CHICAGO — The Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights received more than 1,000 calls to its hotline Friday — the most in a single day since it was created — as reports of federal immigration enforcement surged across Chicago and beyond.
Callers reported sightings of Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, sought legal and economic resources and asked for help finding loved ones who have disappeared. That day, federal agents also forcefully handcuffed a Chicago alderperson and threw chemical irritants onto a crowded street near a school.
The record-breaking number of calls Friday “speaks to the magnitude of how rampant ICE has been in our neighborhoods,” said Veronica Castro, the coalition’s deputy director.
This week marks one month since the Department of Homeland Security launched Operation Midway Blitz, an immigration enforcement campaign targeting Chicago and Illinois. Border Patrol has joined in under a separate mission known as Operation At Large. Together, the two campaigns have brought hundreds of federal agents to the region, and they’ve arrested at least 1,000 people, Russell Hott, ICE field director in Chicago, told Block Club. In the vast majority of those cases, the agency won’t say who it has arrested or for what alleged crimes.
President Donald Trump has also used widespread protests of ICE activity to federalize the National Guard, saying troops will be used to protect ICE agents. Under Trump’s orders — and despite Gov. JB Pritzker’s objections — hundreds of troops from Illinois and Texas have arrived in Chicago this week, further intensifying the federal presence in the state.
As federal agents and soldiers move deeper into Chicago’s neighborhoods, state and city leaders say they’re building new systems of protection — while immigrant advocates rally on the ground to keep families safe.
State And Local Response
On Aug. 25, Pritzker and Mayor Brandon Johnson were joined by city, state and federal officials as they held a press conference to tell Trump to stay out of Chicago. That day, both of them said they would go to great lengths to keep their residents safe.
But both leaders said they were expecting Trump to come knocking anyway, speaking during exclusive interviews this week with Block Club Chicago.
Two weeks after the press conference, Midway Blitz began. Nearly a month later, the National Guard was federalized in Illinois.
“That’s why we held the press conference back then,” Pritzker said. “We fought pretty hard to keep them out, [and] at least we delayed them for several weeks.”
Johnson said Trump’s intentions had long been clear to him: “To stoke fear and chaos.”
“That’s exactly what his administration has represented from the very beginning,” Johnson said.
Chicagoans had been preparing for what’s transpired in the past month since Trump took office in January.
When immigration agents initially arrived in Chicago in January, Trump’s “border czar,” Tom Homan, said outreach efforts by immigration advocates in Chicago and elsewhere were “making it very difficult” to arrest people.
“Illinois is in a stronger position than many other states because we have a city and state government that want to keep people safe,” Castro said.
For months, “Know Your Rights” campaigns were being launched across Chicago, with ads seen on Chicago transit and sister agencies disseminating information to local partners.
The Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights had already been expanding its network when Operation Midway Blitz began. By late summer, more than 4,000 residents had gone through “Know Your Rights” training, and the group’s hotline — bolstered by $48.5 million in state funding — was operating daily in 11 languages, connecting callers to legal aid, deportation defense and public benefits.
The group is slated to receive another $38.5 million in 2026 to continue those efforts, according to state records.
In the past 30 days, Johnson has also signed executive orders aimed at shielding residents from Trump’s immigration crackdown. The first directed federal agents to abide by city laws on policing, a second to protect the rights of protestors and a third banned federal agents from using city-owned property for civil immigration operations.
“We are literally creating a system of protection that doesn’t exist right now because Congress refuses to hold this president accountable,” Johnson said.
However, federal agents have largely ignored the directive to abide by city laws on policing, which bans wearing masks, requires the use of body cameras and mandates wearing identifying information such as badges and uniforms.
Johnson has said he will use the city’s Department of Law to prosecute federal agents violating his executive orders, but no legal action has been taken so far.
‘This Isn’t An Honest Government’
On Monday, the state sued the federal government over the deployment of National Guard troops, with Pritzker arguing that the case is strengthened by videos captured by rapid responders and bystanders.
“Thank goodness for them,” Pritzker told Block Club.
Pritzker used the arrest of Chicago Ald. Jessie Fuentes (26th) as an example. Agents handcuffed Fuentes, forced her out of a Chicago hospital and threatened her with arrest when she asked if they had a signed warrant for a man they’d detained.
Other videos shared online by bystanders over the past month show federal agents throwing people to the ground, lobbing smoke grenades and tear gas on public streets and firing pepper ball rounds from rooftops at peaceful demonstrators. Pastor David Black of the First Presbyterian Church in Woodlawn was struck in the head by a pepper ball while inviting agents to pray last month.
“This isn’t an honest government,” Prtizker said. “They fabricate reasons to send troops, they misstate what’s happening on the ground — so we have to build our own record. That’s what the videos, the eyewitnesses, the lawsuits are about.”
Many of these videos have been taken by rapid responders with the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights. Since the beginning of the year, the organization has grown from 10 hyperlocal rapid response networks to over 30.
Hundreds of trained responders, mostly volunteers, actively go out into the community to verify and document ICE in their neighborhoods. Most are on scene within 15 minutes of being alerted via the group’s hotline.
