CHICAGO (news agencies) — Top Trump administration officials, including “border czar” Tom Homan and the acting deputy attorney general, visited Chicago on Sunday to witness the start of ramped-up immigration enforcementin the nation’s third-largest city.
Few details of the operation were immediately made public, including the number of arrests. But the sheer number of federal agencies involved showed President Donald Trump’s willingness to use federal law enforcement beyond the Department of Homeland Security to carry out his long-promised mass deportations.
Acting Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove said he observed immigration agents from the DHS along with agents from the FBI, Drug Enforcement Administration and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. He didn’t offer further details on the operation, which came days after DHS expanded immigration authority to agencies in the Department of Justice, including the DEA and ATF.
“We will support everyone at the federal, state, and local levels who joins this critical mission to take back our communities,” Bove said in a statement. “We will use all available tools to address obstruction and other unlawful impediments to our efforts to protect the homeland. Most importantly, we will not rest until the work is done.”
The DEA’s Chicago office posted pictures on X showing Bove and Homan with agents from ATF and Customs and Border Protection.
Since Trump took office, similar immigration enforcement operations have been publicized around the country, which U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement says are ongoing.
But the show of force in Chicago was notable. The DEA also posted pictures Sunday on social media of an immigration enforcement operation at a Colorado night club outside Denver where 50 people were taken into custody and of agents preparing for an operation in Los Angeles.
ICE spokesman Jeff Carter said the agency “began conducting enhanced targeted operations” Sunday in Chicago but declined other details. Spokesmen for the FBI, ATF and the DEA confirmed their involvement but didn’t give other information.
Chicago residents, especially in immigrant circles, have already been on edge for months in anticipation of large-scale arrests touted by the Trump administration. The atmosphere has been especially tense the past week as top Trump officials vowed to start immigration enforcement operations in Chicago the day after Trump’s inauguration before walking back those statements.
Last week, Bove issued a memo ordering federal prosecutors to investigate state or local officials who they believe are interfering with the Trump administration’s crackdown on immigration, in an apparent warning to the dozens of so-called sanctuary jurisdictions across America.
Chicago has some of the strongest sanctuary protections, which bar cooperation between city police and immigration agents.
Immigrant rights groups have tried to prepare for the aggressive crackdown with campaigns for immigrants to know their rights in case of an arrest. City officials have done the same, publishing similar information at public bus and train stations.
On Friday, Chicago Public Schools officials mistakenly believed ICE agents had come to a city elementary school and put out statements to that effect before learning the agents were from the Secret Service. Word of immigration agents at a school — which have long been off limits to immigration agents until Trump ended the policy last week — drew swift criticism from community groups and Gov. JB Pritzker.
The Democratic governor, a frequent Trump critic, questioned the aggressive approach of the operations and the chilling effect for others, particularly for law-abiding immigrants who have been in the country for years.
“We need to get rid of the violent criminals. But we also need to protect people, at least the residents of Illinois and all across the nation, who are just doing what we hope that immigrants will do,” Pritzker said Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Union.”
On Saturday, several Chicago-based immigrant rights groups filed a lawsuit against ICE, seeking an injunction prohibiting certain types of immigration raids in Chicago.
“Immigrant communities who have called Chicago their home for decades are scared,” said Antonio Gutierrez from Organized Communities Against Deportation, one of the plaintiffs. “We refuse to live in fear and will fight any attempts to roll back the work we’ve done to keep families together.”
Durkin Richer reported from Washington.
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