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    Judge refuses to block Trump’s deployment of national guard to Illinois

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    A federal judge will not immediately block national guard troops from being deployed in Illinois after a lawsuit from the state against the president on Monday.Troops from Texas could be deployed to Chicago later this week, and Trump is also seeking to federalize the Illinois’national guard. A similar effort to deploy troops to Portland was blocked by a judge in Oregon.Illinois sued the Trump administration on behalf of the state and the city of Chicago on Monday after the president ordered national guard troops to deploy in the state against the governor’s wishes.The Illinois attorney general, Kwame Raoul, filed a lawsuit seeking to stop Donald Trump from calling up the state’s national guard or sending in troops from other states “immediately and permanently”.“The American people, regardless of where they reside, should not live under the threat of occupation by the United States military, particularly not simply because their city or state leadership has fallen out of a president’s favor,” the lawsuit says.Trump has gone after Democratic-led cities, sending in military to clamp down on protests and aid in his deportation agenda. He has declared war on Chicago, threatening for weeks to send in more troops while immigration agents scoured the city for people to deport, and local residents protested against his crackdown.Raoul argues that these efforts to send in guard troops against a state’s will infringe upon the state’s sovereignty and self-governance while leading to unrest and harm for the state’s residents.“It will cause only more unrest, including harming social fabric and community relations and increasing the mistrust of police. It also creates economic harm, depressing business activities and tourism that not only hurt Illinoisians but also hurt Illinois’s tax revenue,” Raoul wrote.Illinois’s governor, JB Pritzker, said the Trump administration had not discussed plans to federalize the state’s national guard or to send in troops from other states.“We must now start calling this what it is: Trump’s Invasion,” he said in a statement. “It started with federal agents, it will soon include deploying federalized members of the Illinois national guard against our wishes, and it will now involve sending in another state’s military troops.”A Trump-appointed judge in Oregon blocked Trump from sending in troops to Portland. Governor Gavin Newsom of California is also fighting against troops being sent from his state to Oregon. Troops from Texas were going to be sent to Portland and Chicago, with the blessing of Texas’s Republican governor, Greg Abbott.Trump administration officials have railed against the ruling, saying a judge cannot prevent the president from moving troops. “Today’s judicial ruling is one of the most egregious and thunderous violations of constitutional order we have ever seen – and is yet the latest example of unceasing efforts to nullify the 2024 election by fiat,” Trump adviser Stephen Miller wrote on X.Chicago’s mayor, Brandon Johnson, also signed an executive order to prohibit federal immigration agents from using city-owned property to conduct their operations, which comes after “documented use” of public school parking lots and a city-owned lot as staging sites, Johnson said in a press release.“We will not tolerate Ice agents violating our residents’ constitutional rights nor will we allow the federal government to disregard our local authority. ICE agents are detaining elected officials, tear-gassing protestors, children, and Chicago police officers, and abusing Chicago residents. We will not stand for that in our city,” Johnson said in a statement.At a press briefing on Monday, the White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, said that cities like Chicago were refusing to cooperate with troops because they don’t like the president. She claimed Trump wants to make cities safer.“You guys are framing this like the president wants to take over the American cities with the military,” she said. “The president wants to help these local leaders who have been completely ineffective in securing their own cities.” More

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      Kristi Noem calls Chicago a ‘war zone’ after federal agents shoot woman

