Harry Targ
Protestors demonstrating
against ICE and National Guard deployment gather Downtown on Oct. 8, 2025.
( Credit: Mustafa
Hussain for Block Club Chicago)
From Carl Sandburg “Chicago,” 1914
(HOG Butcher for the World,
Tool Maker, Stacker of Wheat,
Player with Railroads and the Nation's Freight
Handler;
Stormy, Husky, Brawling,
City of the Big Shoulders)
As I watch from afar the efforts of the ICE armies and the National Guard to invade my hometown, Chicago, I weep from within and at the same time think back to the history of the city with pride. The proud thoughts come from the education, formal and informal, I received about my hometown (an education incidentally that President Trump and his rightwing followers want to expunge from public discourse).
Sandburg correctly identified the centrality of Chicago for the growing national political economy of the late 19th century and what followed. Chicago became the center of continental distribution of goods with the construction of the railroad system. Agricultural goods were transported eastward from the rail hub of Chicago and goods produced in the East were moved westward across the continent. The “hog butcher” referred to the emerging meat processing, with the invention of the refrigerated railroad car, and continental distribution. With the meat packing industry came finance, manufacturing, and architectural innovations. The Chicago ruling class wanted the world to know of the city’s centrality to the new world order of capitalist innovation and architecture and put together the World’s Fair of 1892, celebrating the 400 years since Columbus “discovered” America.
But big capital did not qualitatively change the
United States alone through its Chicago venue. Also, Chicago was the site of
the mobilization of the modern working class. The eight-hour day movement
culminated in 1886 with the Haymarket Affair, protestors victimized by
violence, and their leaders tried, and some hanged for phony allegations of
violence. Almost a decade later, 1894, President Grover Cleveland sent federal troops to
Pullman to break the Eugene Debs led, railroad workers strike. Meanwhile, Hull
House which opened in 1889 by Jane Addams offered social services to the poor
and immigrants.
Despite the victimization of the working class in the
city, workers’ movements grew. The IWW was founded to organize the working
class in a convention held in the city in 1905.
Men’s clothing workers walked out of manufacturing facilities to protest
wage cuts in 1909. Members of the Socialist Party met in the city before and during
World War One.
And in the Depression years workers associated with
the new Communist Party launched Unemployment Councils to protect workers from
evictions. And CIO organizing, occurring all around the country, was visibly manifested
in the packinghouses and farm equipment manufacturing plants in and near the
city. Chicago, along with being a hub of big capital, was also a major site of working-class
militancy.
After World War Two, Chicagoans were both on the side
of urban racial segregation and militantly opposed to it. Meatpacking union
locals and unions in steel, auto, and farm equipment manufacturing participated
in the rising national civil rights movements in the 1950s and 1960s. And in
addition, Bronzeville artists and musicians, the Nation of Islam, and the Black
Panther Party, the Young Patriots, and the Young Lords were leading players in
the Northern struggles against racism. And the 1968 Democratic convention
symbolized the congeries of ruling class violence and resistance that
epitomized US political history.
So today, Chicago is again a visual manifestation of
political struggle. The Trump Administration and the Right seek to crush the
residues of progressivism that still exist in multi-cultural, class conscious,
and racially diverse venues. If the resistance that has represented the best in
the US experience can be crushed in Chicago, the thinking goes, then the entire
nation can be controlled.
New York Times
Chicago crackdown
 | By Julie Bosman I’m the Chicago bureau chief. |
During a recent run near Lake Michigan, I watched a black S.U.V. make a U-turn and chase down three young men. Two armed immigration agents, their eyes peeking out from behind their balaclavas, jumped out and approached them. One asked what visas they held.
“H-1B,” they responded, looking bewildered. That’s the visa for foreign workers with special expertise.
Nothing that I could see would have attracted the attention of the agents, except for the fact that the men had brown skin. After questioning them, the agents let them go.
This scene is now unfolding across Chicago every day.
Federal immigration agents have been asking people about their legal status outside churches, homeless shelters, apartment buildings, parks and even a cemetery. Officers have questioned both U.S. citizens and legal residents, asking for passports and visas as proof of identity.
The presence of officers from Border Patrol and ICE has brought forth an intense backlash. Chicagoans are shouting at immigration agents, calling them fascists and Nazis, throwing objects at them and chasing their unmarked S.U.V.s or minivans, honking their horns to warn bystanders of ICE’s presence.
In response to what a Homeland Security official called “a surge in assaults,” the officers are using increasingly aggressive tactics. In recent days, they’ve hurled tear gas, pepper balls and smoke bombs at the public, protesters, journalists and even Chicago police officers, often without warning. Today’s newsletter is about the conflict on the streets of Chicago.
The intervention
 |
| Jamie Kelter Davis for The New York Times |
The Trump administration began a crackdown on illegal immigration here five weeks ago, promising to help the city by arresting “criminal illegal aliens.” But the tactics are unusual.
Schools. Officers are lingering just off campus in some places. So principals have ordered “soft lockdowns,” keeping students in classrooms until the agents are gone. Last month, ICE tried to arrest a father after a day care drop-off; in the confrontation, he was shot and killed. Now some schools use neighborhood volunteers, at parents’ request, so white adults can walk Latino children home.
Restaurants. Kitchens are often staffed by undocumented immigrants, and ICE knows it. Workers are afraid to leave their homes, and many have cut their hours. One Mexican spot I like keeps its door locked — even when it’s open — as a shield against ICE, allowing customers in one at a time.
Public spaces. Many people, even those with legal status, are asking friends to do their grocery shopping for them. Streets are quieter. One man with legal residency got a $130 ticket for not having his papers, The Chicago Tribune reported.
Why here? It is not surprising to people here that the administration has focused on Chicago, which calls itself a sanctuary city. That means it doesn’t help the federal government deport undocumented immigrants. Half a million Chicagoans, nearly one-fifth of the population, were born outside the United States, and support for immigrants is generally strong in the area. Local police officers won’t ask suspects about their immigration status.
Trump and Gov. JB Pritzker of Illinois, a Democrat, have an adversarial relationship, and Trump regularly criticizes Chicago’s Democratic mayor, Brandon Johnson. The president wrote online that they “should be in jail for failing to protect Ice Officers!” City and state leaders said they were receiving no communication from the Department of Homeland Security or the White House about the operations.
The backlash
 |
| Jamie Kelter Davis for The New York Times |
The fury over immigration enforcement has expanded in the last few days. After a car chase and crash involving agents, more than 100 people came out of their homes and shouted, “ICE go home.” At least one person threw eggs at the agents, hitting an agent directly in the head. (Trump ordered National Guard troops into Illinois over Pritzker’s objections, but a federal judge blocked their deployment last week.)
In response, federal officers released tear gas on the crowd, including 13 Chicago police officers who had been called to the scene. For weeks, Border Patrol and Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers have disbursed people filming and shouting at them by shooting pepper balls and tear gas.
This is very different from norms of modern policing: Officers typically release chemical agents only in extreme situations, and only after warnings. Agents have pointed guns at people who get in their way.
On Wednesday, Pritzker complained that ICE was causing “mayhem” and warned that other cities would face the same fate. In the Oval Office yesterday, Trump named San Francisco. He said, “We’re just at the start. We’re going to go into other cities.”
