President Donald Trump and his allies have been relentlessly pushing the narrative that the aim of the White House’s deployment of federal immigration agents and hundreds of National Guard members to Chicago is to protect the public in what Trump has called “a war zone.”
But hundreds of people who marched through the city on Wednesday evening were clear about who is wreaking havoc in their communities.
“No ICE, no fear, immigrants are welcome here!” residents of the nation’s third-largest city chanted, demanding that Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents leave Chicago and its surrounding suburbs.
Signs at the rally read, “ICE Is Trump’s Gestapo,” “Stop ripping families apart,” and “They blame immigrants so you won’t blame billionaires.”
The demonstration was organized soon after about 300 troops with the Illinois National Guard and 200 Texas National Guard members arrived in the city over the vehement objections of Mayor Brandon Johnson and Gov. JB Pritzker, Democrats who have condemned Trump for deploying masked, armed ICE agents to the city for the past month.
While Trump has claimed that “Operation Midway Blitz” is aimed at protecting the public from undocumented immigrants who have committed crimes, US citizens have been targeted in raids and with violence perpetrated by immigration agents, who have shot pepper balls at a priest and a journalist, fatally shot a man during a traffic stop, and “deliberately” attacked peaceful protesters, according to a lawsuit filed this week.