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      Kristi Noem, Donald Trump’s homeland security secretary, called Chicago “a war zone” on Sunday after federal agents shot a woman and the governor of Illinois accused the administration of fueling the crisis rather than resolving it.Speaking on Fox News Sunday morning, Noem took aim at the city’s mayor, Brandon Johnson, who has been a vocal critic of the Trump administration’s Ice raids and deployment of the national guard in Illinois, a measure he called “unhinged and unhealthy”.“It’s wrong, there should be consequences for that and for leaders that stand up and knowingly lie about the situation on the ground,” Noem said. “His city is a war zone and he’s lying so that criminals can go in there and destroy people’s lives.”Noem’s remarks followed Trump’s authorization to deploy 300 members of the Illinois national guard to Chicago, with orders to protect federal officers and property. The move came just weeks after national guard troops were sent to Washington, where the president federalized the city’s police force in what he described as a “crackdown” on crime, a pattern now extending to a string of other US cities. “We’re going to be doing Chicago probably next,” Trump had said at the time.Noem defended the administration’s course of action, insisting on Fox that residents supported the government intervention. “They understand that where we have gone we have made it much more free,” she said. “People are much safer, we have got a thousand criminals that are off the streets of Chicago, just because we’ve been there.”Appearing on CNN’s State of the Union with Jake Tapper on Sunday, the Democratic Illinois governor, JB Pritzker, accused the administration of fueling the crisis rather than resolving it. “They are the ones who are making it a war zone,” he said.“They need to get out of Chicago. If they’re not going to focus on the worst of the worst, which is what the president said they are going to do, they need to get the heck out.”Border patrol agents on Saturday shot and injured a woman while firing at someone who tried to run them over. The woman who was shot was a US citizen and was armed with a semi-automatic weapon, DHS spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin said, noting that the woman was accused in a US Customs and Border Protection intelligence bulletin last week of doxing agents.Pritzker also condemned the deployment in a post on X on Saturday, writing: “The Trump Administration’s Department of War gave me an ultimatum: call up your troops, or we will.” Pritzker called the decision “absolutely outrageous and un-American,” and added that it had been made “against our will”. More

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      Democrats liken Trump to Putin after call to use US cities for military training

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      A leading Democrat has compared Donald Trump to Russian dictator Vladimir Putin after the US president told military leaders on Tuesday that the armed forces should use US cities as “training grounds”.JB Pritzker, the governor of Illinois, which is bracing for Trump to deploy national guard troops to his state, questioned the president’s mental health and accused him of behaving like an autocrat.“It appears that Donald Trump not only has dementia set in but he’s copying tactics of Vladimir Putin,” Pritzker said. “Sending troops into cities, thinking that that’s some sort of proving ground for war, or that indeed there’s some sort of internal war going on in the United States is just, frankly, inane and I’m concerned for his health.”Since returning to office in January, Trump has used crime and illegal immigration as a pretext to expand federal agents and national guard troops into cities led by Democrats, often with large African American populations.The president deployed in Los Angeles in June and Washington DC in August despite the objections of local officials and official figures showing that crime is falling. And over the weekend Trump announced plans to send national guard troops to what he described as “war-ravaged” Portland, though the city and state are seeking a restraining order, claiming that the president has overstepped his legal authority.On Tuesday, the attorney general, Pam Bondi, said a federal taskforce operation in Memphis, Tennessee was under way. Meanwhile, Louisiana’s governor asked for a national guard deployment to New Orleans and other cities.Trump dialled up the pressure further on Tuesday at a rare gathering of more than 800 military leaders in Quantico, Virginia. He said: “Last month I signed an executive order to provide training for quick reaction force that can help quell civil disturbances. This is gonna be a big thing for the people in this room, because it’s the enemy from within, and we have to handle it before it gets out of control.”The phrase “enemy within” was used by Senator Joseph McCarthy in a 1950 speech about threats to democracy. McCarthy is best known for his aggressive campaign against alleged communist infiltration in the US government and society.Addressing an auditorium full of top brass from around the world, Trump said he told Pete Hegseth that “we should use some of these dangerous cities as training grounds for our military.”Trump acknowledged that he had been criticised for deploying the military on US streets but claimed America was in the grips of a battle against immigrants in the country illegally.“America is under invasion from within,” Trump said. “We’re under invasion from within. No different than a foreign enemy, but more difficult in many ways because they don’t wear uniforms. At least when they’re wearing a uniform, you can take them out.”The president encouraged soldiers harassed or assaulted by protesters to “get out of that car and do whatever the hell you want to do”.Democrats condemned the remarks as a dangerous escalation worthy of an authoritarian.Gavin Newsom, the California governor, whose name has been floated as a possible 2028 presidential contender, said the speech should terrify people.“Declaring war on our nation’s cities and using our troops as political pawns is what dictators do. This man cares about nothing but his own ego and power,” Newsom posted on X.Pritzker called for the 25th amendment to the constitution, which deals with the removal of a president incapacitated by a physical or mental illness, to be applied. “There is something genuinely wrong with this man, and the 25th amendment ought to be invoked,” he said.Chuck Schumer, the Democratic minority leader in the Senate, told MSNBC’s Morning Joe: “So, this is totally against the American grain, and it’s one example of many that they’re moving to an autocracy away from a democracy. In dictatorships, the federal military goes into the cities to do bad things.”Civil society groups also condemned the plans. Naureen Shah, director of government affairs of the equality division at the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), said: “We don’t need to spell out how dangerous the president’s message is, but here goes: military troops must not police us, let alone be used as a tool to suppress the president’s critics.”The Not Above the Law coalition said in a statement: “Trump’s suggestion that US cities should serve as military ‘training grounds’ represents a fundamental betrayal of American values. Our military exists to defend our nation and protect our freedoms, not to practice combat operations against our neighbors in our communities.”The Posse Comitatus Act of 1878 is supposed to prevent presidents from using the military as a domestic police force. But Trump has exploited a loophole by deploying the national guard, a reserve force often used for natural disasters, and creating a new “quick reaction force” for crushing domestic unrest.At Tuesday’s event in Quantico, the defense secretary vowed the military would abolish “overbearing rules of engagement” and “untie the hands of our warfighters to intimidate, demoralise, hunt and kill the enemies of our country”.There were few visible reactions from the generals and admirals, who sat largely silent and expressionless. Trump, accustomed to roars or laughs at campaign rallies, found his punchlines fell flat. More

