CHICAGO (AP) — In late September, immigration agents launched a massive raid on a Chicago apartment building, deploying heavily armed agents who stormed the building from the ground floor while others rappelled onto the roof from a Black Hawk helicopter.
The raid ended with 27 immigrants arrested, officials said. But the apartments of dozens of U.S. citizens were also targeted, residents said, and at least a half-dozen Americans were zip-tied and held for hours.
The immense show of force signaled a sharp escalation in the White House’s immigration crackdown and amplified tensions in a city already on edge.
A raid targeting a Venezuelan gang
The raid, led by U.S. Customs and Border Protection, targeted the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua, though officials said only two of the 27 immigrants arrested were gang members. They gave almost no details on the arrests.
The raid came during the Chicago immigration crackdown dubbed “Operation Midway Blitz,” which began in early September with some arrests in Latino neighborhoods but has surged across the city. It has included increasing patrols by masked, armed agents; detentions of U.S. citizens and immigrants with legal status; a fatal shooting and a protesting pastor shot in the head with a pepper ball outside a suburban immigration facility, his arms raised.
By early October, authorities said more than 1,000 immigrants had been been arrested across the area.
The raids have shaken the city.
“We have a rogue, reckless group of heavily armed, masked individuals roaming throughout our city,” Mayor Brandon Johnson said after the Sept. 30 raid, using language that would have sounded like political hyperbole just a few weeks earlier. “The Trump administration is seeking to destabilize our city and promote chaos.”
American citizens were also detained
Tony Wilson, a third-floor resident born and raised on Chicago’s South Side, was among those detained.
“It was like we were under attack,” Wilson said days after the raid. Agents had used a grinder to cut out his door’s deadbolt and he still couldn’t close the door properly, let alone lock it. He had barricaded himself inside, blocking the door with furniture, and spoke through the hole where his door knob used to be.
“It was terrible, man,” said Wilson, who was zip-tied, taken from the building and held for more than two hours before being released. He’d barely left the apartment since.
What the raid was really about
The White House says gang members and immigrants in the U.S. illegally swarm Chicago, and crime is rampant. Soldiers are needed to protect government facilities from raging left-wing protesters, officials say.
The reality is far less dramatic. Violence is rare at protests, though angry confrontations are increasingly common, particularly outside a federal immigration center in suburban Broadview. And while crime is a serious problem, the city’s murder rate has dropped by roughly half since the 1990s.
To Trump’s critics, the crackdown is a calculated effort to stir up anger in a city and state run by some of his most outspoken Democratic opponents. Out-of-control protests would reinforce Trump’s tough-on-crime image, they say, while embarrassing Johnson and Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker, widely seen as a possible Democratic presidential contender.
So the South Shore raid, ready-made for social media with its displays of military hardware and agents armed for combat, was seen as wildly out of proportion.
Less than two days after the raid, the Department of Homeland Security edited video of the raid into a series of dramatic shots, set it to music and released it on social media. It has racked up more than 6.4 million views.
“This was a crazy-looking military response they put together for their reality show,” said LaVonte Stewart, who runs a popular South Shore sports program to steer young people away from violence. “It’s not like there are roving bands of Venezuelan teenagers out there.”
Officials insist it was no reality show.
The operation was based on months of intelligence gathering, according to a U.S. official not authorized to discuss the matter publicly. The landlord told authorities that Venezuelans in about 30 units were squatters and had threatened other tenants, the official said, adding that the building’s size necessitated the show of force. Immigration agencies declined further comments.
