As you can see, Trump called for Gov. J.B. Pritzker to be jailed this morning for failing to protect the ICE agents who are running roughshod over Chicago. Since he said this on the day they are arraigning James Comey on phony charges, I wouldn’t just laugh this off. After Pam Bondi’s execrable performance before the Senate Judiciary Committee yesterday and Stephen Miller’s ongoing hysteria. it’s clear that they are going completely off the rails and anything is possible.
The behavior of the DHS agents in Portland and Chicago is grotesque. They are mostly “creating content” for the onanistic pleasure of Miller and the MAGA horde but in the process people are being terrorized, traumatized, hurt and killed. Here’s what’s actually happened in Chicago courtesy of JV Last at The Bulwark:
Here are the ultra-butch, lethal warrior warfighters from Texas, arriving Tuesday afternoon:
We should be exceedingly clear:
There is no crisis in Chicago that requires the National Guard. To the extent that there is civil instability in Chicago it has been caused by Trump’s surge of federal agents into the city and their lawless assault on the citizens of Chicago.
Specificity is required:
September 12: ICE agents shoot and kill Chicago resident Silverio Villegas González in Franklin Park. ICE claimed that González was shot after he “seriously injured” an ICE agent. But bodycam footage shows the same agent immediately after the encounter describing his injuries as “nothing major.”
September 30: Some 300 federal agents raid an apartment building in the dead of night. Some rappel from a Black Hawk helicopter positioned over the building. They ransack apartments and detain not only children but several U.S. citizens, including one Rodrick Johnson, who spoke with Block Club Chicago:
Rodrick Johnson, who lives in the building and is a U.S. citizen, said he heard “people dropping on the roof” before FBI agents kicked in his door. He was stuffed inside a van with his neighbors for what felt like several hours until agents told them the building was clear, he said.
“They didn’t tell me why I was being detained,” Johnson said. “They left people’s doors open, firearms, money, whatever, right there in the open.”
October 4: CPB agents shoot an unarmed woman, Marimar Martinez. They claim that she provoked them by ramming their vehicle with her car. Martinez’s lawyer tells the Chicago Sun-Times that there is bodycam footage that shows an agent turning left into Martinez’s vehicle, after which an agent says, “Do something, bitch.” The agent then gets out of the vehicle and shoots Martinez.
October 7: A masked federal agent is caught on camera aiming a weapon at a resident who is reportedly doing nothing more than documenting his activity. This act is reported by Chicago Tribune reporter Laura N. Rodríguez Presa:
There have also been arrests of local officials and candidates for office who were protesting, including Illinois’ ninth congressional district Kat Abughazaleh, who went viral with a video of an Ice agent slamming her to the ground, Daniel Biss, the Evanston mayor, and a city alderman who were aggressively arrested while trying to advocate in a hospital setting. . . .
Reverend David Black of the First Presbyterian church of Chicago, said that he was pelted with about seven or eight “pepper exploding pellets” that hit his head, face, torso, arms and legs, while in a position of prayer. . . .
Local journalists have been detained or attacked by federal agents as well. Over the weekend, Steve Held, Unraveled Press co-founder and reporter, was detained by agents while covering a protest outside of the facility. A Chicago-Sun Times reporter was also tear-gassed and pelted with “rubber projectiles”, according to the outlet.
On Sunday morning, CBS Chicago News reporter Asal Rezaei, was attacked by an Ice agent who shot a pepper ball into her car from about 50ft away and was exposed to chemicals on her face. She said in a social media post that after the incident, she was “puking for two hours”.
In addition to protesters and journalists, legal observers, often delineated in the Chicago-land area by their bright neon green hats that read “legal observer” were also attacked in recent weeks by Ice agents.
Don’t take the word of journalists for it. Here is sworn testimony from a local police chief Thomas Mills in Gov. Pritzker’s lawsuit against the Trump administration:
- According to the sworn statement of the Broadview police chief who witnessed this conduct daily, the “use of chemical agents by federal agents at the ICE facility in Broadview has often been arbitrary and indiscriminate. At times it is used when the crowd is as small as ten people. The deployment of chemical agents is dangerous to the health of both demonstrators and first responders on the scene. In addition, when ICE agents deploy chemical agents, it causes the crowd of protesters to disperse, sometimes running into the road, which is dangerous both for them and for motorists. Broadview police officers have had to attempt to position themselves in a way that directs the crowd to disperse in a safe manner. Over the course of my career in law enforcement, the way in which federal agents have indiscriminately used chemical agents in Broadview is unlike anything I have seen before.”
- According to a sworn statement by the Broadview Police Chief, the next morning, Saturday, September 27, Bovino and several CBP agents came to the Broadview Police station. They told the Broadview Police that the DHS agents would bring a “shitshow” to Broadview that weekend, including that they would be increasing deployment of chemical arms, such as tear gas and pepper spray.
He points out that this is not complicated. The president has ordered federal troops to use extralegal violence against citizens of Chicago and when the people exercised their first amendment right to protest he called up the national guard from a MAGA Confederate state (my words, not his) to invade the state of Illinois. In other words:
He is setting not just the federal government against one of the states, but pitting armed soldiers from one state against the citizens of another.
Please read the rest of his analysis if you can. He correctly lays out all the reasons why this is a very, very dangerous moment and why, should we have the good fortune to survive and defeat Trumpism, legal reforms must be put in place to prevent this from ever happening again.