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Hey Bulwark fam, Donald Trump threatened a war on Chicago that has not yet been borne out. But what I found on the ground was a different kind of war, a pervasive one based on fear. Real communities, people, businesses, children would be devastated by major ICE raids. I have that story for you in this edition—thanks as always for reading.
–Adrian
Trump Hasn’t Invaded Chicago, But the City Is Still Rattled
ICE has had a chilling effect on the businesses, schools, and communities.
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Chicago, Illinois
BEFORE DONALD TRUMP RETURNED to power, the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights (ICIRR) would receive roughly a hundred calls a month at its hotline for community members to report ICE sightings.
But as Trump publicly mused about declaring war on Chicago, things began to change: Call volume shot up to as many as five hundred in just one day.
That figure was just one of several startling revelations from a press conference ICIRR hosted along with the Illinois Legislative Latino Caucus and the Resurrection Project, a group that is connecting affected immigrant families with lawyers during the new crackdown. Local lawmakers at the press conference relayed that ICE activity was up in Archer Heights in southwest Chicago, as well as in west suburban Cicero and Berwyn, about twenty minutes outside downtown Chicago. On the first day of the Trump administration’s “Operation Midway Blitz” in the Chicago area, three people were arrested. DHS then touted thirteen more. The department called them the “worst of the worst”: criminals, rapists, and “violent thugs.”
The operation turned deadly Friday as an ICE agent shot and killed an immigrant just after he dropped off his kids at school. According to ICE, he resisted arrest, tried to flee the scene, and drove his car toward agents, one of whom was struck but then fatally shot the man.
Governor JB Pritzker said a full, factual accounting must come out, while activist leaders argued it was further evidence that the increasingly aggressive ICE tactics are making the community less safe.
This comes as Donald Trump’s clampdown on Chicago may not yet have taken its most heavy-handed form. For one thing, the military hasn’t stormed Chicago. The National Guard hasn’t been dispatched, and Trump seemingly announced on Friday that he was bypassing Chicago in favor of Memphis for his ‘Send the Military to Your Blue City’ Tour. But the federal government’s presence is very much felt here, like a chill from the lake. Much of it has settled over immigrant communities, where a pervasive fear has gripped the Latino and immigrant residents who are the lifeblood of many neighborhoods.
Illinois state representative Aarón Ortíz told me the operation is a dark shadow passing over the community, taking away regular, hardworking people.
“This is not law enforcement,” he said, “these are occupation tactics for TV and social media.”
“The community is being terrorized, that doesn’t mean it’s safer,” said local community activist Imelda Salazar with the Southwest Organizing Project, a progressive group that works across faith and racial lines. The White House, she added, was engaged in una guerra de miedo—“a war of fear.”
WHATEVER NAME ONE APPLIES to it, the fear began to kick in long before “Midway Blitz” even formally launched, as Trump for weeks framed Chicago as a failed city he would have to invade. The mood was conveyed to me through vivid anecdotes, like the one multiple organizers told me about Leodegario Martínez Barradas, a Latino flower vendor who worked at the intersection between South Archer Avenue and South Pulaski Road half an hour outside downtown. He was detained on Sunday and deported to Mexico on Tuesday, the Chicago Tribune reported. His presence—a fixture to passersby—was suddenly simply gone.
“He was a nice older man always trying to hustle,” Karina Martinez of the Brighton Park Neighborhood Council told me.
The fear is not just overtly palpable but present in subtle ways as well. School attendance is down; parents are afraid to pick up their children from school. Community events are being canceled, and people are afraid to attend the Mexican Independence day celebrations that started last week. Foot traffic has fallen off and business is following, making revenues plunge and putting businesses in the Mexican Main Street of Little Village in danger of closing.
Jennifer Aguilar, the executive director of the Little Village Chamber of Commerce, said that revenue is down 40 to 50 percent and that some businesses have closed while others are on the brink of closing. In Pilsen, another traditionally Latino area, Joe Gutierrez, a co-owner of margarita bar La Vaca—which has been in the area for generations—said business is also down 40 percent.
Loc