The Border Patrol official who led aggressive U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids in California announced Tuesday that he is expanding his deportation operation in Chicago, a significant ramp-up of an unpredictable Trump administration campaign that has increasingly stoked fear within the city’s immigrant communities.
“Well, Chicago, we’ve arrived!” Gregory Bovino wrote in a social media post, accompanied by a video of Border Patrol agents in Chicago. “Operation At Large is here to continue the mission we started in Los Angeles — to make the city safer by targeting and arresting criminal illegal aliens.”
Speaking to reporters, Gov JB Pritzker said sources told his office the Trump administration aimed to increase raids as Chicagoans celebrated Mexican Independence Day on Tuesday. The operation also comes as President Donald Trump once again vowed the National Guard would be deployed to Chicago despite opposition from Pritzker.
Department of Homeland Security Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin wrote on social media that Chicago arrests on Tuesday included people arrested for violent assault, felony stalking or DUI. She did not provide any names. DHS Secretary Kristi Noem was also in the Chicago area for a few hours Tuesday but had left by noon, according to Pritzker.
Bovino, who is typically dressed in tactical gear, led the latest deportation effort in Los Angeles that led to more than 5,000 arrests. Dubbed “Operation At Large,” the nationwide plan is an escalated effort targeting those who lack legal status. The California raids included ICE agents popping out of an unmarked rental box truck and arresting people in a Home Depot parking lot. The bust, called “Operation Trojan Horse,” was documented in a polished social media video, accompanied by rap music. Agents in California also smashed car windows and patrolled a park on horseback.
Tuesday’s enforcement in Chicago and the surrounding suburbs are separate from the Department of Homeland Security’s “Operation Midway Blitz,” which was announced two weeks ago.
Immigration advocates say the effort is largely designed to spread fear among the area’s immigrant population and push people to self-deport.
The administration has amped up the hype around its enforcement efforts by embedding influencers while federal immigration officers conduct enforcement operations — and by relying on social media and friendly conservative media.
Replying to a social media post by Gov. JB Pritzker’s Deputy Chief of Staff for Communications Matt Hill, who criticized that ICE hasn’t called Pritzker but has “the time to create a TikTok video showing off beautiful Chicago scenery,” Bovino wrote, “Tik tok, tik tok, time is up!!”
“We’ve already arrested several criminals this morning. Much more to come, so stay tuned my friend,” Bovino wrote. In other posts, Bovino said he was “headed to McKinley Park” and Franklin Park.
A picture of Silverio Villegas Gonzalez is seen at a memorial located along the street near where he was shot and killed by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent on Sept. 15 in Franklin Park. Villegas Gonzalez, a single father of two young children, was shot and killed by ICE agents after trying to drive away from a traffic stop on Sept. 12.
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More than a dozen people were taken into custody by federal immigration agents Monday in raids near a police station in west suburban West Chicago and a Chicago courthouse, according to a state lawmaker and court officials. Federal agents were also spotted around courthouses in Chicago on Monday.
Speaking on WBEZ on Tuesday morning, Mayor Brandon Johnson said he planned to sign an executive order on Tuesday “to protect people’s right to protest,” as ICE’s deportation campaign continues. He called President Donald Trump’s deportation operations a “provocation of terror and anxiety.”
Johnson last month also signed an executive order aimed at holding federal law enforcement in the city to municipal rules on policing, while also keeping tabs on new deployments and informing citizens of their rights.
“I think it’s unfortunate that this president refuses to cooperate and work with municipalities across this country,” Johnson said. “We want criminals off the streets. There’s ways you can coordinate.”
President Donald Trump on Monday teased that Chicago is “probably next,” for a federal task force — and the National Guard — to combat crime. His comments came as he announced a “Memphis Safe Task Force,” which also includes the deployment of the National Guard and law enforcement from the FBI, ATF, DEA, ICE and Homeland Security.
“We’re going to be doing Chicago, probably next,” Trump said.
Trump voiced similar statements on Tuesday on the White House Lawn, saying he’s planning to send troops to Chicago, despite opposition from Gov. JB Pritzker.
“So I’m going to go to Chicago early, against Pritzker. Pritzker is nothing,” Trump said. “If Pritzker was smart, he’d say please come in.”
Pritzker fired back that “you can’t take anything that [Trump] says seriously from one day to the next. He’s attacking verbally. Sometimes he attacks [by] sending his agents in. Sometimes he forgets. I think he might be suffering from some dementia… and the next day he’ll wake up on the other side of the bed and stop talking about Chicago.”
Pritzker said Tuesday’s ramped-up raids seemed more widespread, but still followed the Trump playbook “to cause challenges and mayhem on the ground.”
“The harder the ICE agents come in, the more people want to intervene and step in the way of them. And when that happens and when there’s any kind of touching or engagement with those ICE agents that involves actual potential battery, well, that’ll be the excuse,” Pritzker said. “And it’s wrong, by the way — they are causing it.”
The Democratic governor has claimed for weeks that the White House strategy is to increase immigration enforcement, prompting protests that could then be used to justify a National Guard deployment.
Rejecting Trump’s assertion that the raids are intended to tamp down crime — which has fallen in Chicago over the last few years — Pritzker says it’s about normalizing military presence in communities to decrease voter turnout in the 2026 midterm elections.
Pritzker said Bovino “has a history of acting in ways that are quite violent against people, many of whom are not criminals.
“They are grabbing people who have Brown skin, or who speak with an accent, or who speak in another language, and not people who are guilty of or are accused of perpetrating a violent crime,” the governor said.
“Think about those children that are in school right now, who will come home to an empty house because their parents have been taken with an administrative warrant, not a judicial warrant. Not because someone committed a crime, but an administrative warrant issued by an ICE agent,” Pritzker said. “Now a child is showing up at home… This is what ICE is doing. This is what the president of the United States is doing. It’s wrong.”
Immigration raids this week seem to have focused on the suburbs, though Pritzker said his office remains in the dark on federal plans. The raids also create confusion for local police departments who “see skirmishes going on, [and] they don’t know if those are real ICE officials, especially if they’re wearing masks in unmarked cars and aren’t carrying or showing their identification,” Pritzker said.
Contributing: Mariah Woelfel.