With two top Trump administration officials in Chicago, federal law enforcement began a “targeted” immigration blitz Sunday, according to a spokesman for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
The agency did not say how many arrests have taken place so far.
“U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, along with federal partners including the FBI, ATF, DEA, CBP and the U.S. Marshals Service, began conducting enhanced targeted operations today in Chicago to enforce U.S. immigration law and preserve public safety and national security by keeping potentially dangerous (criminals) out of our communities,” ICE spokesman Jeff Carter said in a statement to the Tribune.
The Drug Enforcement Administration’s Chicago field office confirmed the operations, posting a picture on X of acting Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove and Tom Homan, Donald Trump’s “border czar, meeting with federal agents this morning.
Homan has repeatedly declared Chicago ground zero for mass deportations. Bove, one President Donald Trump’s former criminal defense lawyers, has argued for prosecuting state and local officials who do not cooperate with immigration enforcement activities.
In the photo posted on social media, Homan, wearing a camouflage baseball cap, appears to listen as Bove speaks with ICE and DEA agents.
Federal authorities made more than 1,400 arrests nationwide since Thursday as part of the Trump Administration’s crackdown on illegal immigration, according to ICE. The agency did not respond to questions about how many of those arrests occurred in Chicago, though it does tout the arrest of an alleged immigrant with two DUIs on its social media accounts.
In keeping with city law, the Chicago Police Department did not participate in the operations, according to spokesman.
Also on Sunday, Gov. JB Pritzker appeared on CNN’s “State of the Union” program and reiterated that he agrees violent criminals who are undocumented should be deported.
“Now, what they’re also doing, though, and it’s quite disturbing, is they’re going after people who are law-abiding who are holding down jobs, who have families here, who may have been here for a decade or two decades, and they’re often our neighbors and our friends. And why are we going after them? These are not people who are causing problems in our country,” he said.
Pritzker during the show also dismissed concerns raised from reports earlier this week that Justice Department officials would seek to prosecute state and local officials who do not cooperate with immigration enforcement activities. The memo, written by Bove, also instructs the Justice Department’s civil division to work with a new Sanctuary Cities Enforcement Working Group to identify and potentially challenge state and local laws and policies that “threaten to impede” the Trump administration’s immigration efforts.
“Of course, we all know that they’re just putting that out because they want to threaten everybody. They want people to step back and let them do whatever they want to do,” Pritzker said. “So we’re going to do, you know, what we need to do, but we also have a law on the books in Illinois that says that our local law enforcement will stand up for those law-abiding undocumented people in our state. So we’re doing the right thing, and we’re not going to help federal officials just drag them away because somebody pointed at them and said, ‘Oh, that person’s brown or that person’s not from here. Check it out. Maybe they’re undocumented,’” he said.
Pritzker reiterated that local law enforcement “will not coordinate with federal officials on the arrest of people” when they do not have a judicial warrant.
“Our local officials are not just going to say, ‘Well, that person seems like they’re undocumented, so we’re going to hand them over to you, and you can figure it out,’” he said.
