Top Illinois elected officials and Chicago’s two downtown aldermen criticized Sunday’s patrolling of federal immigration agents through much of the area as a performative and intimidating disruption to the city.
“On a beautiful weekend when families were out enjoying their day in Chicago, armed U.S. Border Patrol agents were downtown marching up and down Michigan Avenue, harassing and intimidating residents and tourists,” Gov. JB Pritzker said Monday of the camo-clad agents seen patrolling near some of the city’s most popular attractions.
The governor’s comments came moments after he announced he had received a report saying federal officials sought to deploy troops to Illinois in support of President Donald Trump’s surge in illegal immigration enforcement. It wasn’t immediately clear whether the troops would be active duty or National Guard personnel, or when or where they might be deployed, Pritzker said.
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Pritzker joined Mayor Brandon Johnson, Cook County President Toni Preckwinkle, Attorney General Kwame Raoul and several other local officials and community representatives at the show-of-force news conference downtown Monday in response to the Trump administration’s escalations.
Johnson argued Trump’s apparent provocation Sunday was an attempt to spur conflict to create a pretext for military deployment.
“We cannot accept the militarization of our cities,” Johnson said. “We have to make sure that this is not the last time we express our unified voice, to ensure that we protect the interests of all people.”
The mayor also on Monday called on the federal government to appoint an independent investigator to review contracts in the city, Cook County and state of Illinois “related to any ICE detention center” for potential “bribery and corruption.” The request came in response to an MSNBC report that said White House border czar Tom Homan had been investigated for accepting $50,000 from undercover FBI agents, Johnson said.
The Border Patrol show of force Sunday lasted only a few hours. By Monday, there was no sign of the agents in the downtown area.
Still, local aldermen joined the governor and mayor in their criticism, saying the Sunday efforts were largely a stunt aimed at intimidating citizens and shoppers.
Ald. Brendan Reilly, 42nd, called the parading federal agents, who walked along Michigan Avenue and in front of Millennium Park, a “bizarre image to see on a beautiful image,” and said the move “only served to scare people and intimidate people.”
“It looks un-American,” Reilly said. “This is not helping anybody. All it’s doing is making President Trump feel really good about the deployment of federal troops and federal officers to blue cities.”
The arrests Sunday included “building tradesmen near Tribune Tower, simply doing their jobs were detained by federal agents working on a construction site,” Pritzker said.
Social media video showed agents detaining several men near a half-constructed tent at the location of a Monday evening celebration hosted by Johnson. A Johnson spokesperson said the mayor’s administration was “looking into” whether the arrested men were contractors working for the city.
Videos online also showed several U.S. Customs and Border Protection boats on the Chicago River and agents detaining individuals in front of Millennium Park.
Ald. Brian Hopkins, whose 2nd Ward includes parts of downtown as well as the Old Town, also condemned the federal show of force.
People in his ward “recognize this as a farce and as a public relations stunt,” the fellow downtown alderman said.
“We are being torn apart as a society from both extremes, the far right and the far left,” Hopkins said.
After sightings near Millennium Park and the Riverwalk downtown, the dozens of federal immigration agents made their way up to the Gold Coast, a primarily white, affluent neighborhood, in the early afternoon, flanking the sidewalks of Clark Street.
Roughly 20 bystanders and passersby started following the officers, chanting “ICE, go home!” The agents stopped at the intersection with Oak Street. Several got in vans that drove away. For another 15 minutes, the crowd of protesters around them grew bigger, yelling “shame.”
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Some of the civilians present confronted Gregory Bovino, the chief U.S. Border Patrol agent, who joined the patrol.
In addition to ICE’s “Operation Midway Blitz,” U.S. Border Patrol has launched “Operation At Large,” but the two agencies have never detailed the differences between the two efforts.
Regardless, the operations have sown fear throughout immigrant communities in Chicago and its suburbs as reports of arrests have spiked as well as federal agents being sighted near local schools, courthouses and workplaces. ICE claimed last week it had made 550 arrests during the first two weeks of the mission.
By mid-afternoon Sunday, the intersection was cleared, traffic was flowing and things went back to normal — much like in the Loop, where after earlier sightings and reports of a couple of arrests, tourists strolled under the sun and took photos of the city, most of them none the wiser.
Organizers with the Southwest Rapid Response Team — a group of community leaders who document federal immigration arrests and offer support for those being targeted — said that on Sunday morning, three of their members were “followed, harassed, physically kettled in their vehicles and intimidated by federal officers aiming a firearm at them.”
Minutes later, the three were “illegally detained,” the group said, “without any stated reason.” It happened around 9:30 a.m. when the team was responding to a sighting of agents in the Back of the Yards neighborhood.
“Our members have been released since; however, the (team) condemns any and all intimidation tactics of federal agents on any community member,” a statement from the group read. “Federal agents have been escalating violence throughout our city and state, with ongoing tactics targeting Chicago’s southwest side neighborhoods.”
baiduhai’s Caroline Kubzansky and Cam’ron Hardy contributed.