A four-minute video making the rounds on social media shows a large crowd shouting at two men apparently trying to detain a man Saturday morning at 63rd Street and Kostner Avenue in the West Lawn community.
One of the men is dressed in typical ICE attire – tactical gear with POLICE written across the back – while the second man is wearing blue jeans and a white T-shirt. Both men were masked.
The video shows them trying unsuccessfully to get the man down and restrained with zip ties while a noisy crowd grows around them and a funeral procession passes by.
After a few minutes, the agents give up and release the man before driving away from the intersection.
State sues to stop deployment
On Monday, Illinois and Chicago sued the Trump administration to try to block the deployment of Texas National Guardsmen to Chicago and the federalization of 300 Illinois National Guardsmen over Gov. JB Pritzker’s objections.
Despite weeks of Trump threats to call in the National Guard, Pritzker and Attorney General Kwame Raoul said at a news conference Monday afternoon they could not file a lawsuit until after troops were actually federalized.
Pritzker, surrounded by state, local and federal elected officials in Chicago, repeatedly cast the deployment of federalized National Guard troops as an “invasion” of the nation’s third-largest city.
The governor further said actions by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents since the launch of “Operation Midway Blitz” on Sept. 8 have led to an escalation of violence in a “targeted and intentional and premeditated” way.
Illinois filed its lawsuit hours after Republican Texas Gov. Greg Abbott announced he will send 400 guardsmen to cities around the country, including Chicago, and after a federal judge in Oregon blocked National Guard deployments to Portland.
The order is “effective immediately for an initial period of 60 days” and subject to extension, according to the memo, signed by Hegseth. It comes a day after Pritzker confirmed Trump’s intention to federalize 300 members of the Illinois National Guard.
“The American people, regardless of where they reside, should not live under the threat of occupation by the United States military, particularly not simply because their city or state leadership has fallen out of a president’s favor,” the lawsuit reads. “To guard against this, foundational principles of American law limit the president’s authority to involve the military in domestic affairs. Those bedrock principles are in peril.”
A federal judge declined Monday afternoon to issue a temporary restraining order but did give the federal government until midnight Wednesday to respond to the state’s request for an injunction. A hearing is scheduled for Thursday.
In a brief hearing Monday afternoon, U.S. District Judge April Perry said she was “very troubled” by the Justice Department’s attorneys’ inability to answer her questions about where the guardsmen would be deploying and what exactly they’d be doing.
“If I were the federal government, I’d strongly urge holding off until Thursday,” she said of the plan to activate troops. But she added, it’s “up to them.”
During the hearing, the DOJ confirmed that members of the Texas National Guard were scheduled to board a plane for Chicago at 4 p.m. But, attorney Jean Lin said, those out-of-state guardsmen would not be “in position to perform their federal protective mission” until Tuesday at the earliest. Members of the Illinois National Guard would similarly not be mobilized until later this week, pending pre-mission training, Lin said.
Christopher Wells of the Illinois attorney general’s office pleaded with Perry to grant “some form of interim relief” before Thursday’s hearing. He pointed to the “level of disregard the administration has shown” to a federal judge in Oregon who over the weekend ruled Trump’s deployment of the National Guard to Portland exceeded his authority. Despite two rulings from the Trump-appointed judge, the feds have mobilized guardsmen anyway from California and Texas to the west coast city.
“This is all part of a concerted effort to target disfavored jurisdictions that the president doesn’t like,” Wells said, urging a temporary restraining order before the federal government “hostilely deploys troops from another state to a sister and equally sovereign state.”
Though she denied his request, Perry sided with Wells’ contention that the Trump administration’s request for an entire week to respond to the lawsuit was “ridiculous” given “they have been planning this for months.”
The promised deployment comes as ICE has ramped up activity in Chicago and its suburbs as part of “Operation Midway Blitz,” which has so far resulted in more than 800 arrests according to the Department of Homeland Security.
There have also been two shootings since the clashes began including a woman in Brighton Park on Saturday morning after she was accused of ramming a Border Patrol vehicle.
DHS stated that agents fired when they saw one of the drivers—a woman allegedly armed with a semi-automatic weapon—attempting to impede their movement. The woman, identified as Marimar Martinez, was taken to Mount Sinai Hospital in fair condition, treated, released, and later taken into FBI custody. A firearm was recovered at the scene, according to law enforcement sources. A second man was also arrested for boxing in the Border Patrol vehicle.
Martinez, 30, and Anthony Ian Santos Ruiz, 21, allegedly used their vehicles to strike another car, with three U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents inside, near West 39th Street and South Kedzie Avenue in Brighton Park.
Prosecutors eventually charged Martinez and Ruiz with attempting to “assault, impede, and interfere with the work of federal agents in Chicago.”
Though the Trump administration insists ICE is targeting undocumented immigrants who have criminal backgrounds, reports have mounted of agents arresting those with no history of illegal activity, detaining children along with their parents and even handcuffing U.S. citizens and children with zip ties. Immigrant and civil rights groups have alleged ICE is arresting people without warrants in violation of a federal consent decree.
The lawsuit also alleges ICE activity in Chicago and its suburbs has already subjected Illinois “to serious and irreparable harm.”
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem asked Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to deploy troops to Illinois to protect federal immigration officers and facilities. The Immigration and Customs Enforcement processing center in Broadview, a near-west suburb of Chicago, has been the site of several clashes between ICE agents and demonstrators in recent weeks.
Attorney General Kwame Raoul argues the troop deployment violates Illinois’ rights as sovereign state to carry about its own law enforcement, as well as the 1878 Posse Comitatus Act that bans the military from participating in domestic law enforcement.
The lawsuit also claims the Trump administration failed to meet any criteria that could allow the president to federalize the National Guard. The president can federalize the National Guard to stop a foreign invasion, when the president can’t execute the laws of the country or to stop a rebellion.
Raoul and state leaders have argued for weeks that Trump would use protests in Broadview as a “flimsy pretext” to claim a rebellion.
Prior to this year, the last time a president federalized a state’s National Guard without a request from a state’s governor was in 1965, when President Lyndon B. Johnson sent federal troops to protect civil rights protesters in Alabama without the cooperation of segregationist Gov. George Wallace.
Contributing to the report was Capitol News Illinois, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news service that distributes state government coverage to hundreds of news outlets statewide. It is funded primarily by the Illinois Press Foundation and the Robert R. McCormick Foundation.
This is an important issue that highlights the ongoing tension between local authorities and federal immigration enforcement. The community’s response shows how passionate they are about protecting their neighbors. It’s crucial for local governments to have the autonomy to make decisions that reflect their values and the needs of their residents.
This is a concerning situation. It’s important to address the community’s safety and rights while ensuring law enforcement can do their job. We need to find a balance that respects everyone involved.