On Operation Midway Blitz – The ICE-Gestapo’s Attack on Chicago
Each day of “Operation Midway Blitz”, the ICE-Gestapo’s invasion of Chicago brings some fresh, new horror. Group chats light up with reports of unmarked SUVs terrorizing some neighborhood: maybe today a gardener snatched up, or a whole family grabbed from the park. A tamale vendor, or some guys looking for work at a Home Depot. Maybe they just grabbed somebody at the bus stop, or maybe today is the day, like September 12th was for the family of Silverio Villegas-Gonzalez, that they murder someone again. The people kidnapped are rendered to a black site detention facility in the suburb of Broadview. The only people allowed into that facility are federal employees, fascist streamers, and the detainees themselves (alongside the occasional protester).
No elected official is allowed inside, or journalist, or lawyer, or priest bearing communion. In fact, the courageous members of the clergy who gather to bear witness to the Broadview nightmare have been subjected to random violence and arrest. Elected officials on the streets and in the hospitals of Chicago have been handcuffed and had guns pointed at them as well. Journalists have been thrown to the ground and brutally arrested. None of this is done with a semblance of due process, and all of this is done in open mockery of court decisions. In fact, outside of their barefaced commander Gregory “Göring” Bovino, nearly all of the ICE-Gestapo are anonymous, identified as law enforcement only by their military-style uniforms.
Despite recent court rulings, it’s become a daily occurrence for tear gas to be deployed on residential streets, outside of schools, and grocery stores. Damn near everywhere the ICE-Gestapo shows up, they are met with heroic acts of resistance, with people blowing whistles to warn their neighbors, locking doors to keep the thugs out, and sometimes showing up in numbers large enough to drive the ICE-Gestapo out altogether. Especially in the heart of Chicago’s Mexican neighborhoods on the East Side, in Little Village, and in Brighton Park, masses of people have given the invading cowards a small taste of their own medicine, forcing the ICE-Gestapo to tuck tail and run. At the Broadview black site, protesters have gathered regularly for nearly two months, doing everything from physically attempting to block ICE vehicles from kidnapping people to holding religious services. They have been met with a torrent of tear gas and rubber bullets from federal pigs, and more recently hit with the truncheons of JB Pritzker’s state police, sometimes shoulder by shoulder with their comrades in the ICE-Gestapo.
What’s shaking in Chicago?
Chicago, as it exactly exists, is the third-largest city in the country, beautiful, diverse, segregated, and deeply riven by class conflict and white supremacy. It’s power structure, the business elite’s murdering pigs, and political leadership, whether the direct representatives of those business elites or the current crop of NGO-paternalists aim their policies directly in the heart of the most oppressed and dispossessed. In the minds of Trump’s reactionary social base, however, Chicago’s violent crime (both real and imagined), vibrant Black and Latino cultures, and legacy of political radicalism (mostly imagined these days) become a powerful symbol for everything they want to eradicate. During the Biden years, as large numbers of Venezuelan migrants arrived in the US (fleeing the economic collapse caused by the bipartisan drive to destabilize that country), reactionary governors in Florida and Texas started busing those migrants to sanctuary cities like Chicago.
The influx of these migrants (who had every moral right to be in the US, and despite the fascist fear-mongering, were in the country legally speaking asylum) caused social friction and conflict, especially given the lack of federal funds to support the new arrivals, and the disastrous mishandling of the influx by subsequent Chicago mayors. As much as his supporters try, we’ll never forget the millions of dollars that Brandon Johnson wasted trying to get a military contractor to build tent cities, or his role in the death of Jean Carlos Martinez Rivero. Fuck Brandon Johnson.
The first weeks of the second season of Trump kicked off, with fully televised immigration raids in Chicago. Agents, accompanied by b-list celebrity Dr. Phil, spent several days kidnapping people in and around Chicago for the benefit of PR and to demonize the city and state for their “sanctuary” policies. As that early campaign wrapped up, Tom Homan, the Homeland Security (DHS) head, complained that too many immigrants in Chicago knew their rights in the face of the ICE-Gestapo. As the mass deportation machine turned its attention to Southern California (and the masses gave them a proper greeting), in Chicago, they focused on stalking the immigration courts, with masked agents grabbing up people trying to do things “the right way.” This spilled over in June when the Chicago Police Department (CPD) aided and abetted (not for the last time) the ICE-Gestapo in brutally attacking a crowd of protesters, including several Chicago elected officials.
In early September, the federal government officially launched “Operation Midway Blitz”, a name dripping with Nazi imagery.
