Adding insult to injury, Trump sent the National Guard into Chicago yesterday to supplement the already-underway illegal ICE raids happening in the city. Some 7,000 city residents, determined to protect their city from the president’s attacks on democracy, turned out at a spontaneous nighttime protest last night around the downtown Trump Tower.
“The National Guard is not wanted here. ICE is not wanted here. This has nothing to do with making us any safer,” a young woman who identified herself as a University of Illinois at Chicago student told People’s World. She withheld her name for fear of possible retribution from pro-MAGA forces.
A woman originally from Mexico who holds a green card told People’s World that the ICE presence in the city has made her afraid to go out shopping, but that she felt safe in the large crowd of supporters. “I heard and saw online that some people who go out to the stores don’t come back,” she said. Stoking fear and division, of course, is a major purpose of both the ICE activities and the troop deployment.
In addition to the ICE raids like the one in which they raided a South Side apartment building recently, arresting and terrorizing all the tenants, they have been kidnapping individuals and sending them off to detention from locations like shopping centers or wherever they can grab them.
A high level of sophistication was expressed by many in the crowd. They are using their cell phones, they said, to take pictures of and document anything they see that is connected with the activities of ICE or the National Guard. People had video on their phones of the National Guard patrolling some of the exclusive shopping streets in Chicago. “They are the ones who break the law, attack people, and carry out illegal raids,” the UIC student said.
Much of Trump’s occupation of the city with troops is designed to present a show of force and tell people he is the one in charge of the country. To that end, National Guard troops sent into the big cities make public appearances on shopping streets or places frequented by tourists rather than meet with or discuss anything with local officials about the real problems of the cities, whether they are connected to crime or anything else.
The first 500 National Guard troops entered the city yesterday after several days of organizing the deployment at an Army Reserve center in the suburbs west of the city.
The deployments are strongly opposed by both Chicago’s Mayor Brandon Johnson and Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker.
The governor has taken issue with what he says are too many Democratic leaders and lawmakers who are unwilling to step up and fight harder against the president’s attacks on democracy. “It shouldn’t be that they are afraid, because you know what? We are the targets. We have to be strong, we need to fight back.”
Pritzker included Democratic governors who have not stepped up and said, earlier this week, that he would quit the National Governors’ Association if they did not back up the Illinois fight against what he called “Trump’s illegal invasion.” He instructed Illinois State Police, he said, to “keep people safe when they see ICE agents or troops endangering them.”
Trump repeated statements today that both Pritzker and Johnson should be jailed.
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