Good morning, Chicago. ✶
🔎 Below: Chaos and fear reigned across the Chicago area on Mexican Independence Day, with stepped-up raids and appearances by the U.S. Homeland Security secretary and a Border Patrol official who had led aggressive sweeps in California.
🗞️ Plus: Ideas to erase Chicago’s $1.15B shortfall, Ford City Mall memories and more news you need to know below.
📝 Keeping score: The Cubs beat the Pirates, 4-1; the White Sox fell to the Orioles, 8-7.
📧 Subscribe: Get this newsletter delivered to your inbox weekday mornings.
⏱️: A 9-minute read
TODAY’S WEATHER ☀️
Sunny with a high near 83.
TODAY’S TOP STORIES
Feds step up immigration raids around Chicago on Mexican Independence Day
By Mitchell Armentrout, Tina Sfondeles, Cindy Hernandez, Elvia Malagón and Chip Mitchell
Escalation in Elgin: Helicopter blades, bright lights and smoke bombs early Tuesday signaled a major escalation of President Donald Trump’s expansive deportation campaign across the Chicago area. Just before 5:30 a.m., an Elgin street was blocked off by armed U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers in military trucks and fatigues who were breaking into a front door.
Vague details: At the helm was U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem. She later issued a statement that her agents “took violent offenders off the streets with arrests for assault, DUI and felony stalking.” But federal officials didn’t release details on the latest slew of immigration arrests — and they also briefly detained an Elgin resident who is a U.S. citizen.
Unpredictable campaign: Confusion and fear reigned with the arrival of Gregory Bovino, the Border Patrol official who had led aggressive ICE raids in California and is now spearheading a significant ramp-up. Gov. JB Pritzker said sources told his office the Trump administration aimed to increase raids as Chicagoans celebrated Mexican Independence Day.
Show of force: The Trump administration is amping up hype around its enforcement efforts by embedding influencers as federal immigration officers conduct enforcement operations — and by relying on social media and conservative media to highlight raids.
Key context: Seven decades ago, former President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s administration deployed a sweeping initiative to arrest and deport Mexican nationals who lacked legal status in the U.S. Experts see parallels between Tuesday’s operation and Eisenhower’s past efforts.
✶✶✶✶
Mayor Johnson’s task force rolls out road map to erase city’s $1.15B shortfall
Reporting by Fran Spielman
Budget options: A new report commissioned by Mayor Brandon Johnson — who had asked a task force to imagine ways to erase Chicago’s $1.15 billion budget shortfall — lays out a vast array of options with potential to save the city as much as $455.5 million and generate as much as $1.65 billion in new revenue.
Revenue ideas: Ideas to raise revenue include raising taxes on bottled water, liquor, plastic bags and retail deliveries; restoring the monthly $4 employee head tax; an automatic escalator that locks in annual property tax increases at the rate of inflation; and increasing a monthly $9.50 garbage collection fee that has been frozen since 2015.
Cost-cutting pitches: Options to cut costs include flexible furlough days, which Johnson has steadfastly avoided for fear of alienating the labor unions that helped put him in office; raising the employee health care contribution; disbanding the Chicago Police Department’s 25-horse, 22-employee Mounted Unit; and diverting some 911 calls to area hospitals for possible telehealth services instead of an on-scene response.
✶✶✶✶
Open House Chicago announces 2025 sites with 30 new places to visit
Reporting by Lizzie Kane
New list: The Chicago Architecture Center has revealed this year’s Open House Chicago sites, which include 30 new spots on a list of more than 200.
Oct.18-19: Marking its 15th year in Chicago, the annual free event is intended to highlight the city’s well-known architecture and to make places that are rarely open to the public accessible. This year it runs Oct. 18-19.
This year’s lineup: The new sites include Morning Star Baptist Church in Grand Boulevard, Chicago Magic Lounge in Andersonville and the Near West Side’s Four Star Mushrooms, a company that grows gourmet mushrooms.
GAMES AND CROSSWORDS 🧩
This week’s Chicago-style crossword theme is: Museums.
Here’s your clue:
24D: “City in a Garden: Queer Art and Activism in Chicago” museum (abbr.)
MORE NEWS YOU NEED
- Quelling quantum: A group of South Shore and South Chicago residents and activists on Tuesday called for elected officials to halt development of the state’s quantum campus at the former U.S. Steel South Works site, and for the project’s funds to be invested in the community.
- South Side tech boost: Just north of the quantum site, Hyde Park Labs held its grand opening Tuesday, marking the launch of the first commercial, advanced research and development lab building on the South Side.
- No body cams: ICE agents weren’t wearing body cameras during the deadly shooting of a Mexican immigrant last week in the suburbs because a program requiring them was scrapped by the Trump administration.