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      Illinois senator demands to meet with Ice amid clashes at immigration facility

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      After days of clashes between federal officers and protesters at an immigration jail in his home state of Illinois, Democratic US senator Dick Durbin on Sunday renewed demands to meet with Trump administration immigration officials.Durbin wrote on X that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) must be “accountable for its actions” amid the administration’s “cruel immigration crackdown”. The post on Sunday morning came after Saturday night protests and arrests at an immigration detention center in Broadview, Illinois.For the preceding few days, federal officials have arrested protesters at the Broadview facility as Ice operations have escalated in Illinois.Durbin, along with Illinois representative Delia Ramirez and other Democrats, have been pressing for a congressional oversight visit to the Broadview facility for weeks in connection with reports of poor conditions.According to a letter written by Durbin and Ramirez on Friday, Democratic members of Congress have been unable to access the Broadview facility nor meet with immigration officials, as they have requested.Durbin and Ramirez informed Ice earlier in September of an upcoming oversight visit to the facility, which members of congress are allowed to do. But Ice in Chicago told Durbin and Ramirez they were “unable to support a visit”, according to the letter, and instead offered a meeting to the Democratic delegation. Ice on Friday postponed that meeting “to an unconfirmed date in October”, the Chicago Sun-Times reports.The Democratic pressure on Ice comes as protesters have clashed with officials at the Broadview site in recent days. On Saturday night, officials deployed pepper spray and rubber bullets and arrested a number of protesters outside the controversial immigration jail.In one video posted online on Saturday night, US border patrol officials, who have been dispatched to the area to assist in the Ice operations, can be seen deploying what is colloquially referred to as teargas on protesters standing outside the facility.On Sunday afternoon, a CBS Chicago reporter posted on Instagram that an Ice official “took a direct shot” at her car, saying that the official deployed gas into her open window. “Been puking for two hours,” the reporter said, adding that there were no protesters at the time and that she was just driving by the facility to check out the scene.Another local reporter in Chicago posted on X that the village of Broadview has opened a criminal investigation into that matter.View image in fullscreenThe Trump administration has called the protesters “rioters”, accusing them of inciting violence. On Saturday afternoon, Ice posted on X: “Rioters will not deter Ice from its law enforcement mission. All those assaulting or obstructing will be held accountable. Full stop.” In another post on Sunday morning, the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) said 11 people were arrested outside the Ice facility – and that officials had confiscated two guns during the arrests.In response, the Illinois governor, JB Pritzker, decried the force used by federal officials at the site. He also called on protesters and bystanders to “document what you see with your phones and cameras”.“The suggestion that chemical agents like tear gas or pepper spray could be used indiscriminately against peaceful demonstrators, or even first responders, is unacceptable and not normal,” Pritzker posted on X. “By observing and recording peacefully, we can ensure that any violations of the law are brought to light and those responsible are held accountable.”Tensions in the Chicago area have been escalating in recent weeks after the Trump administration and DHS launched an operation they dubbed Midway Blitz. The operation led to an increase in the number of federal officials in the area targeting immigrants.Already, the operation has led to a number of scandals for Ice and the Trump administration. Earlier in September, Ice shot and killed an immigrant they were trying to arrest in the Chicago area. Despite DHS saying an officer was “seriously injured” by the immigrant before the shooting, video later released seemed to contradict DHS’s claims.A recent court filing by immigrants rights groups has also claimed that US citizens have been rounded up during the immigration enforcement operations in the area.DHS says it launched Midway Blitz to target immigrants in the state, alleging that Pritzker and his “sanctuary policies” – a term meant to describe limitations on local police’s cooperating with federal immigration agents – welcomed undocumented immigrants.The Trump administration has made immigration enforcement arrests a top priority since it returned to office in January after Joe Biden’s presidency.Top DHS officials, in fact, instructed Ice to arrest at least 3,000 people daily throughout the US. As the Guardian reported on Friday, due to the Trump administration’s intense escalation, immigrants with no criminal record are now the largest group in Ice detention. More

