As the Trump administration’s mass deportation raids begin their third month, their impact has stretched across the Chicago region and the nation.
Political tensions have deepened, hundreds of immigrants, protesters and bystanders have been detained or arrested during raids, and thousands have protested across Chicago and the suburbs, from Home Depot and Target parking lots to outside the two-story brick U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in suburban Broadview to the massive No Kings Rally downtown.
Here’s what we know about federal immigration enforcement in and around the city, as well as other immigration-related stories and the National Guard deployment.
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How we got here
President Donald Trump’s Department of Homeland Security announced Sept. 8 that it had begun a surge of immigration law enforcement in Chicago, dubbing it “Operation Midway Blitz” and claiming it would target “criminal illegal aliens” who have benefited from the city and state’s sanctuary policies.
The announcement came more than two weeks after the Republican president said he was planning to target Chicago because of the city’s crime rates, causing Democratic Gov. JB Pritzker and Mayor Brandon Johnson to warn residents of potential immigration sweeps.
“Let’s be clear, the terror and cruelty is the point, not the safety of anyone living here,” Pritzker said Sept. 2.
Trump set the stage for the operation with a social media post depicting military helicopters flying over the city’s lakefront skyline using the title “Chipocalypse Now.” “Chicago is about to find out why it’s called the Department of WAR,” Trump wrote, a day after signing an executive order to rename the Department of Defense to its pre-1949 title.
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U.S. Border Patrol agents exchange handcuffs for plastic zip-ties while transferring detainees in Niles on Oct. 31, 2025. The detainees were picked up while they were landscaping on Chicago’s Northwest Side. (Brian Cassella/Chicago Tribune)
The Trump administration on Nov. 14 released the names of 614 people whose Chicago-area immigration arrests may have violated a 2022 consent decree, and only 16 of them have criminal histories that present a “high public safety risk.”
The Department of Homeland Security has claimed since the outset of the operation that they were going after the “worst of the worst,” including convicted murderers, rapists and other violent offenders who were allegedly taking advantage of Illinois’ sanctuary policies to terrorize the citizenry. But the government’s own data appeared to show otherwise.
Among those on the list were several featured in stories by the Tribune, including a couple arrested by ICE in September while driving their eldest son to his university to drop off school materials and later meet the rest of the family in church. The couple, Moises Enciso Trejo and Constantina Ramírez Meraz, were released Thursday and reunited with their four children, according to their attorney, Shelby R. Vcelka.
Also on the list was Darwin Leal, a 24-year-old Venezuelan migrant arrested Sept. 14 while driving in Chicago’s Little Village neighborhood with his wife and two young kids. Leal, who is still detained in Texas, was classified by ICE as in the “low” public safety risk category.
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Activity in and around Chicago
“Operation Midway Blitz” has been noticeable around Chicago and its suburbs, from tear gas incidents in Logan Square and detaining a mother and child at Millennium Park to a wild manhunt in suburban Mount Prospect and multiple rideshare arrests at O’Hare.
A federal judge ruled all immigration enforcement agents must have body cameras and said she was particularly worried about alleged violations in recent clashes, including one in Chicago’s East Side neighborhood where agents used a controversial and potentially dangerous maneuver to disable a fleeing vehicle, then tear-gassed people during a tense gathering at the scene. Tear gas incidents from federal agents during immigration raids have escalated recently, from Little Village to Lakeview to Irving Park.
On Sept. 12, Trump’s immigration-enforcement push took a violent turn when agents fatally shot a man in Franklin Park after he allegedly tried to flee a traffic stop and struck the officer with his vehicle. The man who was killed was identified by federal officials as Silverio Villegas-Gonzalez, a 38-year-old single father with two young children. DHS said in a written statement that Villegas-Gonzalez is a citizen of Mexico and was in the U.S. illegally, though further details were not provided.
On Oct. 4, federal immigration authorities shot a Chicago woman who, according to federal authorities, had tried to impede them in Brighton Park. In the shooting’s wake, protesters quickly took to the intersection to confront the federal forces. Some threw water bottles as the agents tossed tear gas and flash-bang grenades at them on the residential street.
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A federal judge in Chicago on Nov. 6 issued a sweeping injunction that puts more permanent restrictions on the use of force by immigration agents, saying top government officials lied in their testimony about threats that protesters posed and that their unlawful behavior on the streets “shows no signs of stopping.”
“I find the government’s evidence to be simply not credible,” U.S. District Judge Sara Ellis said in an oral ruling from the bench, describing a litany of incidents where citizens were tear-gassed “indiscriminately,” beaten and tackled by agents and struck in the face with pepper spray balls.
“The use of force shocks the conscience,” Ellis said. The judge noted in particular that Border Patrol Cmdr. Gregory Bovino lied repeatedly in his deposition testimony about force that his agents and he personally inflicted in incidents across the Chicago area.
