But it wasn’t an alien invasion. It was a federal immigration raid involving hundreds of agents.<\/p>\n
Eleanor McMullen-Webster was among those arrested.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen I opened that door, I tell you, I saw that little red light, and that gun was right in my face,\u201d McMullen-Webster told CBC.<\/p>\n
Federal agents handcuffed the 64-year-old retiree and her husband, she says, directing them into an apartment where Venezuelan migrants were lined up against a wall.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
The raid on the South Shore apartment complex was part of a larger initiative by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to capture the \u201cworst of the worst criminal illegal aliens\u201d in Illinois, according to a press release<\/a>. Codenamed Operation Midway Blitz, the mission was to capture undocumented migrants allowed to \u201croam free on American streets\u201d due to the state\u2019s sanctuary policies.<\/p>\n That night, authorities arrested 37 immigrants, mostly Venezuelans, though none have been charged.<\/p>\n Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) says<\/a> two of them are members of Tren de Aragua, a Venezuelan transnational criminal group the U.S. designated a terrorist organization<\/a> in February, but didn’t release names. One of those men denied any association with the organization in an interview with ProPublica<\/a>.<\/p>\n WATCH | Detained without explanation: \u2018Don’t shoot me. I am not a Venezuelan\u2019: South Shore resident details Midway Blitz arrest<\/p>\n Eleanor McMullen-Webster, a 64-year-old retired Chicagoan, says she and her husband were arbitrarily arrested by federal agents in the middle of the night, and alleges authorities would not explain why they were detained.<\/p>\n After being held for more than an hour, McMullen-Webster and her husband were released, without an explanation.<\/p>\n \u201cI felt this small,\u201d said the Chicago resident, still furious at the \u201cdisrespectful\u201d way she was treated.<\/p>\n President Donald Trump\u2019s immigration crackdown has faced sharp criticism, including from former president Barack Obama<\/a> and Pope Leo<\/a>, who is from Chicago. Both admonished the vilification of migrants.<\/p>\n WATCH | Pope decries treatment of migrants:<\/p>\n But the idea of \u201csaving\u201d Chicago has been ongoing for years.<\/p>\n While running for president in 2016, Trump frequently invoked the city\u2019s violent crime rate, calling Chicago a \u201cwar zone\u201d<\/a> and saying minorities in \u201cinner cities\u201d were \u201cliving in hell.\u201d<\/p>\n Two weeks before his assassination<\/a>, MAGA influencer Charlie Kirk<\/a> \u2014 a Chicago native \u2014 spoke out in favour of Trump’s<\/a> efforts to apprehend “illegal criminals\u201d trying to \u201ctake over\u201d the U.S. \u201cfrom within.\u201d At Kirk\u2019s memorial<\/a>, Trump said one of the last things Kirk said to him was, \u201cPlease, sir, save Chicago.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWe’re going to do that,\u201d Trump told the crowd. \u201cWe’re going to save Chicago from horrible crime.\u201d<\/p>\n But in the wake of Operation Midway Blitz, Chicagoans themselves are divided over who the criminals are \u2014 and who is ultimately responsible for keeping their city safe.<\/p>\n Troops sent to \u2018straighten out\u2019 Chicago<\/p>\n The helicopter-assisted ICE raids took place three weeks after Trump threatened the city in a post on Truth Social<\/a>. It included an image of him as a military commander with the caption, \u201cI love the smell of deportations in the morning,\u201d a reference to the 1979 war film Apocalypse Now.<\/p>\n Trump\u2019s rocky relationship with Chicago<\/a> goes back years. In 2014, he built a 20-foot-tall steel sign spelling out his name on the city\u2019s Trump Tower. The move drew widespread backlash<\/a>, including from then-mayor Rahm Emanuel.<\/p>\n As president<\/a>, Trump blasted the city\u2019s tolerance of illegal immigration, saying violence in Chicago was \u201cworse than some of the places \u2026 where you have wars going on.\u201d He frequently took aim at local officials on social media, threatening to \u201csend in the Feds\u201d<\/a> in January 2017.<\/p>\n WATCH | Call for solidarity: \u2018Bring it on,\u2019 Chicago woman says in response to Trump\u2019s threats to use city as military \u2018training ground\u2019<\/p>\n People should \u2018put our egos to the side\u2019 and build solidarity across racial lines, says Eboni Watson, a South Shore resident who videotaped the federal immigration raid on a neighbouring apartment complex.<\/p>\n Crime in \u201csanctuary\u201d cities has been a focal point for the second Trump administration. After deploying the National Guard<\/a> in August to address the \u201ccomplete and total lawlessness\u201d in Washington, D.C., he again vowed to send federal troops to \u201cstraighten out\u201d Chicago.<\/p>\n Robert Reich, a former U.S. secretary of labour, suggested it’s all a concerted effort to suppress the vote in the 2026 mid-term elections.<\/p>\n \u201cHe is saying to himself and maybe others quietly, this is a way to intimidate [residents],\u201d Reich said. \u201c\u2018If they’re just afraid to be very public in any way, then I win, because they’re not going to vote.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n \u2018Absolute betrayal\u2019 of American people<\/p>\n The force used by federal agents in the South Shore apartment complex is far from isolated.