President Trump launches long-promised Chicago deportation campaign, dubbed ‘Operation Midway Blitz’

After weeks of threats, President Donald Trump’s administration announced Monday that federal agents were ramping up immigration enforcement across Illinois and Chicago.

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security announced the campaign on social media and said it would be used to target immigrants without legal status who have been protected by the “sanctuary policies” of Gov. JB Pritzker, one of Trump’s most prominent political opponents.

But Pritzker said the true goal of the initiative was to invoke fear — not to fight crime.

“Instead of taking steps to work with us on public safety, the Trump Administration’s focused on scaring Illinoisans,” Pritzker said Monday on the social media platform X.

The feds’ campaign came with a splashy and foreboding title: “Operation Midway Blitz.” It’s unclear whether the expected surge in immigration enforcement will come with support from the National Guard, as Trump has threatened.

A spokesperson for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement reported that four Mexican nationals were arrested on Sunday, although it was unclear whether that accounted for everyone who has been taken into custody.

They were previously arrested on a range of charges, including sexual assault, armed robbery, burglary, domestic battery and drunken driving. At least two of them were arrested on the Southwest Side, the spokesperson said.

Federal immigration authorities were spotted Monday at Cook County’s Leighton Criminal Courthouse, and an ICE vehicle was parked down the street with agents inside. No arrests had been reported, but advocates reported last week that two people were detained at the domestic violence courthouse.

“ICE has always operated in Chicago, targeting enforcement around the dangerous criminal aliens that are drawn to this sanctuary city, which protects them over law-abiding citizens,” the agency spokesperson said.

A man selling flowers near Curie Metropolitan High School was among those arrested Sunday, according to Any Huamani, an organizer with Brighton Park Neighborhood Council who helps monitor ICE activity and supports undocumented immigrants.

“It’s obvious that operations have begun in Chicago,” Huamani said at a news conference Monday. “And it’s even more obvious that they are going to be targeting our communities here in the Southwest Side.

“We’re afraid. Our neighbors are afraid.”

Pritzker, Mayor Brandon Johnson and other Illinois officials have spent weeks bracing for a surge in immigration enforcement and vowing to stand against Trump.

On Monday, Pritzker’s spokesperson Matt Hill said the governor’s office was still in the dark about the ICE campaign.

“Like the public and press, we are learning of their operations through their social media as they attempt to produce a reality television show,” Hill said. “As Trump has said himself, this is not about seriously fighting crime or reforming immigration — it’s about Trump’s plan to go to war with America’s third-largest city.”

Over the weekend, Trump stoked fears that he was planning to target Chicago with military force when he posted an image that referenced the film “Apocalypse Now” on his social media platform, Truth.

“Chicago is about to find out why it’s called the Department of War,” Trump said in the post Saturday that included an image of the president in a military uniform, helicopters flying over the city’s skyline and the words “Chipocalypse Now.”

By Sunday, Trump stepped back from what Pritzker, Johnson and others saw as a threat of military intervention.

“We’re going to clean them up so they don’t kill five people every weekend,” Trump told reporters. “That’s not war, that’s common sense.”

Trump’s administration is using a naval base in the northern suburbs to use as a command post for the immigration enforcement operation. On Monday, a source said a large contingent of federal agents had been sent there, potentially all 230 agents that were expected to arrive at Naval Station Great Lakes near North Chicago.

Meantime, Trump has continued to take aim at Chicago, highlighting the number of shootings and killings over the weekend. Six people were killed and 12 more wounded in shootings between Friday evening and Monday morning, Chicago police reported.

“I want to help the people of Chicago, not hurt them,” Trump wrote on his social media platform. “Only the Criminals will be hurt! We can move fast and stop this madness. The City and State have not been able to do the job.”

Despite Trump’s claims, crime has fallen significantly in recent years in Chicago. A WBEZ analysis earlier this month found that this summer saw the fewest killings since 1965.

Blistering reaction from Illinois Democrats

Trump’s onslaught of threats and attacks has kept both residents and lawmakers on guard.

Johnson said his administration was “concerned about potential militarized immigration enforcement without due process because of ICE’s track record of detaining and deporting American citizens and violating the human rights of hundreds of detainees.”

“ICE sent a 4-year-old boy with stage 4 kidney cancer to Honduras, even though the child was an American citizen,” Johnson said in a written statement. “There are more than 500 documented incidents of human rights abuses at detention facilities since

Trump took office, including deaths of detainees and alleged cases of sexual abuse of minors by federal immigration agents.”

Speaking on the Senate floor on Monday, Sen. Dick Durbin denounced Trump’s latest deportation campaign, calling it a cruel way to sow fear into immigration communities instead of addressing crime.

“If this President and this Administration want to join in fighting crime, on a cooperative, bipartisan basis, [then] count me in. But political theater, visions of Chicago being blown up by a ‘Department of War,’ I want no part of it,” Durbin said. “…The President is using fear to deflect and drive a wedge among us. Unfortunately, he seems to be succeeding to some extent, but the people of Chicago won’t take kindly to a bully and a wannabe dictator.”

Evanston braces for ICE agents

In Evanston, the city was warning residents of possible immigration raids as soon as Monday after being tipped off by state officials.

The northern suburb passed sanctuary city protections years ago, but officials are still trying to ensure that federal agents identify themselves. The city recently turned off its license plate reader cameras after a state audit found suburban police departments had been sharing data with federal immigration authorities, Evanston Mayor Daniel Biss said.

“We all just need to step up and keep each other safe,” Biss said. “The city is going to do everything we can, and we ask everyone to keep their eyes open to share credible information and not misinformation, because that can be dangerous as well.”

Although border czar Tom Homan warned that Chicago would be ground zero for mass deportations during Trump’s second term, data shows the administration hasn’t yet realized that goal.

Just about 1% of more than 130,000 ICE arrests between February and late July happened in Illinois, according to ICE data obtained by the Deportation Data Project through a public records request and analyzed by WBEZ and the Chicago Sun-Times.

Most of the people arrested have been from either Mexico, 36%, or Venezuela, 19%.

The number of immigration arrests had begun increasing earlier this summer. Monthly arrests of immigrants in Illinois more than doubled — from 152 in February to 343 in June, the data shows.

Huamani said advocates knew of at least three people who were arrested on the Southwest Side on Sunday. Her organization has been in contact with two of their families, including the loved ones of the flower vendor who was detained.

Huamani said she confronted DHS agents who were parked in West Lawn on Monday, but they wouldn’t tell her what they were doing in the area. She urged residents to brush up on their rights when interacting with federal agents, and said her organization would be canvassing neighborhoods to share information.

She also called on neighbors to support each other.

“If you know a neighbor that may be vulnerable at this moment and you’re able to provide that ride, or able to do that grocery shopping for them please do, be that support system because only we can take care of each other,” she said.

A handful of demonstrators gathered Monday afternoon outside of an ICE processing facility in Broadview, where arrestees are taken.

Karen Byrne, 60, said she lives nearby and has been showing up to monitor what’s happening as tensions have grown.

On Sunday, she said she saw a young boy who looked about 11 being escorted from an unmarked white van into the facility, along with other people who were apparently being processed.

“If it can happen to people they’re going after,” Byrne said. “It’ll happen to everyone.”

Contributing: Tom Schuba