Hundreds of protesters hit the streets around the Chicago area Wednesday evening as National Guard troops were anticipated to be deployed in the Chicago area.
Earlier in the day, a military source told the Sun-Times that Texas National Guard troops were expected to head to the Broadview ICE facility in the west suburbs.
Details were scant on how many troops would be arriving or when, and there were no signs of troops arriving there late Wednesday. But the deployment was expected to entail 200 soldiers from the Texas National Guard and 300 soldiers from the Illinois National Guard, according to a publicly available mission summary from the U.S. military.
The expected troop deployment came as a couple dozen protesters gathered outside the Broadview facility in designated free speech zones. Several dozen more met for a candlelight vigil in Joliet, near the Elwood base where Texas troops were stationed. A larger protest in downtown Chicago saw hundreds march up Michigan Avenue from Congress Plaza Garden.
“To people who are scared, who are detained, we are fighting for you,” said Meredith Shoemaker, a 19-year-old Loyola University Chicago student who marched downtown. “We don’t support what is happening.”
Some protesters said they were marching to resist President Donald Trump’s apparent goal of intimidating immigrant residents.
“We can stand up for people that can’t stand up for themselves,” said Jinah Yun-Mitchell, 59, of Lincolnshire. “The rule of law is falling apart, so we all need to do something to make sure that it doesn’t keep going in this direction.”
Texas National Guard members arrived early Tuesday at a military training site in Elwood, about 50 miles from Chicago, ahead of the operation to protect federal immigration agents and facilities. Their arrival came after weeks of threats from Trump to deploy military troops into Illinois over the vehement objections of Gov. JB Pritzker and other Democratic leaders.
The troops showed up a day after a federal judge rejected a request from Pritzker and Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul to immediately bar the deployment. A hearing on the temporary restraining order sought by Illinois leaders was scheduled for Thursday.
During a White House briefing, Trump said he was considering invoking the Insurrection Act to deploy troops, a move that could bypass the court fight waged by Pritzker and Raoul. Trump escalated his rhetoric on Wednesday, saying Pritzker and Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson should be jailed for failing to protect federal agents working in the Chicago area.
At the Chicago protest, Ald. Jessie Fuentes (26th) called the National Guard troops in Illinois a “Gestapo” force before the crowd. The City Council member had been handcuffed by federal agents as she confronted them at Humboldt Park Hospital last week.
“Tomorrow, we see our day in court. And we are hopeful that the judge will defend our democracy and rule that the National Guard does not belong in our city,” Fuentes said, referencing the hearing before a federal judge Thursday on Illinois’ bid to block the troops’ deployment.
About 50 people attended a candlelight vigil in Joliet, near the Army Reserve Training Center in Elwood where the guard troops were stationed. Some expressed their fear and hope for the area’s Latino community, which has borne the brunt of the increased immigration enforcement activity.
“I know what it’s like to go to school and come home and have your father deported. Our children are afraid, afraid to leave their homes to go to school,” said Lorena Guerrero, who sits on the Joliet Township High School Board and is a licensed clinical social worker.
Back at the Broadview ICE facility, a couple dozen protesters dispersed around 45 minutes after a 6 p.m. village curfew at the site enacted this week.
Several protesting veterans said they were disgusted by the recent Border Patrol raid at a South Shore apartment building, where residents were zip tied for hours.
Robert Bowen, a 66-year-old Navy veteran, said the raid went beyond the Trump administration’s claims of “going after the bad guys.”
“That’s not American,” Bowen said. “Whether they were citizens or not didn’t matter. It shouldn’t have happened.”
Aiden Price, a Marine Corps veteran and Chicago Public Schools civics teacher, said it’s been tough to teach his class given recent events.
“I feel like a hypocrite. I’m teaching things that aren’t being practiced by our government,” Price, 34, said. “These rights are supposed to be given to anyone in the confines of the country.”
Price said he is upset to see citizens being treated as “enemy combatants.”
“The things I’m seeing are too similar to what you’d see if a member of the military was detaining a member of the Taliban or Al Qaeda, but these are kids and grandmas on the South Side of Chicago,” Price said.
This story originally published on WBEZ.org.