<\/p>\n In Evanston, Ill., a car was following a vehicle of DHS officers when agents slammed on the brakes, resulting in a crash. While arresting the activists, one of whom was severely beaten by officers, an immigration agent threatened to shoot a civilian filming the arrests.<\/p>\n \u201cI believe that they’re acting with total authority, but without any sort of oversight at all, and they should be held accountable for their actions,\u201d said local resident David Brooks, who had a pistol pointed at him.<\/p>\n WATCH | Threatened with a gun: This man filmed an arrest by border patrol agents. One threatened him with a gun<\/p>\n In this video shot by David Brooks, a border patrol agent shouts, \u2018Get back or I\u2019m [going to] shoot you,\u2019 then points his pistol at the Evanston, Ill., resident seconds later. The agent would not give Brooks his name and badge number in the aftermath.<\/p>\n Michael Rodriguez, a representative for Chicago\u2019s Little Village neighbourhood, characterized the immigration raids as an \u201cabsolute betrayal\u201d of the U.S. Constitution and the American people.<\/p>\n \u201cThis is a disgrace to our country, to our legacy,” he said. “It will live in infamy.\u201d<\/p>\n Democratic Chicago committeeman Raymond Lopez says the violent nature of the raids have made his constituents \u2014 many of whom are long-term undocumented, mostly Mexican immigrants \u2014 fearful of going outside.<\/p>\n Despite growing opposition<\/a>, some Chicago residents have welcomed Trump\u2019s aggressive actions as a way to keep the city safe.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen you place unvetted gang members into our buildings amongst us with our kids, then you put us in danger. And that’s what we have seen in our communities,\u201d said Danielle Carter-Walters, vice-president of grassroots conservative movement Chicago Flips Red.<\/p>\n The current violent crime rate in Chicago is down about 40 per cent from 2023, which had the most reported incidents in the last decade, city data shows<\/a>. Crime across Illinois has followed a similar downward trend<\/a>, though rates of homicide and rape remain higher than the national average.<\/p>\n WATCH | Migrants flown into Chicago: Texas governor charters plane to send migrants to Chicago<\/p>\n Texas Governor Greg Abbott chartered a plane to send 100 migrants to Chicago in response to the city giving fines to buses that were ferrying migrants to the city. It is the latest escalation in a political fight over the unprecedented number of migrants crossing from Mexico into border states like Texas.<\/p>\n Ramona Paravola, operations manager of Chicago Flips Red, says poor, often Black neighbourhoods were forced to absorb newcomers under the Biden administration \u2014 including more than 30,000 from Texas<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cThey are not spreading the load out,\u201d said Paravola, who believes politicians knew that adding migrant shelters to an \u201caffluent white neighbourhood\u201d would face greater backlash.<\/p>\n Seeing migrants receive help that Black Chicagoans have been demanding for years is another source of resentment. In 2024, for example, city officials invested more than $300 million US to address the migrant crisis<\/a> \u2014 money, they say, should have been invested into their communities first.<\/p>\n WATCH | Chicago isn’t safe, group says: City of Chicago hasn\u2019t kept its citizens safe from crime, says conservative group<\/p>\n Danielle Carter-Walters, vice-president of grassroots conservative movement Chicago Flips Red, says Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson has not kept her community safe from \u2018illegal aliens\u2019 who she says are \u2018selling drugs, prostitution [and] threatening the citizens.\u2019<\/p>\n \u201cHow does that happen when they told us that they didn’t have these [funds]?\u201d said Carter-Walters.<\/p>\n \u201cIt’s not Black and brown people. It’s Black Americans versus brown illegals,\u201d said Paravola.<\/p>\n Paravola, whose husband is a retired Chicago police officer, says she supports pathways to citizenship for \u201cDreamers\u201d who come to America, including undocumented migrants without violent criminal records.<\/p>\n \u201cWe’re not racist,\u201d she said. \u201cWe’re just intelligent enough to see people as individuals, or as individual communities, and not Black and brown as a big lump.\u201d<\/p>\n Presbyterian minister Rev. David Black has witnessed the violent methods used against immigrants employed against protesters at the ICE detention facility in nearby Broadview, Ill.<\/p>\n Black was praying for ICE agents and calling on them to \u201crepent\u201d on Sept. 19 when officers on the roof of the facility shot him in the face, head and body with pepper balls.<\/p>\n Immediately after, video shows<\/a> Black shouting, \u201cGod is watching you \u2014 and you will pay for this!\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cIt seems like they’ve been testing out how much they can get away with \u2026 as they suppress free speech and try to dismantle the civil society of a major American city,\u201d Black told CBC News.<\/p>\n WATCH | Pastor shot with pepper balls: This pastor was shot by immigration agents while calling for them to \u2018repent\u2019<\/p>\n Rev. David Black, pastor of the First Presbyterian Church of Chicago, recounts how he was shot by pepper balls by agents on the roof of the Broadview, Ill., ICE detention facility.