Personally supervised by Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) head Gregory “Göring” Bovino, this operation amounts to a full-scale invasion of Chicago and the larger metropolitan area. It’s hard even to access reliable quantitative information on the scope of this invasion. Bovino himself claims that they’ve kidnapped nearly 3,000 people. Media reports suggest that well over 70 percent of those have no criminal history at all, making a lie out of the government’s claims about the “worst of the worst.” Dozens of people have been arrested by federal, state, and local law enforcement attempting to stand up to these thugs. On the ground, every day seems to bring with it a new horror: the killing of Silverio Villegas-Gonzalez, the shooting of Marimar Martinez. Federal agents filming themselves in a military style raid of an apartment in South Short, rappelling onto the roof, going apartment to apartment, grabbing people up, pointing guns and children, and handcuffing people in their sleeping clothes.
On other days, it’s the full-scale deployment of tear gas in residential neighborhoods, with seemingly no provocation at all, near schools, grocery stores, and family homes. Stalking the parking lots of Home Depots to grab up day laborers, kidnapping people at bus stops, and outside of social service offices. Marching through downtown Chicago, kidnapping a Guatemalan family along the way. They’ve pointed guns at parents coming from school drop-offs, and elected officials warning neighborhoods about their presence. Another elected official was handcuffed in a hospital. They’ve liberally deployed teargas and rubber bullets against other protesters, including, infamously, at a pastor raising his hands in prayer.
An array of state and local officials have stepped into the situation, especially Brandon Johnson and Illinois Governor JB Pritzker. Both have defended their sanctuary laws and given swaggering statements opposing Trump: Pritzker declaring that to get to “his” people, Trump would have to come through him, and Johnson even going so far as to call for a general strike.
Outside of legal filings, however, neither has materially stood up to the mass deportation machine, and a whole slew of local progressive officials have been quietly collaborating with the ICE-Gestapo.
Friends and enemies
An array of state and local officials have stepped into the situation, especially Brandon Johnson and Illinois Governor JB Pritzker. Both have defended their sanctuary laws and given swaggering statements opposing Trump: Pritzker declaring that to get to “his” people, Trump would have to come through him, and Johnson even going so far as to call for a general strike.
Outside of legal filings, however, neither has materially stood up to the mass deportation machine, and a whole slew of local progressive officials have been quietly collaborating with the ICE-Gestapo.
Brandon Johnson’s boisterous claims have been backed up with the declaration of ICE-free zones, which the city of Chicago will not materially enforce. The ICE-Gestapo has made a mockery of those paper declarations, using both city-owned property and city schools to stage their kidnapping operations. Meanwhile, the CPD has repeatedly responded to crowds that gather to protest the ICE-Gestapo, not to defend the crowds from ICE, but to defend ICE from the masses, even getting tear gassed in the process. What is stopping Brandon Johnson from matching his rhetoric with action? With deploying the CPD (for once) to stop harassing the people and instead enforce the actual sanctuary city laws, or keeping ICE from staging in city parks and schools? Or deploying the city’s Law Department (which spent nearly 10 months prosecuting anti-genocide protesters after the DNC) to finding creative ways to drive ICE out of Chicago.
The answer, of course, is that the ultimate loyalty of Johnson and Pritzker (and politicians on down) is to the imperialist system. While they certainly disagree with Trump and the way he is exercising his power, and may despise everything about him, they serve the same system, and their belief in maintaining that system ultimately determines their course of action. Pritzker, in many ways a more savvy politician than Johnson, saw the problems arising from the constant brutalization of protesters at the Broadview black site, and ultimately took over policing that site from the federal government, not to protect protesters from the feds, but to diffuse the situation and take it off the front page. Again, if Pritzker can deploy the Illinois State Police (ISP) to enforce questionably legal curfew and anti-protest measures in Broadview, why couldn’t he send those same officers to shut down that black site in the first place? Or to arrest Bovino and other agents who are blatantly kidnapping people with no warrants. After ISP (with other local law enforcement) took over policing the black site from the Feds, the assistant director of ICE’s Chicago field office wrote: “It’s clear that ISP is the difference maker in this scenario, and we are grateful for their leadership.”
