Adopting a term (Midway Blitz) for its Chicago immigration operation that has its origin in the Nazi’s lightning-fast pulverization of Western Europe and destruction of civilian neighborhoods was a telling choice for the Trump regime—which is infamous for spouting white nationalism tropes and deploying violence against its own people. Sure enough, instead of measured, lawful exercise of civilian immigration enforcement in Chicago, Donald Trump cooked up a dystopian fantasy, tried (but failed) to roll out the military, and dispensed brutal, undisciplined, and reckless Customs and Border Protection forces. The feds terrorized Chicago neighborhoods and garnered judicial rebukes for their illegal conduct and inhumane detention of suspected undocumented immigrants. Judged by their goal of removing the “worst of the worst,” however, it was a humiliating blunder.
ProPublica investigated one of the most notorious episodes during the operation. On Sept. 30, “some 300 agents from Border Patrol, the FBI and other agencies stormed the 130-unit apartment complex.” Using tactics sure to traumatize civilians, “SWAT teams rappelled from a helicopter, knocked down doors and hurled flash-bang grenades.” Though they did arrest 37 immigrants, the feds “also zip-tied and, for several hours, detained many U.S. citizens.” None of them, it seems, turned out to be gang members, let alone criminals.
The details shock the conscience. “During the raid, panicked tenants hid under beds, climbed into elevator shafts and jumped out of windows…. Six Venezuelan men said agents hit or kicked them.,” ProPublica recounted. “A law enforcement dog bit a Nigerian tenant, leaving blood on the floor of an apartment,” while the invading agents charged into one unit forcing the occupant to his knees. “His 6-year-old nephew clung to him, sobbing.”
It would have been one thing if agents were using force to subdue armed, dangerous gang members. But ProPublica found: “Federal prosecutors have not filed criminal charges against anyone who was arrested. Nor have they revealed any evidence showing that two immigrants arrested in the building belonged to the Tren de Aragua gang, or even provided their names.” Instead, detainees were either deported or agreed to leave voluntarily, “a sign that they are not seen as a serious threat and can apply for return to the United States.” This assault was a purely performative drama meant to intimidate all immigrants.
In another high-profile event distinguished for its reckless inhumanity, armed agents stormed into a Chicago daycare center “without a warrant and went room to room searching while children were present.” They violently dragged a screaming woman out of the building. But, again, the agents’ uber-aggression proved utterly unnecessary. A federal judge found the detention “unlawful” and has set a bond hearing.
Meanwhile, the Broadview detention facility, symbolic of the entire deployment, provided a mix of illegality, cruelty, and chaos. Attorneys for the detainees went to court to ask the federal judge to return to the pre-invasion status quo governed by a consent decree. Under that decree, they argued, mandatory detention should have applied only to those “‘noncitizens who recently arrived at a border or port of entry,’ not to people who have lived in the country for an extended period of time.” (It also barred warrantless searches, which, the judge held, still applied.)
As WBEZ reported, U.S. District Judge Jeffrey Cummings agreed and ordered the release of over 600 people who should not have been subject to mandatory detention. The release included one man whose story reveals the regime’s utter lack of humanity:
Among those detained under the Trump administration’s reading of the law was Ruben Torres Maldonado. His detention last month disrupted his 16-year-old daughter’s cancer treatment, and U.S. District Judge Jeremy Daniel later ordered that he be given a bond hearing.
“There is no dispute here that [Maldonado], a noncitizen, was ‘already in the country,’” Daniel wrote in an order. “He has been here for more than two decades.”
An immigration judge later ordered Maldonado’s release.
Justice Department attorneys have not appealed in Maldonado’s case. Maldonado went on to testify at a separate hearing about unsanitary conditions inside the ICE facility in Broadview, where he’d been held.
How typical of the thoroughly warped and cruel Trump regime: It chooses to sweep up and dump in the Broadview hellhole (which one judge said “shocked the conscience”) a father who lived and worked in America for 20 years and was tending to a seriously ill child. (We will know bad Broadview conditions truly are when another federal court judge releases her report based on her four-hour tour with counsel from both sides. )
After all this, the CBP began pulling out last week, although it threatened to return in March. Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker noted that the reason for the evacuation was unclear. “All I can say is, whether it was the loss in the elections a week ago that led to Donald Trump to pull [U.S. Customs and Border Protection] out, or the fact Greg Bovino is a snowflake, on a day you can see snowflakes, whatever it is, the people of Chicago have deserved better,” he said last Tuesday. “I would not say we’re now going to be free of these terrorized neighborhoods, because ICE and CBP will probably still be here.” There will be fewer thugs, however, and Pritzker vowed to “continue to protect our neighbors and our friends and our families.” In short, the “blitz” ended in retreat.
Trump’s extravagant claim to have reduced crime in Chicago simply beggars belief. “Trump is a liar,” Pritzker said. “He cannot steal credit from our violence prevention and law enforcement efforts that have reduced crime for four years straight—long before his masked agents showed up.”
By one estimation, the feds have spent nearly half a billion dollars on operations in Chicago, Los Angeles, Washington, D.C., and Memphis. Chicago alone cost over $12 million. Fortunately, lower federal court judges stepped in time and time again to stop the regime’s reign of terror. But despite the judicial intervention, the outpouring of community support, and the demonstration of leadership in Chicago, the regime wreaked havoc on the city; Trump’s goons did nothing to make Americans safer or more prosperous.
Instead of “blitz,” this might be better described by other military terms—FUBAR or SNAFU. The cost and human toll can be tallied in the numbers of disrupted lives, of families torn apart, of wrongfully detained and terrorized people, and of traumatized children. We fully expect the campaign of violence to continue so long as MAGA xenophobes control the White House and Congress. Until that changes, the courts, state and local officials, and the public must step up to throw sand in the gears of Trump’s police state. Our country’s democracy and decency depend on it.
Thank you, Jen. This is not integration policy, it's, as you've said, rampant racist cruelty on a stick, funded with our tax dollars. We don't want a dime going to this.
I wonder when Trump and the GOP will turn on Kristi Noem, she of the $200 mio in new jets just when the country is in lock-down and people are starving? Why does she need jets? She's not essential to the leadership on the front lines in cities with declining crime rates. She's mostly jetting around so that she make it front of the FOX cameras so her boss can see her wearing her dark glasses or Stetson. Bet the jets have big make-up rooms. Her and Hegseth, what a pair!