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immigration
Chicago Preps for Trump's Looming Militarized 'Invasion'
"If the federal government wants to help they should invest, not invade," said Mayor Brandon Johnson.
Sep 05, 2025
With some federal agents already at a nearby naval station and fencing erected around the Everett McKinley Dirksen U.S. Courthouse overnight, Chicagoans and Illinois' elected officials on Friday continued to prepare for US President Donald Trump's militarized "invasion" of the country's third-largest city.
Trump has threatened to not only send immigration enforcement agents but also deploy the National Guard and even potentially active-duty military, mirroring what he has done in Los Angeles and the District of Columbia.
Anticipating imminent federal action, last Saturday, Democratic Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson signed an executive order targeting what he called Trump's "tyranny," and Gov. JB Pritzker, another Democrat, pledged Thursday that "we're going to immediately go to court if National Guard or other troops are deployed to the city of Chicago."
Trump has sent mixed messages this week. He said Tuesday that "we're going in" to Chicago, but "I didn't say when." The next day, he said the administration was still "making a determination" about the city and may target Louisiana, whose "great governor," Republican Jeff Landry, "wants us to straighten out a very nice section of this country that's become quite, you know, quite tough."
However, the Illinois action seems to be already underway. The New York Times reported Friday that it obtained an internal document which indicates that Department of Homeland Security (DHS) officials "would arrive at the Naval Station Great Lakes this week and that there would be 30 days of operations in the Chicago area."
Congressman Brad Schneider (D-Ill.) and Illinois' two Democratic US senators, Tammy Duckworth and Dick Durbin, visited the naval station on Friday seeking answers from DHS.
"They ended up saying they were unavailable and that they were locking the doors to the building that's being considered, and we wouldn't be able to enter it and see it," Durbin said. "This kind of secrecy shouldn't be part of our government."
Citing unnamed sources familiar with federal plans, the Chicago Sun-Times reported Wednesday that "230 agents, at least some of whom work for US Customs and Border Protection, are coming from Los Angeles, where an immigration blitz this summer spurred protests that pushed Trump to call in the National Guard."
Amid fears of operations targeting immigrants, volunteers are patrolling for signs of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents, the Chicago newspaper noted Friday. It also highlighted that deploying National Guard troops in the city could cost taxpayers nearly $1.6 million per day, according to the nonpartisan National Priorities Project.
The looming threat of stepped-up ICE action in Chicago is already having an impact: Organizers have canceled a Mexican Independence Day festival planned for September 13-14 in Grant Park, explaining that "it was a painful decision, but holding El Grito Chicago at this time puts the safety of our community at stake—and that's a risk we are unwilling to take."
Community organizers and the Little Village Chamber of Commerce announced Friday that for now, the 54th annual 26th Street Mexican Independence Day Parade is still scheduled for September 14—a decision that was met with cheers from residents, according to WGN. One parade organizer said, "Our existence is our resistance."
The expected federal operation in Chicago has provoked protests. As part of the national "Workers Over Billionaires" marches on Monday, which was Labor Day, Chicagoans carried signs and chanted about their opposition to the deployment of National Guard troops and immigration agents.
On Friday, "demonstrators gathered on overpasses by I-94 in Wilmette and Evanston, holding up signs and flags calling out ICE's bolstered presence in the area," ABC7 reported. Protesters also descended a facility in suburban Broadview, "demonstrating against the planned use of the location as the main processing hub for those detained by ICE as a part of their upcoming operation."
Critics of Trump's attacks on Chicago and other Democrat-led cities have also pushed back against his lies about crime rates and called out his cuts to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF).
"Why did Trump cut $468 million from ATF's budget in his nasty, signature bill? Why did he cut funding for the agency responsible for getting guns off our streets by 29%? Why did he cut 1,465 positions from an agency that is so critical to reducing gun violence?" Chicago's mayor said Tuesday. "They cut funding from the agency that is actually stopping gun traffickers so that they could increase funding for ICE and Border Patrol."
Although at least eight people were killed and 50 others were wounded in Labor Day weekend shootings, data from the Chicago Police Department and the Federal Bureau of Investigation show that the city is not the "murder capital of the world," as Trump has claimed.
On Friday, the Gun Violence Prevention PAC (G-PAC) of Illinois joined with the national groups Brady, GIFFORDS, and March for Our Lives to call for federal reform and restoration of funding to address shootings in Chicago rather than the deployment of the National Guard.
"Chicago's gun violence problem is directly related to the availability of illegal guns on our streets," said Kathleen Sances, president and CEO of G-PAC. "Illinois has made significant progress in passing commonsense gun laws with the help of GIFFORDS, Brady, and March for Our Lives, and these reforms have helped prevent access to illegal weapons."
