'We are terrified': ICE begins long-promised immigration blitz in Chicago

It was around 8 a.m. Sunday when a family friend called Maria to ask why her husband of nearly 10 years hadn’t shown up for work.

Minutes later, with federal immigration agents banging on the front door of her apartment in Chicago’s Hermosa neighborhood, she had an answer.

Maria’s husband was one of an as-yet-unknown number of people taken into custody Sunday morning in what appeared to be the opening salvo in the long-promised — and much-feared — federal immigration blitz on Chicago.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement spokesman Jeff Carter issued a statement Sunday saying that ICE and partner federal agencies “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.”

The agency declined to answer additional questions about Sunday’s operations, including the number of people detained and the accusations against them.

Chicagoans and advocates for undocumented immigrants reported at least a half-dozen ICE sightings across the city and suburbs Sunday.

“One raid is one too many, regardless of where it takes place,” read a statement Sunday from a coalition of immigration advocacy organizations.

Raids disrupt communities, sow fear, separate families

The operations were carried out with two top Trump-administration officials in Chicago. The Drug Enforcement Administration’s Chicago field office posted a picture on X of Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove and “border czar” Tom Homan meeting with federal agents Sunday morning.

Homan has repeatedly declared Chicago ground zero for mass deportations. Bove, one of 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, dressed in a suit, speaks with ICE and DEA agents.

TV personality Phil McGraw was also apparently in Chicago Sunday, saying on social media that he accompanied federal authorities on their operations and, later, interviewing Homan at the ICE command center in the city.

Homan told McGraw that the federal government has 300 targets in Chicago, including 150 people that he said had previously been in police custody but were released despite requests to hold them.

The Tribune could not immediately verify Homan’s statements because he did not say which law-enforcement agencies allegedly refused to cooperate.

McGraw boasted about the arrests that took place Sunday, at one point asking the camera to pan to a wall that contained pictures of those apprehended during the operation. The wall had only 21 photographs on it, though it’s unclear if they represented every arrest that had taken place.

‘They took our neighbor’s dad’

It’s unclear where in the city and suburbs federal agents concentrated their efforts Sunday.

In the Hermosa neighborhood, about a half-mile from Maria’s apartment, Melissa — who declined to give her last name for privacy reasons — said her parents ran to hide in their attic when they saw ICE agents outside their home Sunday morning.

“They took our neighbor’s dad,” she said. “My parents were crying. We are terrified.”

Her family, she said, has been in the country for over two decades, and the fear of them getting deported is debilitating. Both her mother and father, who she said have no criminal record, did not come out until the agents left their block.

Across the city and suburbs, residents reported sightings of the prowling federal agents, exchanging texts and posting alerts and photos on social media.

In South Chicago, a working-class neighborhood near the Indiana border with a large immigrant population, an agent in an ICE vest flanked by four other officials walked down a block of older homes with an empty taco truck on the corner by a liquor store.

They appeared to be looking for someone, one of the photo takers told the Tribune. “We’re on high alert,” the resident said.

In the Rogers Park neighborhood on the North Side, Michelle Vallet said she was working at her computer Sunday morning when she looked up to see what seemed like a traffic jam on her street corner. Then she saw several officials in vests — holding guns — walk up to her neighbors’ door.

Vallet immediately called a hotline. She described the cars she saw: a Cadillac SUV with federal plates, and a black pickup truck, a gray Armada and a bright blue Nissan with Illinois plates. She took out her phone and took some photos and a video.

A woman opened the door. The officials talked to her for about five minutes before they disbanded, Vallet said. No arrests occurred, she said.

“They did not go in, they did not leave her stoop, and then she walked them off of her property and shut the gate,” Vallet said.

Vallet said she didn’t know the neighbors who they approached well. She’ll sometimes wave to them when she’s walking her dog. She knew how to respond because she’d taken an online class last Monday on how to react to ICE agents. Still, she said she was scared. She’s a single mother.

