I awoke this morning in a city on the verge of occupation.
On Monday afternoon, U.S. District Court Judge April Perry, a Biden appointee, refused to do what a Trump-appointed judge did in Oregon: Issue a temporary restraining order preventing the federalized National Guard from occupying a peaceful city. This would be a direct violation of the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878 and a move Gov. J.B. Pritzker, Mayor Brandon Johnson, Police Chief Larry Snelling and state Attorney General Kwame Raoul say is unwanted, unnecessary and unconstitutional.
Judge Perry gave the lawbreaking regime in Washington two days to respond. This gives Trump and his minions the time they need to bring in 700 troops from the Texas and Illinois national guards, a move they’ve been looking to justify for months through constant provocations. Their campaign has led to the arrest of hundreds of local residents, a significant share of whom are U.S. citizens. Over the weekend, it included several politicians attempting to protect their constituents by reminding them of their rights.
The military-style campaign, carried out by masked and otherwise unidentified agents from multiple federal law enforcement agencies, included the unprecedented and now infamous assault on an apartment building in the historic South Shore neighborhood, which lies adjacent to Jackson Park, home of the soon-to-open Obama Presidential Center. About 300 federal agents stormed the five-story building and its fewer than 100 residents in the middle of the night by rappelling onto the rooftop from helicopters, throwing flash-bang grenades, kicking down doors, ransacking apartments and detaining adults and children with zip-ties. Many were U.S. citizens or in the U.S. legally.
“They just treated us like we were nothing,” one local resident told ABC7 Chicago. She was handcuffed, had a gun pointed in her face and held until 3 a.m. before being released. The raid, carried out without warrants, resulted in 37 arrests.
At least some of those detained were children, including four U.S. citizens, according to news accounts. One neighbor told television reporters she saw agents zip-tie the kids. “They was 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.” At least one agent laughed when local residents protested the children’s mistreatment. “He said, ‘Fuck them kids,’” she said.
“Imagine an armed stranger forcibly removing you from your bed, zip-tying your hands, separating you from your family, and detaining you in a dark van for hours,” Pritzker said in the aftermath of the raid. “This didn’t happen in a country with an authoritarian regime — it happened here in Chicago,” he said.
Judge Perry refused to act because she needed time to read the voluminous court filings, according to today’s Chicago Tribune. Though “very troubled” by the Trump regime’s actions, she gave the Department of Justice until midnight Wednesday to respond.
Invasion imminent
The newspaper reports those troops will be moving into the city as soon as today since Gov. Pritzker and local officials have no options beyond the courts for enforcing the law. While a case could be made for using local law enforcement to police the illegal actions of individual federal agents, that would be exactly the type of provocation Trump regime is looking for to escalate its assault on the city.
The militarized presence is not limited to the few neighborhoods making the news. When my wife and I returned to Chicago late Sunday after two weeks away, we were greeted by at least one military helicopter flying low over our mostly white neighborhood along Chicago’s North Side lakefront. A friend reports the federal government also sent military helicopters flying over his mixed, middle-income neighborhood over the weekend. They used searchlights to pan streets, lawns and alleys, no doubt scaring the bejesus out of the local rat population.
The regime’s actions make clear this has nothing to do with immigration enforcement. Their goal is to terrorize the local population, whom, through its votes and elected leaders, have chosen to stand in opposition to the illegal and immoral actions of the Trump regime.
The Trumpists are simultaneously consciously attempting to destroy the local economy. It illegally cancelled an already-approved $2 billion contract for mass transit expansion. The president’s constant lies about the state of crime in this city (“a hellhole” and “the murder capital of the world”) is a deliberate attempt to smear the reputation of the Midwest’s top tourist attraction, especially for foreign visitors.
Early estimates showed foreign tourism was down sharply this summer after returning to pre-Covid levels last year. The drop in Canadian tourists — the single largest group — was an estimated 25 percent, which isn’t surprising given they’ve taken to booing the Star Spangled Banner during sporting events in Canada.
According to the state’s complaint filed yesterday in Judge Perry’s court, the Trump’s regime assault on Chicago is creating “economic harm, depressing business activities and tourism that not only hurt Illinoisans but also hurt Illinois’s tax revenue.” The economies of thriving Hispanic neighborhoods have been especially harmed by the constant presence of ICE agents. Street traffic has been reduced to Covid-lockdown levels since everyone with brown skin is at risk of being detained and possibly arrested for failing to present proper credentials during ICE’s indiscriminate sweeps.
The core of the lawsuit charges the federal government with overstepping its authority and violating the constitution. The “deployment of federalized military forces to protect federal personal and property from ‘violent demonstrations’ that ‘are occurring or are likely to occur’ represents the exact type of intrusion on State power that is at the heart of the Tenth Amendment,” the complaint says. “The deployment of federalized National Guard, including from another state, infringes on Illinois’s sovereignty and right to self-governance. It will cause only more unrest.”
I suspect we will learn first hand the truth of that latter statement in the next few days as more Chicagoans are subjected to the presence of heavily armed soldiers patrolling their previously peaceful streets.
Merrill Goozner, the former editor of Modern Healthcare, writes about health care and politics at GoozNews.substack.com, where this column first appeared. Please consider subscribing to support his work.
Reprinted with permission from Gooz News
