Top Trump administration officials, including “border czar” Tom Homan and the acting deputy attorney general, visited Chicago on Sunday to witness the start of ramped-up immigration enforcement in the nation’s third-largest city as federal agencies touted arrests around the country.
Few details of the operation were immediately made public, including the number of arrests. But the sheer number of federal agencies involved showed US President Donald Trump’s willingness to use federal law enforcement beyond the Department of Homeland Security to carry out his long-promised mass deportations.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement said it made 956 arrests nationwide on Sunday and 286 on Saturday. While some of the operations may not have been unusual, ICE averaged 311 daily arrests in the fiscal year that ended Sept. 30.
Acting Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove said he observed immigration agents from the DHS along with agents from the FBI, Drug Enforcement Administration and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. He didn’t offer details on the operation, which came days after DHS expanded immigration authority to agencies in the Department of Justice, including the DEA and ATF.
“We will support everyone at the federal, state, and local levels who joins this critical mission to take back our communities,” Bove said in a statement. “We will use all available tools to address obstruction and other unlawful impediments to our efforts to protect the homeland. Most importantly, we will not rest until the work is done.”
“Dr. Phil” McGraw, a daytime television psychologist, interviewed Homan and livestreamed the Chicago operation on his multiplatform TV network MERIT TV, and several other reporters were also invited to Sunday’s operation. The Associated Press plans to observe operations this week.
The DEA’s Chicago office posted pictures on X showing Bove and Homan with agents from ATF and Customs and Border Protection.
Since Trump took office, similar immigration enforcement operations have been publicized around the country, which U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement says are ongoing. Social media posts from other DEA and Homeland Security offices noted additional weekend operations in at least Arizona, California, Colorado, Georgia, Nebraska and Texas.
Operation targets members of Venezuelan gang in Colorado
The DEA posted pictures Sunday on social media of an operation at a location in the Denver area, where roughly 50 people were taken into custody.
Jonathan Pullen, special agent in charge for the DEA Rocky Mountain field division, said the Colorado operation targeted drug trafficking by Tren de Aragua, a Venezuelan gang. He said about 100 agents and officers, including from the DEA, ICE, ATF and Homeland Security Investigations, carried out a federal search warrant for drug trafficking around 5 a.m. Sunday at a location where Tren de Aragua members were having a party.
ICE detained nearly 50 people and transported them on a bus to one of its processing centers in nearby Aurora, Pullen said. As of Sunday afternoon, about 40 people remained in ICE custody, he said.
“They ran all of the information while they were on scene and they determined, ICE determined, that they were here illegally or they had some other violation in the immigration system, and they detained and arrested them,” Pullen said.
A “handful” of U.S. citizens were also at the site, Pullen added.
Agents seized drugs including cocaine, multiple handguns and cash, Pullen said, adding that the investigation started under the Biden administration and is continuing under the Trump administration. The DEA and ICE have been cooperating for decades and there was nothing new about the two agencies coordinating, he said.
A Trump executive order paves the way for criminal organizations such as Tren de Aragua to be named “foreign terrorist organizations.” Armed members of the Venezuelan gang were caught on video entering an Aurora apartment complex unit last summer in footage that drew Trump’s attention during the presidential campaign.
Chicago residents were on edge before Sunday’s operation
ICE spokesman Jeff Carter said the agency “began conducting enhanced targeted operations” Sunday in Chicago but declined other details. Spokesmen for the FBI, ATF and the DEA confirmed their involvement but didn’t give other information.
Chicago residents, especially in immigrant circles, have already been on edge for months in anticipation of large-scale arrests touted by the Trump administration. The atmosphere has been especially tense the past week as top Trump officials vowed to start immigration enforcement operations in Chicago the day after Trump’s inauguration before walking back those statements.
Last week, Bove issued a memo ordering federal prosecutors to investigate state or local officials who they believe are interfering with the Trump administration’s crackdown on immigration, in an apparent warning to the dozens of so-called sanctuary jurisdictions across America.
Chicago bars city police cooperation with immigration agents
Chicago has some of the strongest sanctuary protections, which bar cooperation between city police and immigration agents.
Immigrant rights groups have tried to prepare for the aggressive crackdown with campaigns for immigrants to know their rights in case of an arrest. City officials have done the same, publishing similar information at public bus and train stations.
On Friday, Chicago Public Schools officials mistakenly believed ICE agents had come to a city elementary school and put out statements to that effect before learning the agents were from the Secret Service. Word of immigration agents at a school — which have long been off limits to immigration agents until Trump ended the policy last week — drew swift criticism from community groups and Gov. JB Pritzker.
The Democratic governor, a frequent Trump critic, questioned the aggressive approach of the operations and the chilling effect for others, particularly for law-abiding immigrants who have been in the country for years.
“We need to get rid of the violent criminals. But we also need to protect people, at least the residents of Illinois and all across the nation, who are just doing what we hope that immigrants will do,” Pritzker said Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Union.”
Immigrant rights groups seek injunction stopping certain types of raids
On Saturday, several Chicago-based immigrant rights groups filed a lawsuit against ICE, seeking an injunction prohibiting certain types of immigration raids in Chicago.
“Immigrant communities who have called Chicago their home for decades are scared,” said Antonio Gutierrez from Organized Communities Against Deportation, one of the plaintiffs. “We refuse to live in fear and will fight any attempts to roll back the work we’ve done to keep families together.”
