The announcement comes more than two weeks after the Republican president began to say he was planning to target Chicago over crime, causing Democratic Gov. JB Pritzker and Mayor Brandon Johnson to caution residents to prepare for potential immigration sweeps.
“For years, Governor (JB) Pritzker and his fellow sanctuary politicians released Tren de Aragua gang members, rapists, kidnappers, and drug traffickers on Chicago’s streets — putting American lives at risk and making Chicago a magnet for criminals,” said Tricia McLaughlin, DHS assistant secretary. “President Trump and Secretary (Kristi) Noem have a clear message: No city is a safe haven for criminal illegal aliens. If you come to our country illegally and break our laws, we will hunt you down, arrest you, deport you, and you will never return.”
Pritzker, the state’s two-term Democratic governor and vociferous critic of the Republican president, took to the social platform X to contend the ICE surge “isn’t about fighting crime.”
“That requires support and coordination — yet we’ve experienced nothing like that over the past several weeks,” he wrote. “Instead of taking steps to work with us on public safety, the Trump administration’s focused on scaring Illinoisans.”
Johnson also said the city had “no notice of any enhanced immigration action.”
The Homeland Security statement marks the first official word from the Trump administration about increased immigration enforcement after weeks of Trump vacillating between vows of “going in” to Chicago with the potential deployment of National Guard troops to fight overall crime, to a stepped-up immigration enforcement role by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents. ICE has secured an office at Naval Station Great Lakes in North Chicago to serve as an operations hub for its activities.
There was no word on how long the ICE operation would last, and there was also no mention of whether Trump would deploy the National Guard to play a supporting role.
“We are concerned about potential militarized immigration enforcement without due process because of ICE’s track record of detaining and deporting American citizens and violating the human rights of hundreds of detainees,” Johnson said in a statement.
Democratic U.S. Sen. Tammy Duckworth said the ramped-up ICE activity was a waste of federal law enforcement resources, and she warned Trump was looking to “provoke a response to his un-American actions, hoping for images of chaos and violence to validate his lie that Chicago is an apocalyptic city in crisis and justify sending in the military to intimidate Americans.”
Despite the “blitz” announcement, it remained unclear Monday how extensive the actions were in the early going. Local officials and immigrant activists cited only a handful of arrests.
Advocates said they had confirmed ICE presence on the Southwest Side and at least three detentions of “community members in a stretch along Archer Avenue,” said Rey Wences, senior director of deportation defense at the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights.
“We believe this operation signaled the beginning of ICE(‘s) full escalation in Chicago and Illinois,” Wences said, noting it came after “many other raids.”
“This has been happening, and it has been starting to get normalized in many of the places in the state and across the city, but this is not normal,” Wences said.
Although the Trump administration portrayed its actions as targeted toward arresting only immigrants who are criminals, studies have also shown that ICE has arrested thousands of Latinos with no criminal history in random locations across the nation.
Under Illinois’ sanctuary state policies, enacted by Pritzker’s Republican predecessor, one-term Gov. Bruce Rauner, Illinois law enforcement cannot cooperate with federal immigration enforcement agents unless they have a detainment warrant issued by a judge. ICE routinely uses an administrative detainment warrant that it issues on its own.
The Trump administration has been previously rebuffed in challenges to the state’s sanctuary policy, with the courts noting that immigration enforcement is the purview of the federal government.
Trump set the stage for the operation with a social media post Saturday morning depicting military helicopters flying over the city’s lakefront skyline using the title “Chipocalypse Now.”
“I love the smell of deportations in the morning…” Trump posted on his Truth Social account, altering the famous phrase from the 1979 movie “Apocalypse Now,” about the smell of “Napalm.” In the post, Trump was depicted in U.S. Army fatigues and sunglasses and wearing a Stetson U.S. Cavalry hat like the lieutenant colonel portrayed in the movie by actor Robert Duvall.
“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.
Hours before the DHS announcement, Trump on Monday morning once again urged Pritzker, a potential 2028 presidential aspirant, to call the White House for federal help to request National Guard assistance with city crime. The governor has repeatedly vowed he will not make such a request because it is not necessary, adding that Trump is trying to normalize the sight of military on city streets as part of the president’s moves toward authoritarian rule from the White House.
On his Truth Social platform, Trump cited six shooting deaths recorded in the city over the weekend, as well as other murders in recent weeks, as he criticized Pritzker and Johnson for inaction.
Just days after his “Chipocalypse Now” post, which he backed off a day later by saying it wasn’t directed at the city but at criminals, Trump sought to cajole Chicago residents into supporting a federal intervention.
“Governor Pritzker just stated that he doesn’t want Federal Government HELP! WHY??? What is wrong with this guy, and the 5% in Polls Mayor. I want to help the people of Chicago, not hurt them. Only the Criminals will be hurt!” Trump wrote on Monday morning.
“We can move fast and stop this madness. The City and State have not been able to do the job. People of Illinois should band together and DEMAND PROTECTION. IT IS ONLY GOING TO GET WORSE!!! ACT NOW, BEFORE IT IS TOO LATE!!!” he wrote. “Thank you for your attention to this matter. President DJT.”
Later, speaking at the Museum of the Bible in Washington, D.C., he told the audience, “We’re waiting for a call from Chicago. We’ll fix Chicago,” as he cited reduced crime in the District of Columbia after he federalized law enforcement there, something he cannot do in the individual states.
“We could do the same thing in Chicago, New York, Los Angeles,” Trump said.
“I don’t know why Chicago isn’t calling us, saying, please give us help when you have, over just a short period of time, 50 murders and hundreds of people shot, and then you have a governor that stands up and says how crime is just fine,” Trump said, before explaining one major political reason for continuing the rhetoric.
“It’s really crazy,” the Republican president said of Democrats, “but we’re bringing back law and order to our country.”
But faith leaders and immigration advocates in Chicago continued to push back against Trump’s narrative that Chicago is crime-ridden and rallied in support of a handful of individuals believed to have been detained by federal agents on Sunday.
Wences described the detentions as “abductions,” and said they were “seemingly random, with agents profiling and approaching them on the street.”
Among those was a street vendor selling flowers on a busy intersection in the Archer Heights neighborhood. He was arrested by three men wearing vests that read “Police Federal Agent.” They were in two vehicles, including a dark Subaru with a Missouri license plate. ICE had not confirmed the arrest as of Monday evening.
Gissele Garcia, 26, pulled over her car as she was driving home from the grocery store when she saw the commotion in the parking lot of a Honda City car dealership on South Archer Avenue and South Pulaski Road. The West Lawn resident approached with her phone up, filming the encounter. She tried getting the street vendor’s name and asked him if he had any family she could call.
Speaking in Spanish, the man said he didn’t know his relatives’ phone numbers.
“It seemed — I don’t know how to put this — like he had given up,” she told the Tribune Sunday.
By Monday morning, around 50 people shouted “faith over fear,” in Daley Plaza in response to the escalating threat. The event was led by leaders of the Inner City Muslim Action Network (IMAN), LIVE FREE Illinois and New Life Centers.
Speakers said there were other ways to improve Chicago than sending in federal agents, including federal spending on health care and education.
“This is not America,” said rally attendee Donald Nye, 68 of Downers Grove. “This is not what my grandson is gonna grow up in. I got a 4-year-old grandson and I’m not gonna allow him to grow up with this. I mean, this is not the way I grew (up).”
Chicago Tribune’s Dan Petrella, Alice Yin and Adriana Perez contributed.
Originally Published: September 8, 2025 at 4:25 PM CDT