As residents of Chicago prepare to mark Mexican Independence Day with parades and events starting this weekend, immigration advocates, as well as state and city officials, are bracing for the celebrations to potentially coincide with a surge of immigration enforcement.
“We have reason to believe that Stephen Miller chose the month of September to come to Chicago because of celebrations around Mexican Independence Day that happen here every year,” Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker said at a news conference Tuesday, referring to the senior White House aide who has been credited with driving President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown. The governor added that he’s “deeply concerned” that officials will specifically target the celebrations and Latino communities.
Officials and advocates in Boston are also preparing for any attempt by Trump to ramp up immigration enforcement after Politico published a report Friday indicating Trump was preparing for an immigration crackdown in the city. NBC News hasn’t independently verified the report, which cites an unnamed current and a former administration official.
Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey told NBC News in a statement Wednesday that “what we are seeing from Donald Trump across the country isn’t about public safety — it’s about political intimidation.”
While there aren’t yet concrete indications of exactly when additional law enforcement could be expected in those cities, immigration enforcement has gone hand in hand with the Trump administration’s sending National Guard troops to Los Angeles and in the federal takeover of Washington, D.C. Trump said late Tuesday that he would be “going in” to Chicago and that he had a right to go into the city to “protect this country.”
The Trump administration has said the operations are necessary to bring down crime, although statistics show crime has been down in cities, including Los Angeles, Washington and now Chicago and Boston.
The Department of Homeland Security said in a statement that it will “go to wherever these criminal illegal aliens are—including Chicago and Boston. Under President Trump and Secretary [Kristi] Noem, nowhere is a safe haven for criminal illegal aliens. If you come to our country illegally and break our laws, we will hunt you down, arrest you, deport you, and you will never return.”
Pritzker, a Democrat, said Trump was positioning armed federal agents on federal property in the Chicago region and warned that he would send masked agents with Immigration and Customs Enforcement “planning to raid Latino communities.”
“In the coming days, we expect to see what has played out in Los Angeles and Washington, D.C., to happen here in Chicago, Illinois,” he said Tuesday.
“None of this is about fighting crime or making Chicago safer. For Trump, it’s about testing his power and producing a political drama to cover up his corruption,” Pritzker said. “We are ready to fight troop deployments in court, and we will do everything possible to ensure that agents operating inside the confines of this state do so in a legal and ethical manner.”
Brandon Lee, the director of communications for the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights, said the advocacy group’s focus was on making sure its rapid response teams were ready, increasing the hours and staffing on its ICE enforcement hotline, providing information to people about their rights and connecting them to legal and social services.
“We are using this moment to promote the hotline, to make sure rapid response teams are prepared, and when the moment comes making sure that there is joint pushback against the Trump administration’s overreach,” he said. “They have been employing new tactics to disrupt our communities and separate families. We’re just ready to be nimble.”
Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson said alongside Pritzker on Tuesday that violence in the city “is not because we have too many immigrants, it’s because we have too many guns.”
Johnson signed an executive order Saturday aimed at curbing the power of federal law enforcement officers and National Guard troops should Trump send them to Chicago. One of the main points of the order, Johnson said, was to direct the city’s Law Department to use “every legal mechanism” to try to stop Trump’s potential plan.
The executive order also clarifies what actions police officers can take to assist federal law enforcement and says the police department won’t collaborate with military personnel or civil immigration enforcement.
Sophia Zaman, the executive director of the Raise the Floor Alliance, said its members have been checking in with leaders and flyering work sites, doing peer outreach and working “arm in arm” with other advocacy groups to prepare. Raise the Floor Alliance is a coalition of worker centers, including in immigrant communities where people are “deeply impacted by the administration’s policies,” she said.
“We know that the city is facing historic lows when it comes to violence in the city, and what we really need is investments in health care and a thriving living wage and all kinds of benefits that really help stabilize our communities, not this kind of militarization,” she said.
“We’re going to equip our people, and we’ll be ready,” she said.
The Trump administration has indicated that other Democratic cities could also be on the list.
Noem told CBS News on Sunday that she would “encourage every single big city, San Francisco, Boston, Chicago, whatever they are, if they want to help make their city safer, more prosperous, allow people the opportunity to walk in freedom like the people of Washington, D.C., are now and enjoying going out to eat at night and not having to worry if they’re going to be a victim of a carjacking or a robbery, they should call us.”
Boston Mayor Michelle Wu’s office said it hasn’t heard anything from ICE about a potential surge of enforcement in the city.
“Unfortunately, at this moment in our country, where we see this federal administration willing to take actions that push the boundaries of law or even step beyond the boundaries of law and our Constitution, I imagine every mayor of every major city is having to make some sorts of preparations,” Wu told NBC Boston on Monday.
Sarang Sekhavat, the chief of staff at the Massachusetts Immigrant and Refugee Advocacy Coalition, said that while there are still questions about the timeline of what any surge in immigration officials would like, advocates in Boston have been following what has been happening in Los Angeles and Washington and will do the same with any potential operation in Chicago.
“We are in constant communication with organizations on the ground in those cities and across the country anyway,” he said. “It gives us sort of an idea of what we can expect.”
“There is some attempt to provide a unified response to this around the country,” he said.
Healey, the Massachusetts governor and a Democrat, pushed back against Trump’s stated goal of combating crime.
“He said he would go after the worst of the worst, but instead, he’s going after farmers, construction workers, landscapers, nannies, health care aides, and restaurant workers,” she said in a statement. “This makes us all less safe, and it isn’t helping our economy or lowering costs. That’s what the President is trying to avoid talking about.”
