After months of threats from the Trump administration, on October 8, hundreds of National Guard troops arrived in Chicago from Texas and Illinois. The US Northern Command announced on October 8 that around 200 soldiers from the Texas National Guard and around 300 from the Illinois National Guard had arrived in the greater Chicago area. Troops are set to “protect” ICE and other federal agents, as well as federal property, according to the Northern Command.

The deployment of troops comes after waves of mass protest against US President Donald Trump’s ramped up immigration enforcement operation – labeled as “Operation Midway Blitz.” US President Donald Trump took to his social media platform Truth Social to call for the jailing of Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnon and Illinois Governor JB Pritzker on October 8 for “failing to protect Ice Officers”.

“This is not the first time Trump has tried to have a Black man unjustly arrested,” Mayor Johnson wrote on X in response.

Protests in Chicago have been almost constant since the Trump administration announced “Operation Midway Blitz” last month. Chicagoans have participated in an array of protest tactics: taking to the streets in mass marches, staging noise demonstrations outside hotels lodging federal agents, engaging in spontaneous street protests against ICE presence, and organizing student walkouts from classes.

The enhanced immigration enforcement operation has also been characterized by outbursts of violence from federal agents against civilians. Immigrant worker and father Silverio Villegas-Gonzalez was shot dead by ICE agents on September 12 in a suburb of Chicago, the third casualty of the Trump administration’s mass deportation operation.

The shooting of Marimar Martinez, who survived a shooting by Border Patrol agents this past weekend, has gone viral after body camera footage revealed that an agent told her to “Do something, b—-,” before pulling over and opening fire on the 30-year-old woman. The video appears to contradict the government’s claim that Martinez drove towards officers in her car before being shot.

“These federal agents can’t go anywhere without being confronted,” Kamran Siddiqi, who has organized in Chicago for a decade, told Peoples Dispatch. “What the administration is saying is that they are sending in troops to protect ICE agents. A month ago it was all about crime, but now it’s about protecting ICE so that they can kidnap anyone and everyone.”

Operation Midway Blitz targets immigrant communities in Chicago

Earlier this month, DHS released a dark, movie-style montage featuring footage of ICE raids and claiming that there have been over 900 immigration enforcement arrests over the course of Operation Midway Blitz.

Siddiqi claims that the operation “is a racist attack on primarily Black and Brown communities” in Chicago. The mostly Black suburb of Broadview has become a site of major struggle after police and federal agents shoved protesters. Chicago’s largely Black South Side was the site of a massive immigration raid in the early hours of October 1, where dozens were arrested including US citizens.

In an interview with WBEZ, commander-at-large of the US Border Patrol Gregory Bovino, who revealed that federal agents are choosing to detain people based on “how they look.”

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