The Chicago kidnappings have begun
-
A federal judge in Chicago on Thursday issued a sweeping injunction that puts more permanent restrictions on the use of force by immigration agents during “Operation Midway Blitz,” saying top government officials lied in their testimony about threats that protesters posed and that their unlawful behavior on the streets “shows no signs of stopping.”
“I find the government’s evidence to be simply not credible,” U.S. District Judge Sara Ellis said in an oral ruling from the bench, describing a litany of incidents over the past month and a half where citizens were tear-gassed “indiscriminately,” beaten and tackled by agents and struck in the face with pepper spray balls.
https://www.chicagotribune.com/2025/11/06/operation-midway-blitz-injunction/
-
Good grief.
-
"U.S. Border Patrol boss Greg Bovino, fellow agents to soon leave Chicago but could be back four-fold in March
Homeland Security Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin insists “we aren’t leaving Chicago,” but the feds’ immigration campaign is expected to begin winding down. However, one DHS source said 1,000 agents could return in the spring, up from 250 now." -
Maybe 10 minutes away from my house.
Federal immigration agents pointed rifles at bystanders and tried to break down doors as they took over an apartment complex in unincorporated Northbrook on Wednesday.
The immigration enforcement action, which took place over the course of around 50 minutes Wednesday morning, Nov. 5, led to the arrest of a man living in the Salem Walk apartments and involved more than a dozen U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents and an armored car, according to eyewitness accounts and photos and videos shared with the Tribune.
“ICE basically held… 90 apartments hostage while they’re trying to get to one man,” said Bobbie Montgomery, a Salem Walk resident.
On Wednesday, Montgomery watched as the agents unsuccessfully tried to break down the stairwell door with a battering ram.
Smith, who followed along on the video call, said he marveled at their ineptitude. “The door opens outwards,” he explained.
https://www.chicagotribune.com/2025/11/11/ice-agents-northbrook-point-rifles-bystanders/
-
“The door opens outwards”
-
Some street vendors say they are barely making enough to survive, due to the widespread immigration crackdown in the Chicago area.
Community members are stepping in and finding creative ways to help them.
"We try to get out at 6-7 a.m., get into the neighborhoods, buy all the products they have so that they can leave and go home and be safe with their family for the rest of the day," said Rick Rosales, a community organizer with CyclingxSolidarity.
They are being called "buyouts."
Groups of cyclists are riding through neighborhoods across Chicago, and purchasing everything street vendors have, from tamales to elotes.
The movement is meant to support street vendors, as many fear being detained, during "Operation Midway Blitz."
Good riddance. ICE has moved to Charlotte.
-
It may not be much, but at least it's something.
Arlington Heights says no to immigration agents using public spaces
Arlington Heights village board members have voted unanimously to ban immigration enforcement officials from using municipal property, though some trustees call the measure unenforceable.
Arlington Heights village board members have voted unanimously to ban immigration enforcement officials from using municipal property, though some trustees call the measure unenforceable.
The 8-0 vote late Monday came at the end of a debate lasting almost two hours in front of a packed village boardroom of residents opposed to the presence of federal agents in town in recent months.
“What our neighbors and residents have experienced, it is not safety. It is fear,” said Trustee Carina Santa Maria, who proposed the ordinance. “If we see this happening and choose not to act, then what is our role? We are elected to protect our neighbors — all of them — to create conditions for safety and stability, to take a stand when something is wrong.”
“It is not enough to say this isn’t our jurisdiction,” she added. “If it’s not ours, then whose is it?”
The ordinance, pending a final vote Dec. 1, would prohibit immigration agents from using any village-owned property, facilities or resources for the purpose of conducting civil enforcement operations. That would include areas already closed off to the public at large, such as a parking lot behind the police station.
But it also would encompass municipal parking areas that have spaces normally open to the public, such as the top floor of the Vail Avenue garage and the lot across the street from village hall.
Though he and other trustees eventually came to support the ordinance, Trustee Colin Gilbert questioned its enforceability and the expense of potentially having to fight such a measure in federal court.
“I don’t want anybody to be lulled into some sort of false sense of security that everything is OK, because we cannot keep these agents out of Arlington Heights,” Gilbert said. “What we can try to do is not allow them to use a small pocket of property. We can’t even do that. We can tell them we’d rather they didn’t. But in terms of enforceability, there’s just not much we can do.”
Trustee Jim Bertucci called the ordinance “window dressing.”
Nearly two dozen residents who later came up to the boardroom podium disagreed.
“Sometimes, it’s the principle of the thing, and not the enforceability of the thing,” said Robert Buehler, whose Ring doorbell camera footage of an Oct. 30 immigration arrest went viral.
The video captured federal agents pushing to the ground a mail carrier who tried to intervene in the arrest of a landscaper.
“I’m angry and saddened that my property played a role in this politically-motivated targeting of the Chicago area and the racial profiling of landscapers and others randomly working in our neighborhoods,” Buehler said.
The Rev. Corey Brost, executive director of the Viator House of Hospitality, which houses young men seeking asylum, said one of his former residents is now in federal custody at a jail in Michigan. The 20-year-old Venezuelan man, who has an active asylum case and a work permit, was arrested by federal officers while repairing a sign at an East Dundee gas station, Brost said.
“We need to be on the right side of history,” Brost said of his support for the village ordinance. “This is a time of moral reckoning. And as for enforceability, Rosa Parks didn’t have the law on her side either.”
