Earlier this week, the Department of Homeland Security announced that the scores of federal agents deployed in and around Chicago the last several weeks were responsible for a “historic drop in crime” in Chicago.
“Since initiating Operation Midway Blitz in Chicago, homicides decreased 16%, shootings decreased 35%, robberies decreased 41%, vehicular carjackings decreased 48%, and transit crime decreased 20%,” wrote assistant secretary Tricia McLaughlin in a DHS press release.
“It’s common sense—when you remove the worst of the worst criminal illegal aliens from our country—crime rates plummet,” McLaughlin wrote.
But it’s unclear if that’s true, as DHS did not respond to WBEZ’s requests for clarification.
Without additional information about how the numbers were calculated, what periods of time were compared, and what data sources were used, it’s difficult to fact-check the department’s claims that the city has experienced an historic drop in crime.
In addition, critics point out that crime has been declining in Chicago for years and any reduction during Operation Midway Blitz could simply be a continuation of that trend. Critics also say that a weekslong immigration enforcement campaign isn’t likely to have a greater impact on curbing crime than the more long-term, entrenched efforts of local law enforcement and community organizations that have been operating for years.
“You don’t drive violence down in our city by indiscriminately throwing tear gas at community members and at our Chicago Police Department,” says Garien Gatewood, Chicago’s Deputy Mayor of Community Safety.
Gatewood said he saw no drastic change in crime as a result of federal immigration enforcement over the past several weeks. “We were already doing the work to drive violence down.”
The figures for several violent crime categories are down so far this year compared to last year, according to a WBEZ analysis of publicly reported crime data from the City of Chicago. But the drop in those figures during the period that federal agents began targeted immigration enforcement in Chicago closely resembles, and in some cases is less than, the declines witnessed this year before the start of the deportation blitz.
WBEZ compared the number of violent crime victimizations — the total number of crime victims as opposed to crime incidents — this year and last year across several different timeframes and crime types, including homicides, shootings, robberies and carjackings.
From September 8 through November 11, when “Operation Midway Blitz” began through the date DHS announced their crime statistics, the number of violent crime victimizations dropped by 28.5% from 2024 to 2025. But in the months before — from January 1 through September 7 — violent crime declined at a similar rate, by 21.2%, from 2024 to 2025. Victimization rates for homicides, shootings, robberies and carjackings followed a similar pattern.
Even during periods of the same length preceding the deportation blitz, which lasted 65 days from September 8 through November 11, violent crime in all the categories declined at similar rates as they did during the blitz. WBEZ also examined violent crime rates from July 5 through September 7, May 1 through July 4 and February 25 through April 30.
Chicago’s declining crime has been years in the making
This comes as Chicago has seen its fewest summer murders since 1965, and major cities across the country are continuing to see declines in homicide and violent crime rates in recent years.
“When we see these more recent crime trends that are after federal interventions across many cities in the U.S., they appear to be continuations of declining crime rates in many cities,” said Ernesto Lopez, a senior research specialist at the Council on Criminal Justice, who studies crime trends across the country.
He adds there are seasonal variations in crime rates and that it’s unlikely a two-month deployment of federal agents focused on immigration enforcement would have any lasting impact on violent crime reduction.
“Shifting a homicide rate in a very large city is really difficult to do,” Lopez said. With “a very narrow, targeted intervention, you wouldn’t necessarily expect to see large city-wide changes.”
Gatewood added that CPD typically sees a decline in crime from September through November, and it takes years to understand how to efficiently deploy resources and offer support to the police department.
He said that kind of work doesn’t happen in a couple of months. “It doesn’t. That’s just not the reality,” Gatewood said. “You can have a media blitz [in that time] … but the work that we’ve done has been years in the making.”
Gatewood attributes the reduction in Chicago’s crime to the collaborative work over the last two-and-a-half years between the Chicago Police Department, partners of community violence intervention and victim services partners.
He also points to city data that shows historic declines in crime, and he says the downward trend is due to the work of CPD and eight community partners.
“I didn’t see any federal agents at 4 a.m. responding to mass shootings or tender-age children being shot. I was out there with the Chicago Police Department and our partners in victim services and our teams,” he said. “I didn’t see them helping drive violence down, so you don’t get to put your name on the project at the end and act like you’ve been here.”
Feds causing fear rather than safety
In a statement launching “Operation Midway Blitz,” DHS said the operation would “target the criminal illegal aliens who flocked to Chicago and Illinois because they knew Governor Pritzker and his sanctuary policies would protect them and allow them to roam free on American streets.”
Acting ICE Director Todd Lyons said in October that more than 3,000 people have been arrested during Midway Blitz, but he indicated a smaller number were arrested in Chicago. The department said it was targeting “pedophiles, rapists, abusers, armed robbers, and other violent thugs.” But DHS and ICE have shared few details on the arrests, making it difficult to independently verify some of the alleged crimes and total number of arrests.
Ed Yohnka, director of communications and public policy at the ACLU of Illinois, says the way DHS reported the crime statistics with no context or citation is cause for concern.
“For many people, it raises a fundamental question about whether or not they can believe anything that the federal government says,” Yohka said. It “raises a question about whether or not this administration is going to concoct whatever narrative they need in order to justify their actions.”
Yohnka said the “aggressive, reckless, violent immigration enforcement” in the Chicago area the last several months has created an atmosphere of fear rather than safety.
“Folks here know what’s happened,” Yohnka said. “They witnessed it with their own eyes, and they know that none of the activity that we’ve seen in this way has had any impact on public safety in our own community.”
City leaders have echoed that sentiment.
“ICE has not made our city safer,” said Chicago Deputy Mayor for Immigrant, Migrant, and Refugee Rights Beatriz Ponce de Leon, in a statement this week. “They have caused fear, chaos, and confusion in our communities and they have put people in harm’s way. That’s not safety.”