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      Chicago organizers say city needs support, not politicalization by Trump: ‘This is not a serious solution’

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      For months, Donald Trump and his administration have been using violent crime as a justification for ramping up Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) operations and sending or threatening to send the national guard to blue cities – first in Los Angeles, then Washington DC and, last week, Chicago.But for those who work on the ground to prevent crime, the White House’s approaches will do little to address underlying causes. Instead, they say, increased law enforcement will only lead to harassment and increased surveillance in communities that are already overpoliced.“[Trump doesn’t] mean well for our community,” said Teny Gross, executive director of the Institute for Nonviolence Chicago, a non-profit that offers services for people most at risk of shooting someone or being shot. “Yes, there’s a lot of violence, and it’s because of policies over decades. If you want to go after violence, go to the cities and invest in them, not just send in the national guard.”Gross has worked in violence prevention for more than three decades. Over the years, he’s heard Chicagoans talk about the need for increased law enforcement in their neighborhoods, including deploying the national guard – comments he saw as expressions of understandable desperation. He says residents have grown exhausted from witnessing decades of bloodshed and poverty that go unabated under both Republican and Democratic administrations.Still, he said that these issues won’t be solved through the shows of force Trump is enacting. “We deal with grief daily. We see death daily. This is not a serious solution,” he said.Last year, 574 people were killed in Chicago, primarily from gunshot wounds, giving the city a homicide rate of 17 per 100,000 people. This is far below that of some cities in red states, such as Birmingham, Alabama, and Shreveport, Louisiana, whose rates were 59 and 41, respectively, that same year. Still, Chicago’s reputation for shootings is being exploited to normalize military force on city streets and expand law enforcement in neighborhoods that are already highly policed and surveilled, said Ethan Ucker, executive director of Stick Talk, a Chicago non-profit that approaches youth gun-carrying through a harm reduction lens.“Those narratives are strategically being deployed to justify state violence,” Ucker said. “I worry about increasing and accelerating criminalization. But that won’t stop when the national guard leaves. It’s ongoing.”The Rev Ciera Bates-Chamberlain, who leads Live Free Illinois, a coalition of faith-based organizations that advocate for criminal justice reform and public safety, said if Trump actually wants to help, he would emphasize better clearance rates and community-based support services for victims of crime, and would get gun trafficking under control.“We’ve advocated for more community-based resources to be invested in,” she said. “We’ve advocated to improve clearance rates. But to completely disregard those requests is immoral and not about protecting citizens.”Bates-Chamberlain, a native of Chicago’s South Side who’s worked in the violence prevention space for more than a decade, said that “two things can be true at the same time” when it comes to the current national conversation about crime in the US. While Chicago’s leadership is boasting a more than 30% decline in homicides in 2025 so far, there were still nearly 200 people killed in the city by the end of June and many more injured.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“The numbers are down, yet communities are still feeling the impact,” she said.But the pain these losses and injuries carry and their reverberations throughout the community won’t be addressed by sending more law enforcement to the street, Bates-Chamberlain said.“He’s politicizing our pain and that is diabolical and despicable for the president of the United States to do,” she said. “This is really harmful.” More