Broadview Mayor Katrina Thompson has constantly criticized ICE while passing laws restricting the right of protest. Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart has deployed his deputies to stand side by side with ICE and the ISP at the Broadview black site. Cook County State’s Attorney Eileen Burke is prosecuting dozens of people arrested for protesting the ICE-Gestapo. Down the line, not only are these officials showing a lack of spine and a lack of creativity, but they are fundamentally choosing to side with the imperialist system over the people under the gun of the ICE-Gestapo. Resistance to the ICE-Gestapo is not only going to have to come from outside of the system; it’s going to require politically exposing these complicit politicians and breaking the hope that people have in these people to succeed.
What about the black site?
The Broadview black site (an ICE facility in a working-class suburb) has been a key focus of resistance to the ICE-Gestapo. Especially before the ISP succeeded in pacifying the crowd, the protesters gathered at Broadview were militantly attempting to impede the apparatus of kidnapping by attempting to block their vehicles and throwing sand in the gears of the mass deportation machine. Largely operating outside of the established Chicago Leftist organizations (and their overriding fidelity to working with the system),
these early protests were a real breath of fresh air, marking the return of both principled religious people acting out of righteous conviction and a few brave black-clad people carrying out direct action (both sorely missed during the Gaza protests in Chicago).
Even that potentially radical mix was not enough to actually shut down this facility before the ISP took it over, and a group of those protesters are now facing federal charges.
The ISP takeover, a dramatic display of Illinois cooperating with ICE, has largely succeeded in pacifying the protesters and allowing for new infrastructure to be built that further separates the dirty dealings from the public. Into that stalemate has come the neon vest-clad NGO clowns, alongside the literal clowns in costume (the less said about them, the better).
As we see it, the way forward in Broadview means: exposing the hypocrisy of Pritzker and raising the political stakes for him and his allies, alongside mobilizing a broad political defense of everyone arrested by local and federal authorities there.
Tactically, it seems that the positive side of the politically varied crowds gathered there could be turned into a broad campaign of civil disobedience, calling on the more liberal sections to put some skin in the game, both trying to actually block ICE vehicles from leaving the facility and slowing down the gears of local law enforcement.
So, rapid response?
Various neighborhood rapid response teams have popped up around the city and in some suburbs as well. Almost always linked to local politicians or NGO’s, these teams take the approach of taking reports and patrolling neighborhoods, letting people know their legal rights in the face of the ICE-Gestapo, sharing reports of ICE activity online, and physically blowing whistles and honking horns to let people know ICE is in the area.
It is clear that these teams have some effect in restricting the ability of ICE to kidnap people. Reports indicate that businesses have been warned to lock doors and people have been able to shelter their neighbors. Various rapid response volunteers themselves have come under assault by ICE.
At their peak, these warnings have caused masses of people to come out into the streets where they have been able to directly confront ICE and chase them out of neighborhoods, employing tactics that are well beyond what the politicians and NGO’s are comfortable with. Unfortunately, the lesson that many people have learned from these confrontations is to invest an often mythical power into these rapid response networks. Rather than seeing the obvious truth of: we should warn people when the ICE thugs are around and try to drive them out, some people have decided that they should sit in a circle for hours with other Leftists, practicing blowing whistles, and even resurrected the inane slogan “we keep us safe.” If you’re primarily worried about your own personal safety, you’re not doing enough to protect your neighbors.
The challenge before everyone is to do more than what is acceptable to NGO’s and politicians. We must spread the defiant spirit of those who have actually stopped ICE in their tracks.
Resistance is the way forward
In Brighton Park, after the ICE-Gestapo shot Marimar Martinez, masses of people did just that. Despite what the clowns in the neon vests told them to do, people spontaneously came out of their homes to confront the kidnappers and actually drive them out of the neighborhood. That day, it took both ICE and the CPD, and dozens of tear gas canisters for ICE to tuck tail and run. On the East Side, in Cicero and in Little Village, similar scenes have played out. In spite of tear gas, in spite of brutal arrests, in spite of cooperation with CPD and suburban police departments, this mass resistance has gone well beyond the pathetic calls to do nothing other than stand back and film.
It’s this resistance, more than anything, that points the way forward: for everyone in Chicago to find what they’re willing to do, what they’re willing to sacrifice, and to push themselves forward to the next step.
Behind Enemy Lines is committing ourselves to going out broadly among the people with a simple pledge:
We are also committing ourselves to intervening wherever we can to politically defend the people facing charges for standing up to the ICE-Gestapo and fighting the repression, whether from the federal or local governments.
ICE’s reign of terror ends only when people rise to stop it. Be brave like the protesters at Broadview, be brave like the rebels in Little Village, be brave for the people under the gun of the ICE-Gestapo. We will be with you. And we will have your back.
Behind Enemy Lines 