In the wake of the outrageous assault on the apartment complex in Chicago’s South Shore last week, ICE and other federal agencies have terrorized different parts of the city. And now the Trump regime is using their aggressive assaults as a pretext to declare they are deploying 300 National Guard troops in Chicago (supposedly to “protect” ICE agents and federal property), over the objections of Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker and Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson.

On Saturday, October 4, a woman who is a U.S. citizen was shot by a Custom and Border Patrol agent in Brighton Park, an area just south of Little Village (the historic Mexican area in Chicago). The Border Patrol claimed that their agents fired when a number of cars were blocking their vehicles. The woman who was shot was taken to the hospital in fair condition. This is the second shooting by immigration agents in Chicago within weeks. In the earlier shooting, a man had just dropped off his child at school when ICE agents trying to arrest him claimed his car posed a “danger” to them—and killed him. ICE’s justifications for the shooting have unraveled under scrutiny by local politicians and media.

On Friday, October 3, Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Kristi Noem (aka Gestapo Barbie) was on hand for the assault on protesters at the ICE “processing center” in Broadview (a nearby Chicago suburb) where she inspected a “sniper’s nest” of ICE agents on the facility’s roof. A reporter witnessed a minister being choked by ICE agents as multiple people were arrested. Noem also toured a large facility the DHS wants to acquire to expand ICE “processing” of immigrants they capture in the Chicago area.

Afterward, Noem joined an anti-immigrant raid on a Walmart on the west side of Chicago. An employee who witnessed the raid said, “It’s terrible, man. Tons of cars just pulled up speeding and there was a ton of yelling and commotion. They just grabbed a random shopper.” 

The same day, an alderperson was cuffed at a hospital emergency room in the west side when she demanded to see a judicial warrant for a man being detained by ICE. And at a grocery store in a north side neighborhood, ICE agents threw smoke bombs (which stung like tear gas) into the parking lot after people heckled them and blew whistles and honked horns to let the community know that ICE was present. Parents of students at the nearby school gathered together as school let out to make sure that ICE could not further terrorize the community.   

People have been shocked and shaken by experiencing this fascist terror popping up throughout the city. And this is just a taste of what Trump was calling for in using the cities (those run by Democrats) as “training grounds” for the military.