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      Jim Edgar, two-term former Republican governor of Illinois, dies aged 79

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      Former Illinois governor Jim Edgar, a popular two-term Republican credited with guiding the state into a period of greater financial stability in the 1990s, died on Sunday, according to his family. He was 79.Edgar died from complications related to his treatment for pancreatic cancer, his family said in a statement. He had disclosed his cancer diagnosis earlier this year.“We are deeply grateful for the love, support and kindness so many have shown to Jim and our family over these last several months,” the statement said.A former state legislator who was Illinois secretary of state for a decade, Edgar was elected governor in 1990. The moderate Republican easily won re-election, including winning heavily Democratic Cook county, where Chicago is located.He remained a party statesman and adviser, and grew uneasy with the Republican party’s shift to the right. Edgar was among high-profile Republicans who did not support Donald Trump’s presidency, joining a campaign to support Kamala Harris’s bid for president last year called Republicans for Harris.Born in small-town Oklahoma, Edgar was much more reserved than his flashy, charming predecessor, James R Thompson, who was the longest-serving governor in state history. At the time Edgar took office, the state was hundreds of millions of dollars in debt and paying its bills months late.Amid a recession, Edgar pushed legislators to cut the state budget, making layoffs and cuts in popular programs. He also managed to fulfill his campaign promise of getting a temporary income tax surcharge made permanent, guaranteeing a stable source of money for public schools.“It wasn’t always pretty how it was done, but we got a lot done,” Edgar told the Associated Press in 1998. “We went after some pretty tough issues. We didn’t get them all, but we got most of them.”He surprised many political observers when he announced in 1997 that he would not seek a third term, considering his popularity. Republicans tried to draft him to run for office again, including bids for the US Senate and again for Illinois governor. But he did not accept.Edgar went on to teach and served as president emeritus of the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library Foundation, among other things.“By any standard, he was a Republican whose integrity guided his time in office and who managed one of the most successful periods in Illinois state government,” Bob Kustra, who served as Edgar’s lieutenant governor, said in a statement.JB Pritzker, the Illinois governor, said on Sunday that flags in the state would fly at half-staff in Edgar’s honor.“Now more than ever, we should channel that spirit and resolve to live as Governor Edgar did: with honesty integrity, and an enduring respect for all,” Pritzker, a Democrat, said in a statement. “He will live on in the incalculable number of lives he touched and in the stronger institutions he helped build.”Edgar is survived by his wife and two children.His relatives said details on funeral plans would follow in the coming days. More

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      US immigration officers kill man trying to flee vehicle stop near Chicago