“I was scared for my neighbors. I was scared for this nation, knowing that this is going to be common now,” she said. “And I was scared for myself too. … I just felt vulnerable in that moment — because I don’t think we’re in a space where law is going to mean anything.”

Vallet was hopeful the woman who answered the door had seen the “Know Your Rights” flyers posted in local businesses and on lamp posts in the neighborhood. She encouraged others who may witness an ICE interaction to report it to local activists and organizers.

“There are a lot of people that are paralyzed right now just trying to figure out and (wrap) their head around what is going on,” she said. “But you have to do something, and that can be as small as recording from your window, just making sure your neighbors are aware ICE is in the area.”

Maria Perez, a volunteer with the nonprofit Southwest Collective, runs a food pantry for migrants on the South Side.

She said she got a call from a woman on Friday who asked for the address of the pantry and threatened “that if there were a lot of migrants at the pantry, you better hope ICE doesn’t show up.”

Perez hung up the phone immediately.

On Sunday, after news of the raids became public, Perez’s supervisor called and asked if it made sense to do a “drive-up” food delivery because now ICE might show up.

“If they were really targeting criminals, they wouldn’t be looking for people at food pantries, people in vulnerable states,” Perez said.

Julie Contreras with United Giving Hope, a longtime immigration rights advocacy organization, said she was trying to gather more details after being in touch with families that were affected by arrests in Waukegan on Sunday.

“Today across our cities Donald Trump placed terror into the hearts of U.S. citizen children,” said Contreras. “In my church today I had to sit down and hug and love and tell a 4-year-old little girl that no one was going to come and harm her and deport her and destroy her family.”

Elected officials, advocates push back

In keeping with city law, the Chicago Police Department did not participate in Sunday’s operations, according to a spokesman.

Also on Sunday, Gov. JB Pritzker appeared on CNN’s “State of the Union” and 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.

Pritzker again said that he agreed 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,” he said. “And why are we going after them? These are not people who are causing problems in our country.”

The governor 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.

While Pritzker and other elected officials sought to ease anxiety among the city and state’s immigrant communities, four local advocacy groups filed a federal lawsuit Saturday seeking to curtail immigration raids in Chicago.

“The impending raids are a brazen attempt to stomp out the sanctuary city movement and run roughshod over the First Amendment,” Sheila Bedi of Northwestern University’s Community Justice Clinic, which is representing the groups, said in the release. “Our communities need organizers’ vision and advocacy now more than ever. This lawsuit is about prohibiting the Trump Administration from using law enforcement to decimate a vital social justice movement.”

‘Ya me dio miedo’

Hours after federal agents left in their unmarked black SUVs in the city’s Hermosa neighborhood, the residential street where Maria and her husband lived was quiet early Sunday afternoon.

The curtains of Maria’s apartment were drawn, leftover Christmas lights and decorations visible on the windows, and a plush toy looking out from the first floor.

Two women approached the house with a box of diapers and a bag of baby formula, and loudly introduced themselves over the gate in Spanish. One of them was state Sen. Graciela Guzmán, a Chicago Democrat whose nearby Northwest Side district covers Latino communities in Logan Square, Kelvyn Park and Belmont Cragin, among others.

María came out to meet her friends and the women, who gave her the supplies for her 2-year-old and shared information on how to locate her husband in the system.

“Everything is very new; they don’t know much about what’s happening, what’s going on,” said Monica Cazares, one of the family friends.

She said people in the community are feeling the fear closing in after a week of tense waiting. “And nothing had happened until now, it’s like — ‘Whoa, this is home.’”

Next door, a Honduran family with young kids zipped up their coats as they headed out to visit relatives. They were surprised to hear about the ICE operation on their street — they hadn’t heard or seen anything that morning.

“Ay no, ya me dio miedo,” one of them said: Oh no, now I’m scared.

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(Chicago Tribune’s Rick Pearson, Gregory Royal Pratt, Dan Petrella, Olivia Olander, Talia Soglin, Alice Yin and Jeremy Gorner contributed.)

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