Trump administration announces immigration surge to begin in Chicago

Rick Pearson, Olivia Olander and Cam'ron Hardy, Chicago Tribune on Sep 8, 2025

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CHICAGO — President Donald Trump’s Department of Homeland Security announced Monday it is beginning a surge of immigration law enforcement in Chicago, dubbing it “Operation Midway Blitz” and claiming it will target “criminal illegal aliens” who have taken advantage of the city and state’s sanctuary policies.

The announcement comes more than two weeks after the Republican president began to say he was planning to target Chicago over crime, causing Democratic Gov. JB Pritzker and Mayor Brandon Johnson to caution residents to prepare for potential immigration sweeps.

“For years, Governor (JB) Pritzker and his fellow sanctuary politicians released Tren de Aragua gang members, rapists, kidnappers, and drug traffickers on Chicago’s streets — putting American lives at risk and making Chicago a magnet for criminals,” said Tricia McLaughlin, DHS assistant secretary. “President Trump and Secretary (Kristi) Noem have a clear message: no city is a safe haven for criminal illegal aliens. If you come to our country illegally and break our laws, we will hunt you down, arrest you, deport you, and you will never return.”

Pritzker, the state’s two-term Democratic governor and vociferous critic of the Republican president, took to the social platform X to contend the ICE surge “isn’t about fighting crime.”

“That requires support and coordination — yet we’ve experienced nothing like that over the past several weeks,” he wrote. “Instead of taking steps to work with us on public safety, the Trump administration’s focused on scaring Illinoisans.

The Homeland Security statement marks the first official word from the Trump administration about increased immigration enforcement after weeks of Trump vacillating between vows of “going in” to Chicago with the potential deployment of National Guard troops to fight overall crime, to a stepped-up immigration enforcement role by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents. ICE has secured an office at Naval Station Great Lakes in North Chicago to serve as an operations hub for its activities.

There was no word on how long the ICE operation would last and there also was no mention of whether Trump would deploy the National Guard to play a support role.

Under Illinois’ sanctuary state policies, enacted by Pritzker’s Republican predecessor, one-term Gov. Bruce Rauner, Illinois law enforcement cannot cooperate with federal immigration enforcement agents unless they have a detainment warrant issued by a judge. ICE routinely uses an administrative detainment warrant that it issues on its own.

The Trump administration has been previously rebuffed in challenges to the state’s sanctuary policy, with the courts noting that immigration enforcement is the purview of the federal government.

Trump set the stage for the operation with a social media post Saturday morning depicting military helicopters flying over the city’s lakefront skyline using the title “Chipocalypse Now.”

“I love the smell of deportations in the morning…” Trump posted on his Truth Social account, altering the famous phrase from the 1979 movie “Apocalypse Now,” about the smell of “Napalm.” In the post, Trump was depicted in U.S. Army fatigues and sunglasses and wearing a Stetson U.S. Cavalry hat like the lieutenant colonel portrayed in the movie by actor Robert Duvall.

“Chicago is about to find out why it’s called the Department of WAR,” Trump wrote, a day after signing an executive order to rename the Department of Defense to its pre-1949 title.

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