'If You Can Keep It': ICE Crackdowns In Chicago And Portland

0:07You're listening to the 1A Podcast. I'm Jen White. And I'm Todd Zwilich. President Trump promised to crack down on immigration in Democratic-led cities using aggressive tactics like detaining people based on their race and language and deploying the National Guard to support Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE. He deployed the National Guard in Los Angeles and Washington, D.C. this summer, where a number of service members still remain. He launched an ICE operation in Boston. And now the president is escalating his crackdown in Chicago and Portland. Yeah, that's who it is. They hit us with the car.

0:43They shot me a bunch of the light with pepper balls. What country do we live in? He has constitutional rights. Do you have a sign? No, you need to leave. Turn around here. Turn around and leave. He's under arrest. You are gonna be placed under arrest. Turn around. Do you have a sign? Do you need to leave? Quit shoving, quit shoving. You're punching. I know you punch him. Those are sounds from ICE arrests and protests in Chicago and Portland. ICE has made more than 1 ,000 arrests in Chicago, according to the Department of Homeland Security, since it began. What it's calling Operation Midway Blitz last month.

1:24For some of you, you aren't simply watching this play out on the news. You're also living it. This is OK from Chicago. Kind of like the temperature check I'm having right now is I'm kind of like worried because I don't live too far away from where they bashed in to those apartments in South Shore. So I'm just like I'm worried. Could that happen to me? And also with the National Guard just like coming out, can I even protest? Like, is it even safe to go to the loop and like be around? Is it OK? Like, can I go out and shop? Like, what's going on? I'm not feeling too good. Nearly half of the FBI agents working in major U.S.

2:03offices have been reassigned to immigration enforcement. That's according to newly released FBI data. Today, for our weekly series on the state of our democracy, if you can keep it, we're asking, what does this radical shift in law enforcement priorities mean for the democratic cities at the center of the president's crackdown and for the country more broadly? We get into that and more after this short break. Stay with us.

2:30Let's get right into the conversation with our guests. Priscilla Alvarez joins us. She's a correspondent covering immigration for CNN. Priscilla, it's great to have you back. Thanks for having me. Also with us is Melody Mercado. She's a reporter covering downtown Chicago for Black Club Chicago. That's a nonprofit news organization focused on local reporting. Melody, welcome to the program. Thanks for having me. Melody, between President Trump's escalating crackdown on immigration in Chicago, protests. We heard some sound there, the deployment of the National Guard, followed by a court decision which temporarily barred the National Guard from being deployed.

3:06It's been a chaotic few weeks in the city. Let's start with Thursday's ruling. You were at the courthouse that day. Tell us about that case and the judge's decision. Yes, U.S. District Judge April Perry granted that temporary restraining order, which will last for 14 days, which blocks the deployment of National Guard in Chicago. In her decision, she rejected the idea that Border Patrol and ICE agents needed the National Guard to quell protests or carry out federal law. She said in her decision that after reading exhibits and hearing from state prosecutors that it seemed like federal agents were at fault for the increased violence happening at locations like the Broadview's ICE detention facility.

3:49And she said that, you know, for several years, there have been prayer vigils that have been held at the Broadview ICE facility. And now those have seemed to become inherently violent as a result of the presence of ICE agents and Border Patrol agents. And so she said that she, because of that, she doubted that the National Guard was actually needed to keep the laws being executed at that facility and in Chicago and Illinois in general. So I just want to be very clear here. She says that the escalation we've seen in conflict and violence at these protests, that's the fault of ICE agents and other agents who are on site.

4:43Let me read it to you before you answer, Melody. This is Judge April Perry in her own words. I'm trying to put this delicately. There has been evidence submitted that the very presence of federal agents, that the way they're interacting with the populace is itself the cause of violence. Yes. And we've also seen that exhibits that the lawyers with the DOJ submitted in this particular case, a lot of those protesters have had their charges dropped. And that being still included in the case caused the judge to really question the DOJ's and the DHS's accounts of what's actually happening on the ground.

