Illegal Chicago Raid Makes ICE The Only Jackbooted Fascists In The Building
Illinois ICE Nazis? ... We HATE Illinois ICE Nazis!
Around 300 federal officers from the FBI, Border Patrol, and Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives raided a five-story apartment building in Chicago’s South Shore neighborhood in the early hours of Tuesday morning, breaking down doors indiscriminately and dragging people out of their apartments without any pretense of showing a warrant. Nearly every apartment in the building was entered or approached, and people were dragged out of the building, including men, women, and children, many in night clothes, and some completely naked. The raid was part of the Trump administration’s ongoing “Operation Midway Blitz” in the Chicago area, just to call to mind the Nazi invasion of Europe at the beginning of WWII.
Those forced from their homes at gunpoint included US citizens, who were forced to wait in the back of rental vans and held for hours while the federal thugs confirmed their identities and searched databases for outstanding warrants that could provide a pretext for inflating the operation’s arrest numbers.
In case you haven’t recently had a ninth-grade social studies class, we’ll remind you that the Fourth Amendment to the US Constitution, rather quaintly, states that
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
Those protections apply equally to both US citizens and noncitizens, even people who are in the country without documentation. But the Trump administration has decided it’s a lot more exciting to pretend the Constitution doesn’t apply to “immigration enforcement operations.” Also, while any normal city police department would be sued out of existence if it tried to get away with busting down every door in a building and detaining everyone without a warrant, ICE probably will face no legal repercussions, since suing the federal government for violations is a hell of a lot more difficult.
Despite the tactic of rousting virtually all the building’s residents out of their homes, the Chicago FBI field office claimed it was a “targeted immigration enforcement operation” — much the way the 1945 nuclear attack on Hiroshima “targeted” military assets in the city.
The raid sure did a great job of creating terror, as ABC 7 Chicago reports.
Neighbors like Eboni Watson say they ducked for cover as they heard several flash bangs.
“They was terrified. The kids was crying. People was screaming. They looked very distraught. I was out there crying when I seen the little girl come around the corner, because they was bringing the kids down, too, had them zip tied to each other,” Watson said. “That’s all I kept asking. What is the morality? Where’s the human? One of them literally laughed. He was standing right here. He said, ‘fuck them kids.’” [obscenity restored by Wonkette]
And just think, the federal agents managed to inflict all that trauma on little kids even without the deployment of National Guard or regular military troops, which is next on Donald Trump’s terrorize-Americans agenda for Chicago and other cities. Remember his charming little AI slop fantasy from a few weeks back?
Neighbors said the federal stormtroopers used flash-bang grenades to add some shock and awe inside the building at 7500 S. South Shore Drive, and just to remind everyone of The Blues Brothers, some of the goons even rappelled down to the roof from Blackhawk helicopters. It is not clear at press time whether they chanted “Hup! Hup! Hup!” as they clambered down the ropes. Illinois ICE Nazis? We hate Illinois ICE Nazis!
The Department of Homeland Security claimed that the massive show of unconstitutional force against people in their homes was aimed at arresting members of the Venezuelan criminal gang Tren de Aragua, the Trump administration’s designated go-to enemy when it wants to justify illegal federal actions like disappearing people to foreign torture prisons without due process and murdering people on the high seas.
As usual when it claims it’s going after Tren de Aragua, the government offered no evidence indicating any members of that gang were among the 37 people arrested in the raid. A DHS press release claimed only that some of those arrested “are believed to be involved in drug trafficking and distribution, weapons crimes and immigration violators.”
Among the not-criminal citizens dragged out of their apartments was Rodrick Johnson, 67, who said agents broke down his door, cuffed him with zip-ties, and left him tied up in a van outside the building for three hours. “I asked [agents] why they were holding me if I was an American citizen, and they said I had to wait until they looked me up,” Jones said. He asked them to show a warrant, and he asked them for a lawyer, but the goon squad didn’t bother responding to either request. Just shut up and be glad they let you go eventually, citizen!
Resident Pertissue Fisher told ABC7 Chicago that ICE grabbed people first and asked questions later, and that they “just treated us like we were nothing.”
