Feds step up immigration raids around Chicago on Mexican Independence Day: 'It's a cultural attack'

Helicopter blades, bright lights and smoke bombs early Tuesday signaled a major escalation of President Donald Trump’s expansive deportation campaign across the Chicago area.

Just before 5:30 a.m., a loud bang woke up Michael Tucker outside his Elgin home, who was shocked to see his entire street blocked off by armed U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers in military trucks and fatigues who were breaking into his neighbor’s front door.

At the helm was U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem, who briefly joined agents in the suburban operation.

Noem later issued a statement that her agents “took violent offenders off the streets with arrests for assault, DUI and felony stalking.” But federal officials didn’t release details on their latest slew of immigration arrests — and they also briefly detained an Elgin resident who is a U.S. citizen.

“It’s a gross overuse of power,” Tucker said. "It’s completely uncalled for.”

Confusion and fear reigned in Elgin and beyond with the arrival of Gregory Bovino, the Border Patrol official who led aggressive ICE raids in California and is now spearheading a significant ramp-up of an unpredictable Trump administration campaign.

"Well, Chicago, we’ve arrived!" Bovino wrote in a social media post, accompanied by a video of Border Patrol agents in Chicago. "Operation At Large is here to continue the mission we started in Los Angeles — to make the city safer by targeting and arresting criminal illegal aliens."

Gov. JB Pritzker said sources told his office the Trump administration aimed to increase raids as Chicagoans celebrated Mexican Independence Day.

“What’s happening here is it’s a cultural attack,” said Elena Gonzales, curator of civic engagement and social justice for the Chicago History Museum. “It’s an effort to strike fear into the hearts of local communities, and to attack our culture and our traditions and the things that hold us together and bring us together.”

‘They are grabbing people who have Brown skin’

Tuesday's enforcement in Chicago and the surrounding suburbs are separate from the Department of Homeland Security's "Operation Midway Blitz," which was announced two weeks ago.

Pritzker said the ramped-up raids seemed more widespread but still followed the Trump playbook “to cause challenges and mayhem on the ground.” Immigration advocates say the effort is largely designed to spread fear among the area’s immigrant population and push people to self-deport.

“The harder the ICE agents come in, the more people want to intervene and step in the way of them. And when that happens and when there's any kind of touching or engagement with those ICE agents that involves actual potential battery, well, that'll be the excuse,” Pritzker said. “And it's wrong, by the way — they are causing it.”

The Democratic governor has claimed for weeks that the White House strategy is to increase immigration enforcement, prompting protests that could then be used to justify a National Guard deployment.

Rejecting Trump’s assertion that the raids are intended to tamp down crime — which has fallen in Chicago over the last few years — Pritzker says it’s about normalizing military presence in communities to decrease voter turnout in the 2026 midterm elections.

The Trump administration is amping up the hype around its enforcement efforts by embedding influencers as federal immigration officers conduct enforcement operations — and by relying on social media and friendly conservative media to highlight raids.

Replying to a social media post by Pritzker's Deputy Chief of Staff for Communications Matt Hill, who pointed out that ICE hasn't called Pritzker but has "the time to create a TikTok video showing off beautiful Chicago scenery," Bovino wrote, "Tik tok, tik tok, time is up!!"

"We've already arrested several criminals this morning. Much more to come, so stay tuned my friend," Bovino wrote. In other posts, Bovino said he was "headed to McKinley Park" and Franklin Park.

Bovino, who is typically dressed in tactical gear, led the latest deportation effort in Los Angeles that led to more than 5,000 arrests. Dubbed "Operation At Large," the nationwide plan is an escalated effort targeting those who lack legal status. The California raids included ICE agents popping out of an unmarked rental box truck and arresting people in a Home Depot parking lot.

Pritzker said Bovino “has a history of acting in ways that are quite violent against people, many of whom are not criminals.

“They are grabbing people who have Brown skin, or who speak with an accent, or who speak in another language, and not people who are guilty of or are accused of perpetrating a violent crime,” the governor said.

Immigration raids this week seem to have focused on the suburbs, though Pritzker said his office remains in the dark on federal plans. The raids also create confusion for local police departments who “see skirmishes going on, [and] they don’t know if those are real ICE officials, especially if they’re wearing masks in unmarked cars and aren’t carrying or showing their identification,” Pritzker said.

Speaking on WBEZ on Tuesday morning, Mayor Brandon Johnson called Trump's deportation operations a "provocation of terror and anxiety."

"I think it’s unfortunate that this president refuses to cooperate and work with municipalities across this country," Johnson said. "We want criminals off the streets. There’s ways you can coordinate."

The operation also comes as President Donald Trump once again vowed the National Guard would be deployed to Chicago despite fervent local opposition.

"So I'm going to go to Chicago early, against Pritzker. Pritzker is nothing," Trump said. "If Pritzker was smart, he'd say please come in."

Pritzker fired back that “you can't take anything that [Trump] says seriously from one day to the next. He's attacking verbally. Sometimes he attacks [by] sending his agents in. Sometimes he forgets. I think he might be suffering from some dementia… and the next day he'll wake up on the other side of the bed and stop talking about Chicago.”

Suburban U.S. citizen detained

Joe Botello was startled awake early Tuesday when federal immigration agents busted through his door in Elgin.

The 37-year-old said he woke up to yelling on the house’s main floor. Shortly after, immigration agents led him and five of his roommates out of the home in handcuffs.

Botello said he was put into a U.S. Customs and Border Protection vehicle and questioned about his immigration status.

“I told them I was a U.S. citizen, that my ID was in my wallet,” Botello said.

Botello said he and one of his roommates were let go after they were questioned, but the other four were taken away.

“I just feel tired,” said Botello, who was working on getting his home repaired and cleaned up after agents broke down a door to get into the house.

Mary Hornish lives a few houses from where federal agents raided the home Tuesday in Elgin.

“I was woken up by all these helicopters flying over my house. I thought we were going to war or something, and I got kind of scared,” Hornish said. “These [immigrants] are very good people. This is a good neighborhood. They’re hard working. I could ask any of them, you know, for something, and they would be happy to help me out. And I’m just, I’m really sad, because I can’t imagine something like that happening to anyone.”

Hornish said she doesn’t want to see federal agents on the streets of her community. “I think it’s an intrusion, and I don’t think it’s right.”

Two Illinois lawmakers helped lead about 75 immigrant rights supporters Tuesday afternoon on a march through west suburban Melrose Park. They decried a fatal shooting by an immigration officer during a traffic stop Friday in nearby Franklin Park.

“It is a shame that I have to be out today, defending the humanity of people, the humanity of someone’s father, someone’s grandchild, someone’s daughter, just because their skin is brown, their hair is dark, their language is different and, most of all, because they dare to be in a country that racists think belongs only to them,” State Rep. Lisa Hernandez, D-Cicero, told the marchers.

State Rep. Norma Hernandez, D-Melrose Park, called for removing “racists out of politics.”

“Let’s make sure that we celebrate our beautiful culture, all of the countries in Latin America, because we are here to stay,” she said. “We are not going anywhere.”

Contributing: Mariah Woelfel, Elvia Malagón and Adriana Cardona-Maguigad