5:24Now, Priscilla, as we said, the Trump administration deployed 500 National Guard members to Illinois last week, 200 of which are from the Texas National Guard. What happens now? Where are they physically located? Well, they are going to basically stay where they are. They were at a nearby base last week when we were reporting on this, because, again, as we saw with these rulings, their deployments are halted. But that doesn't necessarily mean that they need to go back home as this case continues to unfold in the courts. What has been interesting to watch, you just mentioned there, there's 200 of the 500 who are from Texas.

6:09This had actually been a conversation within the administration for months. My colleagues and I reported over the summer that the White House and the Department of Homeland Security were trying to find ways to use the National Guard and the military to bolster their immigration crackdown. And that did include exploring whether National Guard units from Republican-led states, in this case Texas, could be used in non-consenting states. For example, Illinois, where the governor has pushed back multiple times. Now, the National Guard, of course, can't make arrests, but it certainly speaks to a plan that's been underway for some time now of the administration wanting to use the military to further their immigration enforcement goals.

6:53And also, as the president has talked about, his federal crime crackdown. And certainly what we're watching unfold in these blue cities is something that the administration had been thinking about from day one. The officials who were coming into the administration had already been talking about it quite publicly in the months leading into the president's inauguration. Take, for example, White House boarder star Tom Homan, who multiple times, including during the campaign, said that he was going to make arrests and have a presence in cities that limit cooperation with federal immigration agents.

7:31And those tend to be Democratic-led cities. So really what has been unfolding in Chicago, in Portland, and earlier in Los Angeles is not, it doesn't come as a surprise if you have been listening to what the administration has been saying. And as my colleagues and I have been reporting in the conversations that have been happening behind the scenes, because this is exactly where they intended to be. Yeah, it's important to remember, Priscilla, you raised such an important point that this was the plan from day one. Nothing spontaneous about it. We did reach out to the White House for a statement about the Trump administration's decision to deploy the National Guard into Chicago.

8:09Here's what they said. Amidst ongoing violent riots and lawlessness that local leaders like J.B. Pritzker have refused to step in to quell, President Trump has exercised his lawful authority to protect federal officers and assets. President Trump will not turn a blind eye to the lawlessness plaguing American cities. The Department of Homeland Security has been doing similar messaging, accusing J.B. Pritzker of lying that these deployments are unconstitutional, even though Judge April Perry, as we said, ruled in that exact same way. Melody, crime is down in Chicago, just like it was in Washington, D.C., when the National Guard was deployed here.

8:50Can you put the Trump administration's claims about lawlessness and riots and crime in the city into perspective for us? Yes, absolutely. You know, we have data that shows that crime in Chicago has been decreasing year over year significantly as well with violent crime. We know that I just looked at some of the figures this morning. We are still experiencing a 30 percent decrease in crime across the board from the same time last year. Now, the Trump administration, the numbers that President Trump has been touting are based on raw numbers. And so technically he is correct that Chicago has more homicides than any other U.S.

9:34city. But when speaking with criminologists and experts, it is important to put those numbers into this perspective of a crime rate. And so Chicago has a population of 2.7 million people. And so the numbers will naturally be higher than any other city compared to a population of a city that has a population of maybe 25 ,000 to 100 ,000 people. So when we take that into perspective, with a population of 2.7 million people, Chicago recorded about 21 homicides per 100 ,000 people in 2024. When we compare that to a city like Birmingham, Alabama, whose population is about 200 ,000, they recorded about 58 homicides per 100 ,000 residents in 2024.

10:23Statistically, their crime is higher than the city of Chicago. It's more than double. And that statistic is specifically, we took that from the FBI crime data, which is important in the overall perspective. Elizabeth emails, a lot of my friends in Chicago are of Hispanic descent. If they themselves aren't immigrants, they're first generation. Whenever we hang out now or make plans to see each other, we check if ICE is on the route to meet up or near where we're meeting. Even though my friends are first generation, they carry photocopies of their passports to prove they're American citizens because they're so scared they'll get grabbed.

10:59More from you and our guests right after this.