Fisher said she came out to the hallway of her apartment complex on the corner of 75th and South Shore Drive in her nightgown around 10 p.m. Monday only to find armed ICE agents yelling “police.”
“It was scary, because I had never had a gun in my face,” Fisher said. “They asked my name and my date of birth and asked me, did I have any warrants? And I told them, 'No,' I didn't.”
Fisher said she was handcuffed before being released around 3 a.m., and she was told that if anyone had any kind of warrant out for them, even if it was unrelated to immigration, they would not be released.
Fisher also spoke to CBS News Chicago, explaining that she and other Black citizens were held in the back of one van, while Venezuelan detainees were loaded into a different van.
In a text message, ICE spokesperson Emily Covington reacted to photos of people being herded into vans and ICE agents swarming from the backs of rented box vans, “No detainees were placed in a U-Haul.” True enough, because “BUDGET” was on the vans in big bold letters.
Dare we hope that the whole fucking fascist takeover of American cities will fall apart when truck rental companies start enforcing their rules against letting people ride in vans’ cargo areas? Yeah, probably not gonna happen.
Another resident of the building, Dan Jones, 27, said that he woke up when agents tried to break down his door around 1:00 in the morning, but that they couldn’t break the double lock, so he went back to sleep. When he woke up in the morning and left for work, his neighbors, who he says were mostly Venezuelan, were all missing and the hallway was littered with broken doors and belongings.
When Jones returned home from work, he found that his place had also been broken into and tossed.
Jones said he entered his unit to find all of his electronics and furniture missing, and all of his clothes and shoes thrown on the floor. Jones said he had no idea who took his belongings and hadn’t received answers from Chicago police.
“I’m pissed off,” Jones said. “I feel defeated because the authorities aren’t doing anything.”
Jones said that his Venezuelan neighbors were “cool people,” and that they all took turns cleaning the hallway because the building’s owners didn’t bother doing maintenance. He wondered what had happened to the neighbors’ children.
Following the raid, Charles Szymanski, a neighbor who documented the raid with photos, said that the building’s power was cut, and that every story of the building had broken windows. “They tore the whole building apart,” Szymanski said.
Others who went inside said the building had been completely cleared of residents; Maira Khwaja, a local journalist with the Invisible Institute, said that water was leaking from the floors and ceilings of the building, and that “It seemed clear that the living conditions were horrible beforehand. ”
More damage left behind by the ICE stormtroopers, about whom you must think nice things OR ELSE, can be seen here.
A small moving crew said they had been hired after the raid to clear out now-vacant units — but didn’t say by who. Doors were boarded up. In one room, there were zip ties and blood stains on the floor next to baby shoes. Flies swarmed around open fridges.
Water damage had caved in ceilings. Strollers and air conditioners and more things left behind blocked the middle of dark hallways. The lobby elevators were broken, with their buttons perpetually lit on the down arrow.
Jones and Johnson told the Chicago Sun Times they suspect the landlords (no press organizations have been able to find them) will evict the residents now.
But don’t worry, anyone: This was a huge success, at least according to Border Patrol Commander-At-Large Gregory Bovino, who offered this sunny take on the raid:
“How about you live in the apartment next-door to the Tren de Aragua members that are trafficking prostitution, guns, drugs and taking advantage of American citizens in a violent way,” Bovino said.
Far better for your own government to keep you safe by trashing both your constitutional rights and your home, in the name of catching dangerous traffickers, or maybe some busboys and cooks. You people should all get down on your knees and thank Mad King Donald Trump for destroying your building in order to save it.
[ABC7 Chicago / Block Club Chicago / Chicago Sun-Times / Block Club Chicago]
Yr Wonkette is funded entirely by reader donations. If you can, please become a paid subscriber, or if you’d prefer to make a one-time donation, here’s your button.
Updated with additional details from this Block Club Chicago story, which went up while I was writing. It's infuriating.
https://blockclubchicago.org/2025/09/30/armed-agents-in-unmarked-vans-target-south-shore-apartment-building/
It's the end of the beginning of the end. The prelude is over. The line is crossed. We are now a fascist nation.