- Police hearings battle: Chicago’s largest police union is asking the Illinois Supreme Court to weigh an appeal of a lower court ruling that requires public hearings for officers accused of egregious misconduct.
- Feds target CPS: The U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights has threatened to terminate Chicago Public Schools’ Magnet Schools Assistance Program grant over its Black Student Success Plan and treatment of transgender students in accordance with state law.
- Committee defies mayor: Over Mayor Johnson’s strong objections, a City Council committee agreed Tuesday to back legalization of video gambling at more than 3,500 restaurants, hotels, theaters and bowling alleys.
- Lady Gaga review: The pop star kicked off a three-night stand at the United Center on Monday with her “Mayhem Ball” production, a daring theatrical masterpiece that gives Broadway a run for its money, writes Selena Fragassi in a review for the Sun-Times. The run continues Wednesday.
WATCH: MAYOR JOHNSON Q&A ▶️
Mayor Brandon Johnson stopped by the WBEZ studio Tuesday morning for another round of “Ask the Mayor” with Sasha-Ann Simons, who’s now leading her new morning show, “In the Loop.”
Johnson answered questions from listeners who called in and discussed CTA funding, President Trump’s “Operation Midway Blitz” and more.
CHICAGO HISTORY 🛍️
Food courts to clothes racks: What are your mall memories?
Reporting by Natalie Y. Moore
Ode to the mall: Americans loved malls. They were sites of capitalism and memory. For young people, malls were gathering spaces to shop, people-watch and hang with friends without the prodding eyes of adults: First dates, first jobs, first spending money.
Ford City legacy: Those experiences have waned over on 76th Street and Cicero Avenue at Ford City Mall. When it opened in 1965, the mall quickly served as more than a shopping destination, providing cultural significance to the surrounding community with fashion shows, trade fairs and even church services on the lower level.
Shell of itself: Now the property is blighted on the outside and dimly lit on the inside, with a number of vacant shops. Anchor stores Montgomery Ward, Carson Pirie Scott and Sears shuttered years ago. The mall is in the process of being sold and replaced with an industrial campus.
Curious City question: Brenda Macias, 27, reached out to WBEZ’s program “Curious City” — she wanted to know what Ford City was like in its prime. Spoiler alert: that was in Macias’ mother’s teenage years in the 1990s.
Mall memories: Macias’ question inspired Curious City to mine for heyday memories at other local malls. Read on or listen to the episode here.
FROM THE PRESS BOX ⚾🏈
- Cubs are close: The team is one win away from clinching a playoff berth. The champagne showers could come Wednesday.
- Sox progress: Even for the White Sox’ exciting core, there are growing pains on the road from rebuilding to rebuilt, writes Vinnie Duber.
- Poles’ roster: Bears GM Ryan Poles’ goal of taking the NFC North and never giving it back seems impossible just two weeks into the season, writes Patrick Finley.
BRIGHT ONE ☀️
Meet Chicago’s next generation of jazz musicians
Reporting by Erica Thompson
Several rising local stars are asserting themselves as new bandleaders, composers and teachers on the scene — mastering jazz standards and pushing boundaries within the genre.
This month, you’ll be able to catch these musicians at the Englewood Jazz Festival, which runs through Saturday, and the Hyde Park Jazz Festival, happening Sept. 27-28 — two free showcases that mix the old and new guard.
Among the young vanguard is bassist Micah Collier, 25, who will perform with his band, Proximity, at the Hyde Park Jazz Festival on Sept. 27. Collier told the Sun-Times his band is part of a generation of musicians changing what jazz is known to sound like.
“Jazz is funk. Jazz is soul and R&B. It’s all pulling from the same place,” he said.
Collier will also join his friend and frequent collaborator, Frank Morrison, in a large ensemble during the Englewood Jazz Festival. On Friday, the group will play a four-movement piece composed by festival founder Ernest Dawkins.
Morrison, a 24-year-old Roseland resident, is an in-demand drummer. Last month, he played with his band, the FM Trio, as well as Dawkins’ band and two others at the Chicago Jazz Festival, which branded him the “hardest working man” at the event.
“I think about each person as having their own story when they’re playing, and I help them tell their story. It’s like I’m a co-signer,” Morrison said.
YOUR DAILY QUESTION ☕️
From Ford City to River Oaks, Evergreen Plaza and more, we want to hear about your Chicago-area mall memories. Tell us:
What’s one of your defining memories of going to the mall when you were younger? Be sure to tell us which mall and decade.
Email us (please include your first and last name). Your answers may be included in Thursday’s Morning Edition newsletter.
Thanks for reading the Sun-Times Morning Edition!
Got a story you think we missed? Email us here.
Written and curated by: Matt Moore
Editor: Eydie Cubarrubia
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