ICE Violently Besieges Chicago Apartment Building, Abducts Dozens of Workers

Read our editorial on mass deportations here, and the ongoing struggle against it here.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) carried out a brutal and highly militarized raid on an apartment building in the South Shore neighborhood of Chicago on September 30. The raid is part of the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) Operation Midway Blitz, which has seen massive and extremely violent ICE raids across Illinois and particularly the Chicago metro area as part of the ruling class’s attempt to offset its economic crisis.

Early in the morning, ICE, along with Customs and Border Protection (CBP), the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) descended on the apartment building from Blackhawk helicopters, throwing flashbang grenades as they broke in. Agents chainsawed through fences, handcuffed dozens of people, pointed guns at residents’ faces, and separated Black and presumed immigrant detainees into different vans. According to DHS, 37 people in total were arrested.

Neighbor Eboni Watson told monopoly media that residents were “terrified.”

“The kids was crying. People was screaming. They looked very distraught. I was out there crying when I seen the little girl come around the corner, because they was bringing the kids down, too, had them zip tied to each other…. That’s all I kept asking. What is the morality? Where’s the human? One of them literally laughed. He was standing right here. He said, ‘fuck them kids,’” she said.

ICE claims that the area is “known to be frequented by Tren de Aragua members and their associates,” despite providing no evidence of this. Tren de Aragua (TDA) is a Venezuelan gang that has become a code word to justify ICE terror in much of the same way “MS-13” has been for over a decade. The Trump administration has also used the gangs as pretext for its recent provocative and illegal attacks on ships off the coast of Venezuela as US forces increasingly position themselves for an invasion of Venezuela and Latin America more broadly.

Chicago in past weeks has seen hundreds of uniformed ICE agents occupying the streets, harassing and arresting anyone they suspect to be immigrants. As a result, anti-ICE protests have become an increasingly regular and militant occurrence, especially outside the Broadview ICE torture center that lacks basic essential amenities for prisoners. Just hours after the raid on Tuesday, protesters again took to the streets, blocking traffic and demonstrating against the latest attack by ICE.

Ultra-reactionary President Trump announced the terrorist “Operation Midway Blitz” campaign in early September, targeting the immigrant and Hispanic working class in Illinois “sanctuary cities,” especially Chicago. As ICE abductions have gone on, Trump escalated his rhetoric at a recent meeting of military leaders initiated by “Secretary of War” Pete Hegseth. He went on about “the enemy within,” saying that the military should use US cities as “training grounds”.

Trump also recently sent National Guard troops to Portland, Oregon, and Memphis, Tennessee, in an effort to repress growing movements in those cities against mass deportations. The ruling class is attempting to carry out mass layoffs and forcibly reduce the wages of workers through increased competition for employment by way of deportation and imprisonment while also repressing the increasingly militant resistance to ICE in particular and the State in general.

Photo: Video still of protesters outside the Broadview ICE concentration camp attempting to prevent a federal vehicle from leaving the facility.

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