Over the last three weeks, federal agents have ramped up efforts to carry out the Donald Trump administration’s immigration and crime enforcement plans in Chicago and its surrounding suburbs. Agents are detaining people of various immigration statuses, and sometimes even U.S. citizens, during home raids and traffic stops. An unidentified ICE agent shot and killed 38-year-old Silverio Villegas González during a traffic stop in Franklin Park on Sept. 12.
Still, what remains unclear is whether President Donald Trump will follow through on his threat to send federal troops here to Chicago. He has repeatedly threatened to send in troops to “get the city’s crime in order.” He recently federalized the National Guard in Washington, D.C., and Los Angeles, and signed an executive order on Sept. 15 to establish a multiagency federal task force to be deployed to Memphis.
There are two ideas at play under Trump’s plans. There’s American militarism. Equity and Transformation (E.A.T.) executive director Richard Wallace described militarism as a belief system that’s deeply invested in the idea of war and military use on civilians.
And there’s military occupation, the presence of a military force in a pedestrian community, like what’s happening in Los Angeles and Washington, D.C.
”So what we’re seeing with ICE and the National Guard, more specifically, is the presence of a military force in communities,” Wallace said. “What I think about what militarism is, more or less, it’s the belief system of the military [being used] to solve crises or to quash civil disobedience or civil unrest. Opposed to assessing the issue at hand, we just use the military to solve it.”
Some Chicagoans are organizing a resistance to militarism and military occupation. Dozens of Black-led faith and community organizations developed a 30-day emergency response, which includes Know-Your-Rights training sessions, mental health support and mutual aid. E.A.T., which is part of the Black-led coalition, is hosting a weekly free breakfast program in East Garfield Park in the spirit of the Illinois Black Panther Party.
“To quote the great [rapper] Bone Crusher, I ain’t never scared. I won’t admit fear because that’s what fascism wants for you to run scared,” Stevie Valles, Chicago Votes’ executive director, told The TRiiBE. “We just got to be tactical. This is real-life fascism, and we gotta try our best to maintain some steady emotions and support each other, to navigate this crisis.”
With the ever-changing news cycle, there’s been a feeling among some that Chicago is in the clear when it comes to federal troop deployment. But that’s simply not the case, according to Asha Ransby-Sporn, a longtime organizer who leads the Chicago Black Voter Project.
“Last week, we saw a [federal agent] even shoot and kill someone and then start to spread misinformation about who that person was and how those events unfolded, which is similar to what we see when police kill Black Americans, and then try to make it out like they were to blame,” said Ransby-Sporn about Villegas González.
Latiné and Black communities are interconnected by common struggles: systemic racism and overpolicing. A recent U.S. Supreme Court decision allows federal agents to stop anyone they believe to be illegally in the country, and race is one of the factors that can be taken into consideration. This move is akin to New York City’s stop-and-frisk program that enabled racial profiling, according to the ACLU of Wisconsin.
Whether it’s the Chicago Police Department, the National Guard or Immigration and Customs Enforcement, this “is just something that adds to any problem of violence or lack of safety in our communities,” Ransby-Sporn said. “It’s important for us to be in solidarity but not just solidarity out of a moral place but also from a shared collective interest.”
She added that the federal money spent on ICE is being taken from funding for Medicaid and SNAP benefits. The real enemy, she said, is “the billionaires that are stealing from all of us.”
Despite looming collective anxiety, organizing networks, movement-building and legislative wins make Chicago well equipped to stand up against the Trump administration’s militaristic plans, said KB, an organizer with DC Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression who uses they/them pronouns. The alliance, based in Washington, D.C., is a mass defense organization — and branch of the National Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression — that’s committed to uniting peoples’ movements and mounting an organized fightback against racist, political repression.
KB also pointed to the city’s support from Democratic leadership as a plus.
“Chicago is well-positioned to take up that fight and to lead that struggle,” KB said. “I would say the best preparation is to continue to do what the organizations and coalitions in Chicago have been doing to fight back and to defend the community against this impending occupation.”
National Guard mobilization and additional federal agents have resulted in hundreds of arrests in D.C.: “So [there’s’] a multiagency effort to violate people’s civil rights and to openly and brazenly and target our people in our community, but we’re fighting back,” KB said, referring to Trump’s takeover in D.C.
This critical moment should be taken seriously, and there’s no room for divisiveness, said Frankie Seabron, a third-generation D.C. native and program manager with Harriet’s Wildest Dreams, a Black-led abolitionist community defense hub based in D.C. The organization supports and protects people at risk of state-sanctioned violence through legal empowerment, political and civic education, mass protests and organizing campaigns.
