THIS IS ETHNIC CLEANSING
Chicago Tribune reporters have been documenting the chaotic, purposely staged and sometimes brutal immigration raids being carried out by ICE and border patrol agents in the Chicago area. These masked agents, who are not trained in normal policing, are driving around Chicago and suburban areas in unmarked cars hunting for anyone who looks Hispanic and creating mayhem in the process. They stop people, question them and seem to have unlimited power to detain and arrest people without probable cause. Most of the people being detained are normal, everyday workers: landscapers, construction workers, day laborers, housekeepers, day care workers, restaurant staff, home nursing aides, students and others. They are being picked up and detained because they look Hispanic. Many being detained are American citizens, not illegal immigrants. Because of this, if you live in the Chicago area and happen to look Hispanic you dare not leave your home without your papers: your passport, your work papers, numbers to call if you are swept up in a raid conducted by Trump’s goon squad.
Government agents have the ability to make more targeted arrests of people with proven criminal backgrounds. That is not what is happening here.
2024–2025, around 71.5% of people in ICE custody had no criminal convictions, and analyses of nonpublic bookings reported about 65% of people taken by ICE lacked convictions [Fact Check]
Rogue, masked government agents roving the streets of Chicago and its suburbs in unmarked cars targeting people based on how they look creates justifiable panic, fear and anger in these communities. When I was a prosecutor it was illegal for police to stop anyone based solely on the color of his or her skin without probable cause. It’s called racial profiling. But the Supreme Court opened the door for immigration agents of the Trump regime to use racial profiling as the sole grounds to stop, search, arrest and deport.
THE SUPREME COURT DESERVES BLAME
In a 6-3 vote in the case known as Vasquez Perdomo v. Noem, the Supreme Court granted an emergency request from the Trump administration and temporarily halted a LA judge’s order that barred “roving patrols” from snatching people off California streets and questioning them based on how they look, what language they speak, what work they do, or even where they happen to be. Both a Los Angeles federal court and the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals had ruled that these actions amounted to illegal racial profiling.
On Monday, the Supreme Court issued a brief, unsigned order that overturns those decisions. This gives immigration agents a “green light” to once again stop anyone they guess to be here illegally—even if a central reason for the stop was race. This endorses ICE and Border Patrol targeting any Latinos they observe in Los Angeles speaking Spanish or working in low-income jobs, and then demanding their papers.
Justice Sotomayor, one of the three Justices who dissented, raised a clear alarm in her dissent. She warned that this decision risks turning Latinos into second class citizens. In her words: “We should not have to live in a country where the Government can seize anyone who looks Latino, speaks Spanish, and appears to work a low wage job. Rather than stand idly by while our constitutional freedoms are lost, I dissent.”
TRUMP WANTS A POLICE STATE
The Trump regime is hoping for and trying to incite violence because Trump thinks that would give him the justification he is looking for to bring in military troops by invoking the Insurrection Act.
The Brennan Center explains the Insurrection Act and why it is too vague:
The Insurrection Act [of 1792] authorizes the president to deploy military forces inside the United States to suppress rebellion or domestic violence or to enforce the law in certain situations. The statute implements Congress’s authority under the Constitution to “provide for calling forth the Militia to execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions.” It is the primary exception to the Posse Comitatus Act, under which federal military forces are generally barred from participating in civilian law enforcement activities.
Although it is often referred to as the “Insurrection Act of 1807,” the law is actually an amalgamation of different statutes enacted by Congress between 1792 and 1871. Today, these provisions occupy Sections 251 through 255 in Title 10 of the United States Code.
In theory, the Insurrection Act should be used only in a crisis that is truly beyond the capacity of civilian authorities to manage. However, the Insurrection Act fails to adequately define or limit when it may be used and instead gives the president significant power to decide when and where to deploy U.S. military forces domestically.
The Insurrection Act was never intended to allow military troops on American streets to help a dictator cement his power. The Insurrection Act was intended to allow a brief, limited use of military support when a local government was overwhelmed and requests or agrees to get that help from the federal government. But Trump understands the weakness of that Act and is using ICE and the border patrol as antagonists to try to ignite a violent response that would give him a justification for using military force in blue cities to broadly impose his will.
LYING UNDER OATH
Judge Sara Ellis is the federal district court judge in Chicago hearing the evidence in a case brought by reporters and the religious community to stop the federal government from using overly aggressive tactics in their immigration efforts.
Clergy members, protesters and other Chicago residents described aggressive tactics used by federal immigration agents, including firing tear gas in residential neighborhoods without warning, throwing protesters to the ground during arrests and shooting pepper balls at a minister’s head while he stood in prayer.
The government agent in charge of the Chicago immigrant round up effort is Greg Bovino. He has lied multiple times under oath in Ellis’ courtroom.