Bovino said federal agents’ operations had been “going very violent” after the same day that his agents fired pepper balls at a moving vehicle in Gage Park and pointed rifles in Little Village as residents blew whistles, screamed at passing federal cars and followed their large convoy around the city’s Southwest Side. “We can operate with great skill, legally, ethically and morally,” he said during a brief stop in Gage Park.
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Restaurants in immigrant neighborhoods are ‘dying a slow death’
Intense immigration enforcement continues to ripple across the Chicago area and the restaurant industry has been feeling the impact: Significantly fewer customers are dining in, owners are locking their doors when they feel unsafe and businesses are operating at a loss.
Since September, Little Village had largely avoided large-scale ICE raids. But on Oct. 22, the shrill sound of whistles filled the neighborhood as volunteers sprang into action, warning people to duck into stores or hide inside private properties.
“We are dying a slow death,” said Marcos Carbajal, owner of Carnitas Uruapan. Little Village and Pilsen, much like Devon Avenue’s Little India in Rogers Park or Greektown on Chicago’s Near West Side, are microeconomies that rely heavily on a shared culture to keep things moving.
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What’s happening in Broadview?
Confrontations between federal agents and people protesting “Operation Midway Blitz” have put the tiny suburb, and the first Black woman to lead it, in the national spotlight.
Protesters have held near-daily demonstrations at Broadview’s ICE processing center since DHS announced it was launching “Operation Midway Blitz” in early September. Friday and Sundays often see larger crowds and, with that, arrests in violation of Broadview Mayor Katrina Thompson’s recently issued order that protests only occur between 9 a.m. and 6 p.m.
Bowing to a court-ordered deadline, crews tore down the controversial security fence outside the facility on Oct. 14. Federal officials erected the 8-foot-high fence three weeks earlier . In turn, Broadview officials immediately pushed back, saying it was “illegally built,” and demanded that the Department of Homeland Security take it down.
A federal judge on Nov. 5 ordered government officials to provide immigration detainees enough food, water and bed space, among other remedies, finding that conditions in Broadview do not “pass constitutional muster.”
“It has really become a prison,” U.S. District Judge Robert Gettleman said. “The conditions would be found unconstitutional even in the context of prisons holding convicted felons, but these are not convicted felons. These are civil detainees.”
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Chicago takes action
Whether its aldermen leading street patrols or residents blowing whistles to alert others, activists are coming in all shapes and sizes in Chicago. “We’ll do everything in our power to make sure that ICE is out of Chicago,” Ald. Michael Rodriguez, 22nd, who represents Little Village, told the Tribune on Oct. 3.
Numerous U.S. citizens and others have reported being detained, including a 44-year-old U.S. citizen who said agents zip-tied her and questioned her after work at a downtown bar earlier this month, and a Rogers Park man who agents fined $130 for not carrying his legal papers with him when they questioned him about his legal status last week. Here’s what to do if ICE stops you.
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In Albany Park, they fired pepper-spray balls to disperse an angry crowd and arrested two U.S. citizens. In Evanston, one repeatedly pointed his weapon at protesters while another knelt on a man’s back and punched him in the head.
They grabbed workers at an apartment complex in Hoffman Estates, landscapers, house painters and laborers in Edison Park, Skokie and Niles.
Despite pleas from Gov. JB Pritzker to pause federal immigration enforcement operations while children celebrate Halloween, teams of Border Patrol agents — including one led by Cmdr. Greg Bovino — tore through Chicago’s Northwest Side and nearby suburbs, sparking violent clashes with community members throughout the day.
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Could the National Guard be next?
Gov. JB Pritzker has repeatedly called out the Trump administration for defending its decision to deploy National Guard troops to Chicago as necessary to fight violent crime in the city, even though the federal government has emphasized in court and Pentagon memos that the mission is mainly to protect federal immigration enforcement agents and federal property.
Appearing on ABC’s “This Week,” Pritzker on Oct. 13 said President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance’s ultimate goal is to bring in the National Guard to cities like Chicago and Portland, Oregon, to militarize the country’s Democratic-controlled enclaves as a form of political payback.
“They just want troops on the ground because they want to militarize, especially blue cities and blue states,” he said.
The Trump administration on Oct. 17 asked the U.S. Supreme Court to allow the president to dispatch troops in the Chicago area pending appeal. A federal judge in Chicago on Oct. 22 indefinitely extended the restraining order barring President Donald Trump from deploying the National Guard in Illinois as both state and federal officials await a U.S. Supreme Court ruling that could upend the case. Members of the Texas National Guard arrived in the Chicago area Oct. 7.
Trump has discussed the potential of invoking the two-century-old Insurrection Act as a way to get around judicial orders blocking guard deployment. The Insurrection Act is an exception to the Posse Comitatus Act and would allow the U.S. military to be actively involved in law enforcement to put down a “rebellion” or when enforcing federal law becomes “impractical.”
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