“This is a battle for people’s hearts and minds. So, political education is so important right now,” Seabron told The TRiiBE. “The fundamental thing is, if you’re silent about your pain, they will kill you and say you loved it. That’s a quote by Zora Neale Hurston. Every Chicagoan should be looking out for their neighbor.”
Through their organizations, KB and Seabron have been providing support to D.C. residents through rapid-response efforts, which include cop-watching, court support, and political education. They both view the support from Illinois elected officials, such as Gov. J.B. Pritzker, as an advantage but say they lack that type of backing from D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser. On Sept. 2, Bowser issued an executive order to continue working with federal law enforcement, despite Trump’s public emergency declaration set to end on Sept. 10.
“When your mayor, elected officials and your governor are able to stand up and say, ‘Actually, this is not what our people need. Our people need resources. Our people don’t need more police,’ it makes all the difference in the posture of what you have in order to fight back,” Seabron said.
Pritzker encourages residents to resist peacefully and document interactions on their cellphones with ICE agents. And Mayor Brandon Johnson and Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul have indicated they are prepared to fight federal troop deployments in court.
But there are still concerns among immigrant rights groups and the city’s immigrant population, which makes up about 22% of the city’s population.
“People are already struggling,” according to Fasika Alem, programs director at the Woodlawn-based United African Organization. “They’re so afraid to even go to work in order to survive, and I think that would just make things worse. How do you support people who are too terrified to take their kids to school or to go earn a living?”
The organization provides direct services to immigrants, including assistance in accessing public benefits, housing, employment and education. Alem added that immigrants are afraid to go in person to get public benefits, even though they’re eligible, because they fear being detained.
Those anxious feelings have also been expressed by some Black civic leaders who recently denounced the Trump administration’s threats to send military forces to Chicago. In a written statement, three Black organizers, including Ransby-Sporn and Wallace, also condemned racial profiling and the surge in ICE activity in Chicago.
“We live in a country that claims to believe in freedom and justice for all, but time and time again, we’ve seen how those words don’t always apply equally,” said Marlon Chamberlain, executive director of the Illinois Coalition to End Permanent Punishments.
“Black and brown communities are all too often treated as exceptions, criminalized, surveilled and punished rather than invested in,” Chamberlain said. “That is not freedom, that is not justice, and we refuse to accept that.”
The Trump administration has been boasting about its success in reducing crime in the nation’s capital and his plans to normalize this type of exponential increase in law enforcement presence, according to Seabron. This leads to more arrests.
D.C. has cooperation agreements with 32 independent policing agencies. So it was already heavily policed before additional troops and federal agents arrived, Seabron explained: “We were seeing HSI [Homeland Security], FBI, other federal agents, checkpoints and people literally just being stopped on the street.”
Additionally, Seabron said the local Metropolitan Police Department in D.C. has been assisting ICE in its immigration enforcement efforts.
“We’ve seen illegal checkpoints. We’ve seen warrantless searches and seizures,” she said.
KB has witnessed activists and organizers being unjustly targeted and arrested. In addition, they noted that jails, prisons and juvenile detention centers are overcrowded due to the sheer number of arrests. The increase in cases is also impacting the courts. D.C. U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro has reportedly instructed prosecutors to “bring more cases to federal court with the most serious charges they can pursue.”
“They’re being arrested on offenses that are fines or citations, namely, anything that has to do with marijuana. It’s really been disproportionately affecting the Black and immigrant working-class communities in D.C.,” KB said.
Both organizers encourage Chicago residents to tap into local community-based organizations to find out how they can resist Trump’s authoritarian aims.
“This isn’t a competition for liberation,” according to Seabron. “All of us need to be in lockstep so we can fight, fight, fight against fascism.”
Alem suggests Chicago residents who are citizens provide rapid support to immigrant communities by accompanying them to appointments, whether at the aid office or court, for those who are scared to go to appointments alone.
It’s also essential for those who do plan to participate in First Amendment activities to know the full extent of their rights, according to Michelle Garcia, ACLU of Illinois deputy legal director.
“You have the right to protest in public spaces,” Garcia said. “You can record actions by law [enforcement], including the National Guard and immigration officers. It’s just important that you don’t obstruct or get in their way or try to resist them.”
Here’s what ACLU of Illinois recommends:
- Call the Illinois Coalition for Immigration and Refugee Rights hotline at (855) 435-7693 to track interactions between federal agents conducting immigration enforcement.
- Turn off facial recognition on cell phones.
- Consider using app platforms like Signal or Telegram to avoid being tracked.
“Authoritarianism wins if people don’t fight back and speak up,” Garcia said.
