has been ramping up his rhetoric about expanding federal law enforcement and National Guard presence in Democratic-led cities and states, casting the use of presidential power as an urgent effort to confront crime even as local officials cite declines in homicides and other violent offences.

DHS said its latest ICE operation was necessary because of city and state "sanctuary" laws that limit cooperation with federal immigration authorities.

Assistant DHS Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said the crackdown was aimed at convicted gang members, rapists, kidnappers and drug traffickers who she called "the worst of the worst criminal illegal aliens in Chicago".

The press release cited 11 cases of immigrants in the US illegally, most from Mexico and Venezuela, who DHS said had records of arrest or convictions for serious crimes and were released from local jails rather than turned over to federal immigration officials.

City Alderwoman Jeylu Gutierrez, who represents the predominantly Hispanic 14th Ward on Chicago's southwest side, said at least five members of her community had been detained in what she called a "federal assault".

Among those arrested, Gutierrez said, was a flower vendor taken into custody on the job, while others were detained as they waited for a bus or walked on the sidewalk.

"THIS ISN'T ABOUT FIGHTING CRIME"

"This was never about arresting the worst of the worst; this is about terrorising our communities," Gutierrez, a Mexican immigrant, told a press conference.

Pritzker, widely seen as a potential 2028 candidate for the White House, also disputed the crime-fighting rationale that Trump voiced last Tuesday when he said he would send National Guard troops to Chicago, the nation's third most populous city and a Democratic stronghold.

"This isn't about fighting crime," Pritzker said on social media platform X on Monday. "That requires support and coordination — yet we've experienced nothing like that over the past several weeks."

Pritzker has suggested Trump's National Guard deployments might be a dress rehearsal for using the military to manipulate the 2026 midterm congressional elections.

Johnson said he was concerned about "potential militarised immigration enforcement without due process," citing "ICE's track record of detaining and deporting American citizens and violating the human rights of hundreds of detainees".

In a post on Truth Social on Monday, Trump cited recent murders and shootings in Chicago and blamed Pritzker for making no requests for assistance from the Trump administration.

"I want to help the people of Chicago, not hurt them," Trump wrote. "Only the Criminals will be hurt! We can move fast and stop this madness."

In a separate post on Saturday, Trump posted a meme based on the 1979 Vietnam War movie "Apocalypse Now" that showed an image of the Chicago skyline with flames and helicopters, reminiscent of the deadly helicopter attack on a Vietnamese village in the film.

The Trump administration launched a parallel immigration enforcement operation in Boston in recent days, an ICE official confirmed on Monday.

ICE also said on Monday that its Houston-based agents had arrested 822 "criminal aliens, transnational gang members, child predators, foreign fugitives and other egregious offenders" during a week-long operation last month in southeastern Texas.

Previously, DHS said ICE had arrested nearly 1,500 immigration offenders during a month-long enforcement surge in Massachusetts in May and early June.

The latest ICE operation in Chicago was announced the same day that the US Supreme Court issued a 6-3 decision allowing federal agents in Southern California to proceed with immigration raids that detain people on the basis of their race, ethnicity, language or accent, even without "reasonable suspicion" that they are in the country illegally.