“Mr. Bovino and the Department of Homeland Security claimed that he had been hit by a rock in the head before throwing the tear gas, but video evidence disproves this. And he ultimately admitted he was not hit until after he threw the tear gas,” Ellis said Thursday.
At the time of the incident, DHS defended Bovino’s actions saying that a Border Patrol transport van transporting undocumented immigrants was attacked by demonstrators.
“The mob of rioters grew more hostile and violent, advancing toward agents and began throwing rocks and other objects at agents, including one that struck Chief Greg Bovino in the head,” Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said in a statement after the incident.
That portrayal of what happened by the government was inaccurate. Greg Bovino was excoriated by Judge Sara Ellis for lying to her under oath.
BROADVIEW IS GROUND ZERO FOR PROTESTS
Currently Broadview, the Chicago detention center being used by DHS, has become ground zero for peaceful protests.
A group of moms from the western suburbs were arrested Friday morning during a protest against the separation of families outside of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in Broadview. Fourteen mothers jumped over the barricades and sat in a circle on Beach Street to “demand an end” to the immigration raids that have swept through the Chicago area since the Trump administration launched “Operation Midway Blitz” in September. Less than a minute later, the women were arrested by Cook County sheriff’s deputies. The women were charged with obstruction, disorderly conduct and pedestrian walking on highways.
A RESISTANCE IS GROWING
In a Tribune article written by Andrew Carter on Sunday, November 9th, he writes about how the various communities within the city of Chicago are building robust peaceful resistance efforts. They use a combination of whistles, cell phones, and verbal shaming.
Baltazar Enriquez began wearing his whistle in June when the threat of the Trump administration’s immigration raids was more focused and the fear perhaps less widespread in Chicago. The whistle- green plastic, attached to an orange lanyard- was at first a small gesture of preparedness. It has since become a symbol of resistance.
A growing peaceful resistance movement to Trump and his authoritarian take over efforts has been forming across Chicago and its suburbs.
EVANSTON, A SANCTUARY CITY, HAS BECOME ANOTHER HOT SPOT
Evanston, a suburbs north of Chicago, has become a hot spot because overly aggressive immigration agents are creating huge community activism in response. Below is a must see interview done by the mayor of Evanston, Mayor Biss, with an Evanston resident, an attorney, who showed up at the scene of a car accident that had been deliberately caused by border patrol agents. She was part of a large community protest.
She recounts how she was violently grabbed by border patrol agents, abducted, thrown in the car with two other American citizens (one of them a young man who had been beaten and was asking for medical help which they did not give him), handcuffed, and driven around by the “Keystone Cops”- going fast the wrong way down alleys, trying to cause more accidents, threatening people with their guns and mace, and even at one point threatening to use mace inside the car. It’s a harrowing account of what happened– what she saw and heard and learned when she was in that car for over an hour with these border patrol agents.
This interview will help you understand what Trump and this goon squad are doing to create mayhem in and around Chicago. https://danielbiss.substack.com/p/daniel-biss-talks-with-detained-ice?utm_source=publication-search
Suburbs like Evanston are learning from places like Little Village in Chicago about how to create an effective resistance movement in their communities. There are whistle brigades and rapid response and tracking teams. The community uses whistles to warn that ICE is around and cell phones to film these ICE and border patrol agents to document how THEY are the ones creating trouble and violating the law. Many of the community members berate the agents verbally saying- “go get a better job”, “you should be ashamed of yourself” “you are the ones breaking the law.” This kind of community response might seem weak in the face of the agents who are pointing guns and using mace as weapons and who have probably been told they will not be held responsible for breaking the law themselves, but as you will hear if you listen to the interview, the agents were afraid of the organized community response. This kind of community response is very effective and got the agents to back off.
THE GOP IS WRECKING ITS BRAND BY STAYING WITH TRUMP
Trump is turning parts of America into Nazi Germany where masked armed agents are swarming streets in their unmarked cars where there are high density Hispanic populations and otherwise quiet, peaceful suburban residential areas in and around Chicago where many Hispanic immigrants work. Shockingly, Americans who are peacefully protesting are being kidnapped by roving border patrol and ICE agents off the streets simply for voicing dissent or in the case of the young man who was beaten, simply trying to help when he saw there was a car accident.
This is not the America most Americans want. This is not the America most Americans voted for when they elected Trump. Trump is unpopular and will get even more unpopular as he continues his authoritarian coup.
On Sunday Trump went to the NFL Washington Commanders game and was booed.
Donald Trump became the first sitting president in nearly a half-century at a regular-season NFL game, attending the Washington Commanders‘ 44-22 loss to the visiting Detroit Lions on Sunday.
There were loud boos from some spectators in the stands when Trump was shown on the videoboard late in the first half — standing in a suite with House Speaker Mike Johnson — and again when the president was introduced by the stadium announcer at halftime.