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      A man was fatally shot during a vehicle stop on the outskirts of Chicago by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) officers after attempting to flee the scene, according to officials, and another officer was injured during the altercation.Ice released the following statement after the shooting: “This morning in Chicago, Ice officers were conducting targeted local enforcement activity during a vehicle stop, the suspect resisted and attempted to drive his vehicle into the arrest team, striking an officer and subsequently dragging him as he fled the scene, fearing for his life, the officer discharged his firearm and struck the subject. Both the officer and subject immediately received medical treatment and were transferred to a local hospital.”It continued: “The suspect was pronounced dead at the hospital, the officer sustained severe injuries and is in stable condition, viral social media videos and activists encouraging illegal aliens to resist law enforcement not only spread misinformation, but also undermine public safety, the safety of our officers and those being apprehended.”The target of the stop in Franklin Park, to the west of Chicago, was Silverio Villegas-Gonzalez, who was an undocumented immigrant with a history of reckless driving, according to the Department of Homeland Security.“We are praying for the speedy recovery of our law enforcement officer. He followed his training, used appropriate force and properly enforced the law to protect the public and law enforcement,” said Tricia McLaughlin, the DHS assistant secretary. She then echoed the statement by Ice regarding the dangers of social media videos.The incident was first reported on X by the CBS immigration correspondent Camilo Montoya-Galvez.He wrote: “An ICE operation turned deadly in Chicago today, after a suspect resisted arrest and tried to drive his vehicle into agents, prompting an officer to shoot the suspect, who has been pronounced dead, a DHS official tells me. The officer suffered severe injuries but is stable.”The incident involved a traffic stop to check on what Ice said was an undocumented immigrant. It happened about six miles from where, separately, a daylong protest had been unfolding outside an Ice processing center in Broadview, Illinois, where demonstrators clashed with federal government agents on Friday morning and there were reports that a demonstrator was shot in the leg with a pepper ball by enforcement officers.A worker at a tire shop across the street from where Villegas-Gonzales was killed spoke to BreakThrough News, according to the outlet, saying: “I thought it was your run-of-the-mill car crash, because car crashes have been here all the time, so I thought nothing of it. That’s when my boss came out and told me, ‘Hey, something happened here.’ And I saw a huge police presence, military presence and FBI presence.“So right now, the community is a bit scared about Ice and the military operations here in Chicago,” he added. “Franklin Park is heavily Latino and Polish, so I didn’t know that they were going to come here one day. It’s just, once it happens, you’re in shock, like you can’t believe your eyes.”He also provided reporters with security footage from outside the shop, which included audio of what sounds like gunshots.Police taped off the area and behind patrol vehicles a grey sedan could be seen that the man had been driving. It had crashed into a parked truck, and it could be seen that the driver’s side window was open.A neighbor who did not want to be identified spoke highly of Villegas-Gonzalez with a small group of reporters and mentioned that Villegas-Gonzalez was a hard worker and a good neighbor.One time, the neighbor recalled, Villegas-Gonzalez scraped the neighbor’s car, came over and offered to fix it. The neighbor said it’s been distressing to see social media posts about Villegas-Gonzalez.“It’s such a sickening world that everybody’s celebrating his death,” the neighbor said. It’s just wrong, you know? He’s a human being.”When asked about Ice’s arrest of Villegas-Gonzalez and the agency having said Villegas-Gonzalez tried to drive into officers, the neighbor said Villegas-Gonzalez “was scared 100%” and didn’t speak English.Meanwhile, in nearby Broadview, demonstrations began at dawn and were set to continue until the evening. By late morning, several dozen people had assembled outside the facility, according to CBS News Chicago.These incidents and some others are part of a surge of immigration enforcement into parts of the Chicago area in the last week as part of a crackdown pledged by Donald Trump, as neighborhoods have braced. He has threatened to send in troops to deal with crime in the kind of unilateral action taken by the administration in WashingtonDC, ongoing, and Los Angeles earlier in the year following protests there against Ice raids.This would be expressly against the wishes of Chicago’s mayor, Brandon Johnson, and the state governor, JB Pritzker, both Democrats, who have condemned the saber rattling and called for resistance. By Friday troops had not been sent.Crowds in Broadview could be heard and seen on video shouting “shame on you” towards officers and the facility.At one point, a reporter observed Ice officers forcing protesters back while clearing the way for agency vehicles to pass through the crowd. Tensions escalated further as protesters and Ice officers began facing off directly.Another reporter shared a video from that scene, writing: “I am at Broadview Village ICE detention center where demonstrators just chased Chicago US Army Special Reaction Teams (SRTs) as they were leaving the building.” The footage shows Ice personnel retreating as demonstrators pursue them, shouting. More