11:07Let's get back into it with this message we got from one of you. I live about five minutes from the Broadview ICE facility, and I'm very annoyed because they keep firing on civilians. I went there just to see what was up, and I got pepper spray bullets were shot at me. I wasn't doing anything wrong. I was behind all the fences, but they still shot at me. Additionally, they keep closing off 25th Avenue, which I used to get home. I wish ICE weren't so out and about. Melody, we've seen several videos documenting the crackdown in Chicago and elsewhere, and we'll talk more about the role social media is playing in all this later.

11:44But how have we seen what this administration is calling Operation Midway Blitz playing out on Chicago's streets? You know, people are on edge. Neighborhoods, predominantly Latino corridors, Latino businesses, are experiencing low numbers of people just visiting and frequenting those areas. We've seen some festivals and Latino events be canceled. People are scared to go out into their communities. And, you know, I spoke to the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights, which is a huge coalition located in Chicago. And on October 3rd, they received the most calls to their hotline in one day, which was 1 ,000.

12:30And I think that just speaks to how on edge the community here is in Chicago specifically. specifically, but how Midway Blitz is playing out in the neighborhoods is that we've seen ICE caravan vehicles show up seemingly out of nowhere, taking people from the streets. We've seen street vendors just kind of disappear in the middle of the day. They don't come back. Their families are wondering where they are. And we've seen protests seemingly also come out of nowhere in a response to ice coming out into the neighborhoods. People are alerting their neighbors with whistles. And so now when you hear a whistle being blown on the streets of Chicago, that is, that typically means that ice is nearby and you see people heading into their homes, locking their doors, heading into local businesses to try and seek cover.

13:26To put that all into perspective, It has really changed what everyday life looks like for a lot of people living in Chicago. Priscilla, we've all seen the videos of what look like ICE actions on the streets of Chicago. They may be other types of federal agents. We also know that the federal appropriation for ICE is just massive, 45 or even 60 billion for ICE recruitment. I think I have that number right. Right. What do we know about the training level of the people on the streets right now to the untrained eye? And I have an untrained eye. There are there are some of these videos where the where the agents hopping out of cars and throwing people in the pavement look like they're not trained to be law enforcement officials.

14:16What do we know about what kind of training they have before they're being put out on the streets? So a couple of things here. Number one, the agents, so immigration enforcement agents, which include Immigration and Customs Enforcement, ICE, as well as U.S. Customs and Border Protection, which is primarily focused on the border, they all go through robust training. There has been a push to recruit thousands more ICE officers as well as Border Patrol agents and the like, But they are still in the sort of training phase. So the ones that we have largely been seeing doing the enforcement would presumably be people who have been through the various academies that are required to carry a gun and to be doing these arrests.

15:06Now, their caveats here is that the administration pulled in so many different sort of alphabet soup agencies, DEA, ATF, FBI. And something that I hear from my sources often is civil immigration enforcement is sort of in its own categories. For example, some of the people that you may be arresting are not people with extensive criminal records, right? They're someone who crossed the border unlawfully and has stayed in the country, and they are here then illegally. So arresting someone like that looks really different from arresting someone who is a danger to the community. That is perhaps something that FBI and other agencies are more accustomed to, but they are using the same tactics that they would with someone who is dangerous, with someone who is just here illegally.

16:01That is something that I hear as a complaint sometimes among my sources, that they feel like in some scenarios ICE might get a bad rap or another agency or DHS might get a bad rap, but really it's not them. Now, this is, but part of that too is that it's just so confusing because of the attire they're wearing. Sometimes they're not saying who they're with and the reality that there are cases where there are controversial arrests being made by ICE and CBP and others. And I do want to make a note here because we keep talking about ICE, but interestingly, what is happening in Chicago and what happened in Los Angeles is being led by a U.S.

16:39Border Patrol chief agent. That is Gregory Bovino. I spoke with him last week, and he has been the one that has sort of been leading the federal immigration enforcement crackdown in these Democratic-led cities. So many of those who are out doing arrests are also Border Patrol agents. So that, too, can create its own sort of wrinkle because border patrols typically, while they do have offices across the United States, they are also more accustomed to doing enforcement along the U.S.-Mexico border, which looks different than it would look in an urban landscape. All the same, I did ask him about some of the aggressive tactics that you just asked me about.

