We are getting new reports about a chilling and downright shocking escalation of ICE tactics against the residents of Chicago.
In the middle of the night hundreds of armed federal agents and police, backed up by riot trucks, smoke grenades and helicopters, breached fences and busted doors in an immigration raid on an entire apartment building on the city’s southside.
They pulled dozens of residents from their homes in zip ties, including children – some of them without any clothes. They then held some outside for hours and dragged the others into rented vans. — Chris Hayes, October 2, 2025
The victims included American citizens (men, women, and children), who were rousted from their homes, zip tied, and forcibly detained for hours behind the building. They were released only after the raiders verified that there were no outstanding warrants against them.
This conduct by armed federal agents clearly violates the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution and — a string of 2025 shadow docket rulings by the Roberts Court notwithstanding — established precedents by the United States Supreme Court.
In Los Angeles earlier this year, a U.S. District judge — after a trial challenging the roving patrols, arrests without reasonable suspicion, and denial of legal counsel — ruled the raids illegal.
“Is it illegal to conduct roving patrols which identify people based upon race alone, aggressively question them, and then detain them without a warrant, without their consent, and without reasonable suspicion that they are without status? Yes, it is,” she wrote.
Her decision was stayed by the Republican justices on the Supreme Court in another shadow docket decision — in an unsigned, one-paragraph order (Noem v. Vasquez Perdomo). Justice Brett Kavanaugh, in a concurrence, dismissed concerns over “brief stops for questioning” — which Justice Sonia Sotomayer, in dissent, rejected as contrary to what government agents were actually doing to undocumented immigrants and U.S. citizens alike.
Now Kavanaugh stops have become a thing. (The name is inspired by SCOTUS-sanctioned Terry stops, which allowed police, with reasonable suspicion of criminal activity, to briefly stop-and-frisk individuals.) Masked federal agents inflict performative violence on the perceived enemies of the man in the White House.
State sanctioned MAGA violence unleashed
Trump has spent years threatening his enemies, including — first and foremost — Democrats. Yesterday On Truth Social, the president posted a graphic characterizing Democrats as “THE PARTY OF HATE, EVIL, AND SATAN.” Trump’s chief White House advisor, Stephen Miller, has said, “The Democrat Party is not a political party. It is a domestic extremist organization.” It is no coincidence that Trump’s militarized agents have gone after Democratic states and cities.
In speaking with the nation’s military leaders this past week, Trump even suggested using our cities as “training grounds for our military.” Not just any cities, “the ones that are run by radical left Democrats.” His meandering remarks also included this:
“America is under invasion from within. We’re under invasion from within. No different than a foreign enemy, but more difficult in any ways because they don’t wear uniforms. At least when they’re wearing a uniform you can take them out.”
“War ravaged” Portland
Now Trump has targeted Portland with federalized National Guard troops, even though the Oregon governor suggested that the city was not under siege. Trump pushed back:
“I spoke to the governor, she was very nice,” Trump said. “But I said, ‘Well wait a minute, am I watching things on television that are different from what’s happening? My people tell me different.’ They are literally attacking and there are fires all over the place…it looks like terrible.”
The city’s mayor responded, after multiple sources reported that the president has been watching Fox News Channel, which has included five year old images of Portland during the George Floyd protests:
“The number of necessary troops is zero,” Portland’s mayor, Keith Wilson, said. “I’ve been so deeply disappointed to see the footage from a half decade ago recycled,” he added, referring to a recent Fox News reported cited by Trump that misled viewers by wrongly presenting video from a 2020 protest in Portland as new.
The Democratic governor of Illinois has responded to our lawless, vengeful, TV-addled president:
ICE is running around the Loop harassing people for not being white. Just a year ago, that was illegal in the United States. Now ICE is making it commonplace. That’s not making America great.
In any other country, if federal agents fired upon journalists and protesters when unprovoked, what would we call it? If federal agents marched down streets harassing civilians and demanding their papers, what would we say? I don’t think we’d have trouble calling it what it is: authoritarianism.
Governor JB Pritzker added:
For Donald Trump and the MAGAs in Congress, this is not about fighting crime or about public safety. This is about sowing fear and intimidation and division among Americans. It was about creating a pretext that sends armed military troops into our communities. This is about consolidating power in Donald Trump’s hands. What he plans to do with that power now or during the 2026 elections should worry all of us.
When you add to that the Trump’s administration’s efforts to label as dangerous free speech critical of him, White House senior staff calling the Democratic Party fascist, the Trump-appointed FCC chair threatening to revoke broadcast licenses and the approval of a merger in order to silence late night comedians, Trump’s threats to jail political opponents, you cannot call this anything except an attack on the Constitution of the United States.