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      Chicago suburb warns residents that federal agents may be about to arrive

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      A Chicago suburb has warned its residents that federal immigration agents may be present in the coming days as Donald Trump continues to threaten an immigration enforcement crackdown and national guard deployment in the nation’s third largest city.The city of Evanston issued a statement urging its residents to report sightings of federal agents, after local officials said they were informed over the weekend about the likelihood of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) activity.Evanston’s mayor, Daniel Biss, told the local outlet Evanston Now that he received information from the governor’s office suggesting the likelihood Ice agents would be deployed there “in the coming days”.“In Evanston, we welcome our immigrant and refugee neighbors and protect each other,” the statement read. “We will do all we can to safeguard our community and keep Evanston families together.”Within hours of the statement, Trump repeated his desire to send federal enforcement and national guard troops to “straighten” Chicago out.“You try and reason with people, like in Chicago, with the governor there, you try and reason with them, and it’s like you’re talking to a wall,” the president said during remarks at the Museum of the Bible in Washington DC.Furthermore, a social media post from the Trump-led Department of Homeland Security said the agency was “launching Operation Midway Blitz” in honor of an Illinois woman who authorities say was killed in January by a Guatemalan national who was in the US without permission.The suspect in the case was identified as 29-year-old Julio Cucul Bol, and authorities say he was drunk-driving.Invoking a term that historically has been associated with the intense, sudden military attacks waged by the Nazis during the second world war, Monday’s DHS post claimed the operation in Abraham’s name would target those who “flocked” to Chicago knowing it limits local law enforcement cooperation with Ice. The post also contained a tribute video to Abraham, who was killed in the crash alongside a 21-year-old woman named Chloe Polzin.Chicago mayor Brandon Johnson released a statement on Monday afternoon responding to the DHS announcement on X.“The city of Chicago received no notice of any enhanced immigration action by the Trump administration. We remain opposed to any 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,” he said.On Wednesday last week, the Chicago Sun-Times reported that an advance team of at least 30 agents was undergoing crowd-control and flash-grenade training at Naval Station Great Lakes, north of Chicago. And 230 agents, most of whom work for Customs and Border Protection, were being sent to Chicago from Los Angeles, the outlet reported.Meanwhile, at a news conference last week, the Illinois governor, JB Pritzker, expressed concern that Ice agents would target Mexican Independence Day events in the middle of September. The El Grito Chicago Mexican Independence Day festival was postponed due to concerns about Ice operations.Trump’s deployment of military troops to Los Angeles in July was deemed illegal in a ruling by a federal judge in California. And his federalization of Washington DC’s police department in August was unprecedented.Nonetheless, the Republican president has turned his focus to other major Democratic-led cities, threatening federal intervention over what he has purported is a “national crime emergency”.Despite falling crime rates nationwide, Trump has insisted his priority is “cleaning up cities” with a focus on violent crime and homelessness. And he has repeatedly suggested he next wants to deploy the national guard to Chicago – where, like in Washington DC, violent crime is at its lowest in decades.Calling Chicago a “hellhole”, Trump has boasted: “We’re going in. I didn’t say when, [but] we’re going in.”Trump has verbally attacked Pritzker, opining that the Illinois governor has been reckless for not asking for the president’s help.Earlier on his Truth Social platform, Trump insisted that he wants to “help the people of Chicago, not hurt them”.The post derided Democratic leaders in Chicago and Illinois, saying “the city and state have not been able to do the job”.“People of Illinois should band together and DEMAND PROTECTION,” Trump’s post continued. “IT IS ONLY GOING TO GET WORSE!!! ACT NOW, BEFORE IT IS TOO LATE!!!”Shrai Popat contributed reporting More