However, in recent weeks, immigration agents have become more aggressive, Castro said.
“Before, when our rapid responders showed up, you could feel the tension drop,” Castro said. “They’d see the cameras, see the witnesses and leave. They didn’t want to get caught on tape.”
But over the past month, that dynamic has changed dramatically. Castro said ICE and Border Patrol agents are no longer deterred by witnesses, often continuing arrests even while being filmed.
“Now, they don’t care,” Castro said. “They’re pushing people aside, they’re grabbing whoever they came for. Even when there are cameras and volunteers there, they keep going.”
Volunteers have documented federal agents in unmarked vehicles, detentions outside of schools and people being taken without clear information about where they were being held. Many responders have also witnessed families separated in real time.
Concerns have also grown as federal agents’ accounts of what’s happening seems to contradict what people are seeing in the ground or revealed in court.
Last month, an ICE agent fatally shot Silverio Villegas González after claiming he was dragged by a car — though body-camera footage later showed the agent saying his injuries weren’t major. In another instance, an agent shot a South Side woman five times claiming she drove toward officers; footage cited in court this week appears to contradict federal accounts, the Sun-Times reported.
These discrepancies have led to increased concerns from the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights about the safety of their rapid responders. But despite explaining the increased risk, people continue to show up on the ground.
“That is the beauty of what it means to be in solidarity with each other, is that they find it so much more important to make sure that there is somebody there to witness what’s happening, so that people aren’t disappeared into the abyss, that they will risk their own to their own personal safeties, sacrifice the time from their own families in order to do this work,” Castro said.
Protesters have also seen increased escalation from federal agents, especially at an ICE facility in suburban Broadview, 1903 Beach St. Agents have repeatedly used tear gas, rubber bullets and other weapons against protesters and journalists.
Rachel Cohen, a lawyer who left her job in protest of Trump’s policies, has been regularly protesting outside the Broadview facility. In recent weeks, demonstrators have been showing up with more gas masks to combat the tear gas being thrown by agents, but numbers on the ground haven’t decreased.
Cohen has gone viral on social media for making videos walking viewers through what Chicagoans can do to resist ICE — from court watching Downtown to showing up at Broadview.
“I am very proud of the people that have shown up to risk brutality,” Cohen said. “I think that’s something really impressive that we’ve seen in the city of Chicago, is a focus on liberation and understanding that state violence is interconnected and ongoing.”
The number of protesters at Broadview continues to grow as organizers have expanded from showing up on Friday to several days a week. Cohen said she’s seen people “extremely motivated” to get involved, especially those who are not from marginalized groups that have been targeted during the immigration raids throughout the city, since they are comparatively safer than their peers.
Johnson, who has a strong background in activism, told Block Club he’s increasingly grateful to the people putting their bodies on the line to protest Trump’s presence and immigration policies, calling them essential to the city’s response.
“They have literally sacrificed everything for this moment,” Johnson said. “I’m glad that we have a strong apparatus in this city that recognizes that it’s going to take organizing and all of us to defeat authoritarianism. It’s not one politician; it’s the collective response.”
What’s Next?
Johnson and Pritzker have said they fear federal agents will kill another person as enforcement intensifies across Illinois. That fear is what’s driving their next round of actions — legal, economic and executive — to try to rein in federal operations in the city.
Pritzker said last week he is prepared to use “every lever at our disposal” against the Trump administration. As the state awaits a federal judge’s decision on whether to block the deployment of troops to Illinois, the governor told Block Club he still has a few additional “levers” he’s considering pulling.
Pritzker pointed to retaliating economically against states like Texas, which has sent several hundred of its own National Guard troops to Illinois.
“There are economic levers that a state like Illinois could pull against a state like Texas in terms of investments or otherwise. That’s an example of something that’s still in the works,” Prtizker said.
Johnson is keeping his next move quiet. The mayor alluded to another executive order but didn’t share details as to what that could entail.
However, both leaders cited the need to find a way to support local businesses and economic corridors that have been impacted by a heightened immigration presence in Chicago. Videos and photos online have shown Latino-owned businesses, restaurants and retail corridors empty in neighborhoods like Little Village and Pilsen.
Pritzker urged people across the city and state to shop and spend money in those affected neighborhoods. Johnson said he’s also exploring ways to support local businesses in the meantime. When asked whether that could include grants or direct financial assistance, the mayor said he must also be mindful of the city’s looming $1 billion budget gap.
“We’re going to look at everything, while also finding ways in which we can have a budget that’s balanced,” Johnson said.
The Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights will, in the meantime, advocate for state lawmakers to strengthen Illinois’ Trust Act, which limits cooperation between local law enforcement and federal immigration authorities, arguing that loopholes still allow information sharing and indirect collaboration that put residents at risk.
It’s unknown what the future holds for Chicago and Illinois with Trump having three more years in office, but officials have vowed to put up roadblocks as needed.
“We have to rely on the courts at this point because the federal government is invading our cities unconstitutionally. And we need law and order — we need the law to be enforced,” Pritzker said.
Johnson said, “I want people to remember that the city of Chicago stood firm in defending our democracy, but more importantly than that — not just our democracy, but protecting our collective humanity.”
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