For Donald Trump, the “enemy from within” includes not only undocumented immigrants, drug cartels, foreign terrorists, liberal activists, and the press. ICE’s raid on a Chicago apartment building and the ensuing ICE violence against civilians make clear that Trump has initiated an unconstitutional, brutal war against ordinary Americans.
A military attack more akin to an overseas military operation than a domestic police action unfolded in that Chicago apartment building on Tuesday.
Families were separated, and children were zip-tied together and left traumatized. The local public radio station recounted: “Armed federal agents in military fatigues busted down their doors overnight, pulling men, women and children from their apartments, some of them naked, residents and witnesses said. Agents approached or entered nearly every apartment in the five-story building, and U.S. citizens were among those detained for hours.” Neighbors also reported that “federal agents used flashbang grenades to burst through the building, and several drones and helicopters were deployed.” The local ABC affiliate station quoted a neighbor who witnessed ICE agents: “One of them literally laughed. He was standing right here. He said, ‘f*** them kids.’”
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This incident was just one episode in Trump’s “Operation Midway Blitz,” an exercise in indiscriminate and excessive force. Another raid was “carried out in suburban Elgin, when agents led by U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem rode in a military vehicle and blew down the front door of a home where they detained six people, including two U.S. citizens,” WBEZ reported.
Chicago, state officials, and civil rights groups have denounced ICE’s onslaught of abuse and excessive force. Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker, decrying ICE for “running around the Loop harassing people for not being white,” enumerated the violent actions taken against civilians, including “posting social media videos mocking and glorifying the detention of individuals—including U.S. citizens—who are later released.” He also recounted, “Kristi Noem’s and Greg Bovino’s masked agents threw chemical agents near an elementary school, arrested elected officials exercising their First Amendment rights, and raided a Walmart.”
ICE’s violence escalated quickly. On Saturday, an ICE agent shot and wounded a motorist. Following his playbook from Portland, Los Angeles, and D.C., Trump first threatened to nationalize the Illinois National Guard.
Pritzker swiftly responded on social media that for Trump, “this has never been about safety. This is about control.” He reiterated that no military troops were needed because state, county, and local forces were protecting public safety. He also vowed, “I will not call up our National Guard to further Trump’s acts of aggression against our people. In Illinois, we will do everything within our power to look out for our neighbors, uphold the Constitution, and defend the rule of law.”
With the ruling Saturday night from U.S. District Court Judge Karin Immergut, a Trump appointee, enjoining Trump’s invasion of Portland, Trump might be stymied in Chicago, at least at the lower court level.
On CNN’s State of the Union on Sunday, Pritzker summed up the situation:
What happened at that building is shameful. Our Department of Children and Family Services are investigating what happened to those children who were zip-tied and held, some of them nearly naked, in the middle of the night, and, again, elderly people being thrown into a U-Haul for three hours and detained, U.S. citizens.
What kind of a country are we living in? And this raid at this building is emblematic of what ICE and CBP and the president of the United States [and] Kristi Noem and Greg Bovino, are trying to do. They want mayhem on the ground. They want to create the war zone, so that they can send in even more troops.... They fire tear gas and smoke grenades, and they make it look like it’s a war zone.
Responding to Trump’s and Stephen Miller’s unhinged attack on Judge Immergut, Pritzker noted that “this judge is a Trump-appointed judge” who found that “what the government is doing, what Trump is doing, is untethered from the facts.”
“What kind of a country are we living in?”
By Sunday evening, Trump reversed course and threatened to send several hundred members of the Texas National Guard to invade Illinois. Pritzker responded on social media: “I call on Governor Abbott to immediately withdraw any support for this decision and refuse to coordinate. There is no reason a President should send military troops into a sovereign state without their knowledge, consent, or cooperation.”
Trump’s unprecedented assault on Chicago and other American cities is the inevitable result of the MAGA Supreme Court’s acquiescence to the Trump regime’s violent assault on individuals who look Latino, speak Spanish, and/or work or live among undocumented migrants. Last month, the Supreme Court’s majority, again misusing its emergency docket, condoned Los Angeles raids based on racial profiling. (Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s shameful concurrence ludicrously minimized and mischaracterized ICE’s brutality.) ICE took that as a green light to ratchet up violence and shred civil liberties nationwide.
On the flimsiest of pretexts, Trump’s regime has deployed overwhelming force against Americans, traumatized children, detained suspected undocumented immigrants (many of whom turn out to be citizens or legal residents) for days or weeks, wrecked people’s homes, and stirred up violence on the streets.
The “enemy from within” is Donald Trump. The “violent extremists” are Trump lackeys who have turned ICE into fascistic shock troops. This is not business as usual, or “Trump being Trump.” In response to Trump’s brutal, racist, and unconstitutional campaign of terror designed to desensitize Americans to police state tactics, the country must mobilize collectively.
Lawyers can sue to protect victims and stop the invasion of our cities. Judges can block violent ICE raids lacking probable cause and—as Immergut did in Portland—halt military invasions that unconstitutionally supplant domestic police, refusing to defer when Trump’s actions are “untethered to facts.” (Long ago, courts should have refused to grant deference to a president who perpetually acts in bad faith.) Congressional Democrats can demand oversight hearings and deny votes to fund egregious ICE conduct and misuse of National Guard forces. Legacy media outlets could even renounce the sane-washing of Trump and phony equivalence (i.e., cover Trump as they would a foreign autocrat).
All Americans can respond with peaceful, robust protest. As the ACLU suggests, you can take action such as “going to a No Kings protest, filming ICE activity, taking a Know Your Rights training, or simply helping your neighbors’ children get safely to school, …. [to] help protect not just our loved ones, but our communities.”
This will not end until voters boot out MAGA lawmakers who refuse to rein in Trump. We will not be safe from a dictatorial presidency as long as the Supreme Court refuses to check executive overreach. Court expansion and repeal of its appellate jurisdiction must be on the table.
Meanwhile, all Americans must defend our neighbors, our deepest-held values, and what is left of our democracy.
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