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      JB Pritzker calls for ‘all to stand up’ to Trump’s immigration crackdown in Chicago

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      Illinois’s governor JB Pritzker has called on “all to stand up” to Donald Trump as the US president prepares to launch a federally led immigration crackdown across Chicago, a plan which has been met with widespread backlash from local leaders and the public.Pritzker’s comments come as White House officials vow to target Chicago next in its sweeping immigration crackdowns across the country. Recently, the White House requested that a US military base on the outskirts of Chicago assist with immigration operations as the Trump administration plans a broader takeover of Democratic-run “sanctuary cities”.Pritzker, a Democrat, told CBS on Sunday: “Any kind of troops on the streets of an American city don’t belong unless there is an insurrection, unless there is truly an emergency. There is not … I’m going to do everything I can to stop him from taking away people’s rights and from using the military to invade states. I think it’s very important for us all to stand up.”Pritzker spoke after Trump on Saturday took to Truth Social to rant about Pritzker and Chicago, saying: “JB Pritzker, the weak and pathetic Governor of Illinois, just said that he doesn’t need help in preventing CRIME. He is CRAZY!!! He better straighten it out, FAST, or we’re coming!”Meanwhile, Pritzker said that no one from the Trump administration has contacted his team, the city of Chicago or any other local officials.In his interview with CBS, he said: “It’s clear that they’re secretly planning this. If they actually send in US troops, it would amount to an invasion. They should be coordinating with local law enforcement, telling us when and where they’re coming, and whether it’s Ice, ATF, or another agency. But they’re not doing that. And I have to say, it’s disruptive and dangerous. It stirs up tension on the ground when we’re left in the dark and can’t coordinate with them.”Pritzker also pushed back against accusations from Kristi Noem, the secretary of homeland security, who said that Illinois “refuses to have our back”.“That’s not true,” he said, adding: “There were police officers who made sure that there was nobody interfering or attacking or causing problems for the Ice officials that were here … People have a right to their first amendment … and we protect that too in the city of Chicago … We have our job, which is to fight violent crime on the streets of our city and by the way, we’re succeeding at that job, but when they bring people in and don’t coordinate with us, they’re going to cause enormous problems.”Pritzker continued: “If he wants to send troops, he should call. I’ve been very clear about what it is that we’d like help with. But, instead, he’s talking about sending troops. Nobody’s called, literally nobody from the White House … If they actually wanted to help, they might call and say, what help do you need? … I don’t know why they haven’t bothered to reach out if they have plans of their own, but honestly, we’d be happy to receive a call.”The governor also accused Trump of having “other aims, other than fighting crime”, pointing out the handful of Democratic cities that have been the target of Trump’s immigration crackdowns, including Washington DC and Los Angeles.“The other aims are that he’d like to stop the elections in 2026 or, frankly, take control of those elections. He’ll just claim that there’s some problem with an election, and then he’s got troops on the ground that can take control if, in fact, he’s allowed to do this. We have sovereignty,” Pritzker said.With an imminent federal crackdown in Chicago expected to take place as soon as the end of this week, Chicago’s mayor, Brandon Johnson, signed an executive order on Saturday in an effort to push back against the White House’s “out of control” plan to deploy federal troops into the city.The new order bars Chicago police from aiding federal authorities with civil immigration enforcement or related patrols, as well as traffic stops and checkpoints during the crackdown.Johnson also ordered all city departments to protect the constitutional rights of the city’s residents “amidst the possibility of imminent militarized immigration or national guard deployment by the federal government”. More