<\/p>\n When Kat Abughazaleh, a congressional candidate, first visited the Broadview facility for a vigil in the summer, she said ICE \u201cdidn\u2019t even board up the windows.” Since then, she has witnessed the \u201cone-sided violence\u201d by ICE agents escalate.<\/p>\n \u201cPeople were dragged, beaten,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n Abughazaleh, a journalist, was thrown to the ground herself at multiple rallies. In one video<\/a> that went viral, Abughazaleh can be heard hitting the asphalt after being shoved by immigration officers.<\/p>\n \u201cThey shot pepper bullets at the sidewalk and said, \u2018Your First Amendment rights are on the sidewalk,\u2019\u201d she said.<\/p>\n WATCH | ICE fires tear gas, pepper balls: Several protesters \u2018abducted\u2019 by immigration agents in tactical gear, says congressional candidate<\/p>\n Journalist and Democratic congressional candidate Kat Abughazaleh describes how immigration enforcement agents confronted demonstrators in \u2018full tactical gear,\u2019 using tear gas and pepper bullets against the group outside the Broadview, Ill., ICE facility.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, Sister JoAnn Persch, who worked with migrants in the Chicago area for 40 years, was repeatedly denied access to provide spiritual care to detainees at the Broadview facility. Authorities cited \u201csafety reasons.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cAll these years I’ve been right with immigrants, I’ve never felt they were going to attack me and surely I was not going to attack them,\u201d said the 91-year-old nun, who was not allowed inside to visit migrants during a Nov. 1 mass.<\/p>\n WATCH | Persch barred from ICE facility:<\/p>\n Earlier this month, the spiritual coalition Persch was a part of sued the federal government<\/a> for what they allege are violations of First Amendment rights to religious freedom.<\/p>\n Persch, a Sister of Mercy who got a state law passed in 2009<\/a> to allow pastoral workers into immigration facilities, said the situation made her \u201cextremely sad.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThere’s just so many human rights being violated in that building. So we just have to keep working for human and religious rights,\u201d said Persch, who died on Nov. 14.<\/p>\n Two months since the beginning of Operation Midway Blitz, federal authorities and Chicago locals still find themselves at odds on whether the mission to \u201csave\u201d Chicago has succeeded.<\/p>\n At the end of October, DHS Secretary Kristi Noem boasted that agents \u201carrested more than 3,000 illegal aliens<\/a> including rapists, murderers and gang members\u201d since September.<\/p>\n But a Chicago Tribune analysis of government records<\/a> found that of 614 arrestees whose names were released by the Department of Justice, only 16 \u2014 or 2.6 per cent \u2014 had criminal histories.<\/p>\n U.S. Customs and Border Patrol Commander Greg Bovino has defended the agency\u2019s tactics, asserting in an interview<\/a> that their \u201coperations are airtight \u2014 legal, ethical and moral.\u201d<\/p>\n WATCH | Trump’s war on Chicago: Why is Trump at war with Chicago?<\/p>\n Chicago has become a model for U.S. President Donald Trump\u2019s campaign against political opponents in American cities. CBC’s Terence McKenna breaks down why Chicago is in the crosshairs of the ICE crackdown and how the city has tried to resist.<\/p>\n But the widespread use of force has led to judicial scrutiny of the government\u2019s tactics in Chicago. Bovino was subpoenaed to appear in federal court about his agents\u2019 use of force against protesters in the Chicago area, and in a 233-page ruling<\/a> released Nov. 20, Judge Sara L. Ellis identified \u201cinconsistencies\u201d in his testimony.<\/p>\n Ellis said Bovino \u201cappeared evasive\u201d throughout his deposition, either providing \u201ccute\u201d responses to the plaintiffs\u2019 questions or \u201coutright lying.\u201d<\/p>\n WATCH | Woman choked, pastor shot, tear gas used against protestors:<\/p>\n The judge wrote that videos contradicted Bovino\u2019s claims that his agents\u2019 use of force was justified.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/1764505209_116_default.jpg\")
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Danielle Carter-Walters, vice-president of conservative activist movement Chicago Flips Red, speaks on behalf her group at a subcommittee hearing on border security and immigration. (Zoe Leigh\/Chicago Flips Red)\u2018Black Americans vs. brown illegals\u2019<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/1764505210_550_default.jpg\")
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A federal immigration enforcement agent sprays Rev. David Black, of the First Presbyterian Church of Chicago, as he demonstrates outside the Broadview ICE facility on Sept. 19. (Ashlee Rezin\/Chicago Sun-Times\/The Associated Press)ICE facility \u2018gates of hell,\u2019 says pastor<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/1764505211_202_default.jpg\")
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JoAnn Persch, a Sister of Mercy who worked with migrants in Chicago for decades, tells 2,000 people at a mass outside the Broadview facility that they are not allowed to visit and give communion to detainees, on Nov. 1. (Bryan Sebastian\/Coalition for Spiritual and Public Leadership)Border Patrol commander \u2018outright lying\u2019<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/1764505212_121_default.jpg\")
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