17:23And he maintained that the way that they are doing arrests is in line with the way that they are trained. He said that it is true as well that they, the agents, the federal agents, are receiving threats and have been put in dangerous situations. Two things can be true, however. There are aggressive tactics that are leading to some people, well, U.S. citizens being arrested, but also people who don't have extensive criminal records being arrested in forceful ways. And it can also be true that agents are in a precarious place right now where they too are facing threats. So it just makes for a really challenging environment, a very controversial one in the ways that things are unfolding.

18:10But I have, you know, talked to those agents, too, and Gregory Bavino particularly, who's leading this, and he stood by the way that they're doing things. Well, I want to turn to a raid on a complex. We saw some 300 federal agents, some landing in helicopters. They stormed an apartment building in Chicago in the middle of the night, arresting residents, including children. U.S. citizens were also detained. Here's Partissue Fisher, one of the residents of South Shore Apartments, who was swept up in that raid, speaking at a protest rally. I got a gun put in my face and everything. And me personally, I don't appreciate that at all.

18:50It was several of us that got detained for some hours. I'm not the only one. And we asked them what was going on, and they didn't answer us. Last week, a federal judge in Chicago extended a nationwide consent decree demanding that ICE offer better documentation for probable cause during arrests. The federal judge also found that ICE consistently violated this decree by making warrantless arrests. Melody, tell us more about how we're seeing ICE either ignore the consent decree or are perhaps being forced. Are there mechanisms in place to ensure they're following the law? I mean, I think this speaks to the importance of rapid responders and journalists showing up to the scene to take video of these situations that are happening.

19:40Because oftentimes we see agents show up and just ask to see documents from people that they are assuming might be undocumented. We've seen those happen, carry out with a mother and her two young children that were detained in Millennium Park while they were playing at the fountain downtown. And that family was detained. They were separated. There was no warrant. And in that particular situation, violation of the consent decree. And so we've been seeing this play out in several detainments throughout Chicago. and this just adds to the layers of people being on edge, of feeling like they need to carry their documents whenever possible if they are U.S.

20:30citizens. I want to get to this email we got from Elizabeth who says, I live a few miles away from where the ICE agents are staying in a western suburb of Chicago. I saw ICE agents in the downtown train station this week. The lupus seemed extra quiet and less populated. I feel a sense of camaraderie among Chicagoans and also an eerie feeling about what is going to happen next. I applaud Governor Pritzker in challenging the order to send the National Guard to our city, but I would like to hear some acknowledgement from our officials about how we got here. There was outsized immigration to Chicago because of its designation as a sanctuary city, which also drew public and private resources away from residents.

21:04What was needed was a federal response to this problem years ago. And we should also note that in 2022, Texas Republican Governor Greg Abbott bussed over 30 ,000 migrants to Chicago. That's according to the official office of the Texas governor website. But Melody, give us briefly a bit of context around Elizabeth's comments about immigration to Chicago and its status as a sanctuary city. Yeah, I think, you know, again, more than 30 ,000 migrants bussed over to Chicago. There has been some backlash about this specifically because there are historically disinvested communities in Chicago. And when migrants started coming to Chicago, Mayor Brandon Johnson and previous Mayor Lori Lightfoot had to create this whole infrastructure to take care of those individuals.

21:55And so many, many longtime Chicagoans that live in those disinvested communities were saying, OK, these individuals get to skip the line and we are wondering where is ours. And so there has been specific backlash about this, particularly with thousands of migrants being sent to Chicago. But I think consistently Governor J.B. Pritzker and Mayor Brandon Johnson have said that this is a situation that was created by the Republican federal administration and that has been exasperated by Governor Abbott sending all of these individuals to Chicago. and Chicago having, you know, they have no choice but to respond and try to make sure these people can get meals, can have a place to stay, can have some sort of infrastructure in place to make sure that they're not left out on the streets.

