In Chicago, Black and brown people are disappearing

The president of the United States has ordered an assault on Chicago.

That assault is being carried out by a combination of groups — including uniformed Customs and Border Patrol officers, uniformed Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers, and plainclothes men whose affiliations are unknown.

They are everywhere.

A team of four was even staying at the same hotel I was on a recent reporting trip — the Oak Brook Hyatt House Hotel located 10 minutes from the detention facility. I encountered that team on my last day at the hotel. They were walking out as I was walking in. Like the Chicagoans I had met in my brief time there, I documented them as best I could and sent the information to a rapid response group to track.

Yesterday, in a conversation with United Methodist Church pastor Lindsey Joyce of Grace Church Logan Square, she shared what it’s been like living there during the president’s invasion of her city.

I think what’s hard for people to understand who aren’t in the city is that what’s happening here is not immigration enforcement. There’s not a list of bad guys who because we’re so lax got away with stuff that the ICE agents are hunting down. That’s not what’s happening.

They are literally just disappearing brown people and Black people. They’re disappearing brown and Black neighbors, and it’s snatch first, ask questions later. They’re leaving vendor carts, they’re leaving pickup trucks with keys in them. They’re leaving kids on the side of the road. They’re just disappearing people. Recently there was a piece that said over 60% of the people they’ve snatched have no warrants. So they’re making up warrants afterward.

This is extra-legal. It’s lawless, it’s extra judicial. And these are the most easily provoked, thin-skinned snowflake agents I’ve ever — you can quote me on that — I’ve  ever experienced. They are incredibly easily provoked. They are here to cause damage. And they’re here in Chicago specifically.

Chicago was on purpose because Chicago is a place where the GOP has long had a vested interest in making a narrative that Chicago is a failed city. And, you know, this has been going on for decades, and we all roll our eyes and laugh when they say Chicago’s a war zone while we’re like on the architecture tour on the beautiful Chicago River. Right?

“They are here to cause damage. And they’re here in Chicago specifically.”

And yet that’s not to say there aren’t places where there is violence, there are issues in this city, but we’re working on them. And the people who are most impacted by them are working on them and doing amazing work. But they have a vested interest in Chicago being a failed political experiment because Chicago is a bastion of progressive policy.

So what they’re doing now, because Chicago has refused to bend the knee on anything, is trying to create that narrative. I have never in my life felt unsafe in this city. And I live on the north side, I’ve been on the west side, I go to the south side. I never in my life have I ever felt unsafe. Until now.

I’m walking around my city wearing a whistle around my neck in case the secret police gestapo show up so I can alert my neighbors. Knowing that those thin-skinned agents will probably tear gas me again. Or shoot rubber bullets at us. They haven’t done that in the neighborhoods yet, but they’re just constantly escalating.

The Department of Homeland Security has been releasing edited clips of its assault, claiming to be capturing the “worst of the worst” in Chicago through what they’ve dubbed “Midway Blitz.” Their own most recent press release claims “more than 1,000 illegal aliens” have been arrested, yet details only 10 as having criminal records. That’s just 1% of those they’ve swept off the streets.

Footage captured by Reuters and by bystanders tells a different story about what is happening. And yesterday’s events in which bystanders and Chicago police officers were tear gassed and had assault weapons pointed at them are just the most recent in a long line of similar instances.

There was the Chicago father killed two blocks from his child’s school after morning drop-off.

There was the apartment building — a whole apartment building — stormed by agents rappelling from Blackhawk helicopters, using flashbang grenades and zip-tying children in an incident intended to incite terror.

There were the multiple instances of clergy being tear-gassed while praying outside the Broadview facility (including Joyce). While the case of Pastor David Black being shot in the head with a bullet of pepper-spray has received the most attention, his isn’t the only case of state-sponsored attacks on clergy.

There are the numerous cases of agents deploying chemical agents near school playgrounds and against bystanders.

This is not normal. The situation Chicagoans are living under is state-sponsored terror.

The president has made it clear he sees those who don’t agree with him as “the enemy within” and cities across America as the military’s training ground. ICE and CBP have taken him up on unrestrained terror. If this president and his administration are not held to account now, this Fallujah-styled combat will come for more American cities soon.

 

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