At around 1 a.m. on Tuesday morning, armed federal agents rappelled from helicopters onto the roof of a five-storey residential apartment in the South Shore of Chicago. As other agents worked their way through the building from the bottom, they kicked down doors and threw flash bang grenades, rounding up adults and screaming children alike, detaining them in zip-ties and arresting dozens, according to witnesses and local reporting.
The military-style raid was part of a widespread immigration crackdown in the country’s third-largest city as part of the Trump Administration’s “Operation Midway Blitz,” which has brought a dramatic increase in federal raids and arrests.
The raid has drawn outrage throughout Chicago and the state of Illinois, with rights groups and lawmakers claiming it represents a dramatic escalation in tactics used by federal authorities in the pursuit of Trump’s aggressive immigration crackdown.
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Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker accused the federal agents of separating children from their parents, zip-tying their hands, and detaining them in “dark vans” for hours. Videos show flashbang grenades erupting on the street, followed by residents of the building—children among them—being led to a parking lot across the street. Photos of the aftermath show toys and shoes littering the apartment hallways, evidence of those pulled from their beds by the operation that included FBI and Homeland Security agents.
‘Military-style tactics’
Pritzker condemned the raid and said that he would work with local law enforcement to hold the agents accountable. “Military-style tactics should never be used on children in a functioning democracy,” he said in a statement on Friday. “This didn’t happen in a country with an authoritarian regime – it happened here in Chicago. It happened in the United States of America – a country that should be a bastion of freedom, hope, and the rights of our people as guaranteed by the Constitution,” he added.
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has touted some 900 arrests in its Chicago operation since it began in early September, as well as the 37 arrests made in the nighttime raid on Tuesday, all of whom it said were “involved in drug trafficking and distribution, weapons crimes and immigration violators.” The DHS said the building was targeted because it was “known to be frequented by Tren de Aragua members and their associates.” DHS Secretary Kristi Noem posted a video of the raid on social media, overlaid with dramatic music, showing helicopters shining bright lights onto the apartment, kicking down doors and armed agents leading people out of the building in cuffs.
A DHS spokesperson told CNN following the raid that children were taken into custody “for their own safety and to ensure these children were not being trafficked, abused or otherwise exploited.” The DHS also said that four children who are U.S. citizens with undocumented parents were taken into custody.
President Donald Trump has repeatedly threatened to send federal authorities and troops to Chicago and other Democratic-run cities to assist in immigration raids and to address what he perceives to be rampant crime.
The Trump Administration launched expanded immigration enforcement operations in Chicago on Sept. 8 as part of a wider federal crackdown on sanctuary cities across the country.
“This operation will target the worst of the worst criminal illegal aliens in Chicago,” ICE Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said in support of the operation.
Chicago officials mounted a pushback ahead of the crackdown. The city’s mayor, Brandon Johnson, signed an order directing Chicago law enforcement and officials not to cooperate with federal agents and established an initiative intended to protect residents’ rights. The city of Evanston, an urban suburb of Chicago, issued a statement warning its residents of impending raids by ICE agents and urging them to report sightings of law enforcement.
Zip-ties and guns
In the aftermath of the sweeping raid, residents and city lawmakers have been demanding answers from the federal government.
Ed Yohnka, from the American Civil Liberties Union of Illinois (ACLU), told MSNBC on Saturday that the raid represented “an escalation of force and violence” from the federal government in Chicago.
“What we saw was a full-fledged military operation conducted on the south side of Chicago against an apartment building,” he added.
“They just treated us like we were nothing,” Pertissue Fisher, a U.S. citizen who lives in the apartment building, told ABC7 Chicago in an interview soon after the raid. She said she was then handcuffed, held for hours, and released around 3 a.m. This was the first time she said a gun was ever put in her face.
Neighbor Eboni Watson, who witnessed the raid, also told the ABC station that the children were zip-tied—some of them were without clothes—when they were taken out of the residential building by federal agents. “Where’s the morality?” Watson said she kept asking during the raid.
“As a father, I cannot help but think about what it means for a child to be torn from their bed in the middle of the night, detained for no reason other than a show of force,” National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) president Derrick Johnson said in a statement. “The trauma inflicted on these young people and their families is unconscionable.”
ICE and DHS did not immediately respond to a request for comment from TIME.
Protests in the aftermath
The increased raids have turned Chicago into a flashpoint in the battle over Trump’s crackdown. Protests have hit the city in recent weeks over the ICE operations, and after the raid on Tuesday, they have concentrated outside the ICE Broadview detention facility near Chicago.
On Friday, at least 18 protestors were arrested near the facility as DHS head Kristi Noem said in a post late in the day that she and her team were blocked from entering the Village of Broadview Municipal Building.
“This is how JB Pritzker and his cronies treat our law enforcement. Absolutely shameful,” Noem said in a post on X.
On Saturday, DHS spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin shared on social media that law enforcement officers were “rammed by vehicles and boxed in by 10 cars.”
“One of the drivers who rammed the law enforcement vehicle was armed with a semi-automatic weapon,” McLaughlin said. “Law enforcement was forced to deploy their weapons and fire defensive shots at an armed US citizen who drove herself to the hospital to get care for wounds.”
ICE’s tactics were criticized again on Friday, when Chicago Alderperson Jessie Fuentes was handcuffed by federal immigration agents at a Chicago medical center after questioning agents about their warrant to arrest at the medical center.
Chicago’s Mayor Johnson called Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE)’s tactics “abusive.”
The raids come just days after President Trump signaled a desire to make greater use of the U.S. military in American cities during a speech to top military leaders, as he assailed a “war from within” the nation.
“We are under invasion from within,” he said, “no different than a foreign enemy, but more difficult in many ways, because they don’t wear uniforms.” In the same speech, he called for U.S. cities to be “training grounds” for the military.
Trump has frequently singled out Chicago in his long-running feud with Democratic-run cities, threatening it with his newly named “Department of War.”