22:52Well, Portland, Oregon is another Democratic-led city that President Trump has targeted, is calling it war-ravaged and falsely claiming that Antifa The thugs have repeatedly attacked ICE offices there. Simple assaults have increased 8 % from this time last year, but homicides have dropped 50%. That's according to police and city data. Let's talk about what's really happening on the ground in Portland. Joining us now is United States Democratic Senator from Oregon, Jeff Merkley. Senator Merkley, welcome. It's a pleasure to be with you. Senator, welcome back to the show. What's your response to how the president has described the city of Portland?

23:30Well, I think the district judge put it best when she said that the description of the Trump administration was, quote, simply untethered to the facts. That sums it up. What we're seeing are demonstrations of whimsy and joy. We've got the inflatable frogs standing together. We've had a wedding. We've had the world naked bike ride last night. We have pastries and pajamas, a group of women handing out pastries. We've got the puppies coming down with puppy paws for peace and even have the unipiper who rides a unicycle and bagpipes and is well known on Portland circles. This is Portland using its creativity to express its disagreement, but it certainly isn't a war zone.

24:26Senator, last week you were talking to a group of reporters, I think, on Capitol Hill about confrontations at an ICE facility in Portland. And you said, this is a quote, this is the first time that I know of, at least in my lifetime, that the federal government has faked a riot in order to try to justify the Insurrection Act being invoked. Can you explain what you meant and what you think the implications are? Yes. A week ago Saturday, you had the group of federal agents come out. We think they were federal protective services, but they may have come from other police forces or federal forces.

25:04But they asked the demonstrators to back up several hundred yards. And as there wasn't a confrontation, the protesters did what they asked. When one reported, it was three city blocks, but several hundred yards. And then they formed a line, and behind them were professional videographers. So behind this line of federal agents. And then when, you know, the protesters are standing where they were asked to stand, and the federal agents have a line. And then the federal agents upon command threw down pepper balls and tear gas and flashbangs. Flashbangs, if you haven't heard them go off, they sound like gunfire going off.

25:45So you have gunfire and you have tear gas smoke and you have pepper balls and everyone scurries away. And filming that makes it look like a riot. And that's what they were trying to do is create video and say, look, our agents are confronting a riot. That sort of situation where you're faking a riot in order to convey to judges or to maybe the audience of certain television stations or so forth that there is violence going on and confrontation going on that wasn't going on, that is just extremely scary to see that strategy by the federal government. But Senator, very briefly, what power do you have to ensure that ICE is adhering to the law?

26:32We've heard reports of U.S. citizens being arrested by officers in plain clothes. What do you say to your constituents? Well, in terms of our powers, it's mostly our voice and our vote. And the vote, when you're in the minority, is difficult to convey and that you can't get an amendment up or a bill up that you want to be considered. In terms of your voice, it's every possible way. Like the very first gathering we had as elected officials, I called it the don't take the bait press conference because I wanted to convey here's what the federal government is up to. They're trying to create confrontation and use that confrontation or violence to justify even more authoritarian power.

27:23And so that is the main thing I'm trying to convey is don't play into Trump's hand. We're in an extremely scary situation. We have these two different federal laws, the ability to both federalize the National Guard, but also the Insurrection Act that can be used. Let's protest, but do it with the spirit of saying what's happening is wrong, but don't get into conflict. That's U.S. Democratic Senator of Oregon, Jeff Merkley. Senator, thank you for your time. You're very welcome. We'll be back in a moment.

27:59Melody, I just wanted to ask you briefly. We got this question from Jason who says, When we see federal agents engaging physically with protesters and then we see local police not intervening, why? What responsibility do local law enforcement have to protect protesters? Is ICE in charge of how local law enforcement responds? What can you tell us about the way local law enforcement is interacting with ICE agents and other federal law enforcement? So we know because of Illinois' laws, sanctuary city policy, the Trust Act, that local law enforcement is not to be engaging with immigration arrests, detainments, things of that nature.