"These efforts have contributed to Chicago's reduced crime rates, with the city recently experiencing the fewest summer murders in 60 years," Sances added. "But without meaningful reform at the federal level, guns will continue to cross into our state, and violence will persist. If the White House wants to get serious about violence, it can start by supporting gun safety efforts instead of the gun lobby."
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475 Immigrants Arrested in Raid of Hyundai EV Plant in Georgia
A spokesperson for South Korea's foreign ministry said that "the economic activities of our companies investing in the US and the rights and interests of our nationals must not be unfairly violated."
Sep 05, 2025
The South Korean Ministry of Foreign Affairs on Friday expressed "concern and regret" after US agents arrested 475 immigrants at a Hyundai electric vehicle plant in Ellabell, Georgia and turned them over to Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
ICE was among several agencies involved in "the largest single-site enforcement operation in the history of Homeland Security Investigations," Steven Schrank, the special agent in charge for HSI Atlanta, said during a Friday morning press conference.
The immigrants worked for a variety of companies and were arrested "as part of an ongoing criminal investigation into allegations of unlawful employment practices," Schrank explained. The probe continues, but no criminal charges are being filed at this time.
While Schrank only confirmed that a large number of those arrested on Thursday are South Koreans, a diplomatic source told the news agency Yonhap that the figure is over 300.
Yonhap also reported on a press briefing in which a spokesperson for South Korea's foreign ministry, Lee Jae-woong, said that "the economic activities of our companies investing in the US and the rights and interests of our nationals must not be unfairly violated."
"We conveyed our concern and regret through the US Embassy in Seoul today," Lee added.
According to The Associated Press:
Hyundai Motor Group, South Korea's biggest automaker, began manufacturing EVs a year ago at the $7.6 billion plant, which employs about 1,200 people, and has partnered with LG Energy Solution to build an adjacent battery plant, slated to open next year.
In a statement to The Associated Press, LG said it was "closely monitoring the situation and gathering all relevant details." It said it couldn't immediately confirm how many of its employees or Hyundai workers had been detained.
"Our top priority is always ensuring the safety and well-being of our employees and partners. We will fully cooperate with the relevant authorities," the company said.
Hyundai's South Korean office didn't respond to AP's requests for comment. Forbes highlighted that the raid comes shortly after the company "announced it would invest $26 billion in the US over the next three years," which is expected to create 25,000 jobs.
During the Friday press conference, Schrank appeared to try to distinguish these arrests from President Donald Trump's mass deportation agenda, saying that "this was not an immigration operation where agents went into the premises, rounded up folks, and put them on buses—this has been a multimonth criminal investigation."
However, Tori Branum, a firearms instructor and Republican candidate for Georgia's 12th Congressional District who is publicly taking credit for the raid, made the connection clear.
"For months, folks have whispered about what's going on behind those gates," Branum wrote on Facebook. "I reported this site to ICE a few months ago and was on the phone with an agent."
"This is what I voted for—to get rid of a lot of illegals," she told Rolling Stone after the arrests. "And what I voted for is happening."
In addition to raids of other workplaces such as farms in California, Trump's mass deporation agenda has featured an effort to illegally deport hundreds of children to Guatemala over Labor Day weekend, masked agents in plain clothes ripping people off US streets, arresting firefighters while they were on the job, revoking Temporary Protected Status for various foreign nationals, and locking up immigrants in horrific conditions in facilities including "Alligator Alcatraz."
American Immigration Council legal director Michelle Lapointe, who is based in the Atlanta area, said in a Friday statement that "these raids don't make anyone safer. They terrorize workers, destabilize communities, and push families into chaos."
"This historic raid may make dramatic headlines, but it does nothing to fix the problems in our broken immigration system: a lack of legal pathways and a misguided focus on punishing workers and families who pose no threat to our communities," she added. "Raiding work sites isn't reform, it's political theater at the expense of families, communities, and our economy."
This article was updated with comment from the American Immigration Council.
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'Cruelty': US Appeals Court Blocks Order to Shut Down Alligator Alcatraz
"The fact that a facility embedded in so much pain is allowed to reopen is absolutely disheartening!" said Florida Immigrant Coalition's deputy director.
Sep 04, 2025
Two judges appointed to the US Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit by President Donald Trump issued a Thursday decision that allows a newly established but already notorious immigrant detention center in Florida, dubbed Alligator Alcatraz, to stay open.
Friends of the Everglades, the Center for Biological Diversity, and the Miccosukee Tribe of Indians of Florida sought "to halt the unlawful construction" of the site. Last month, Judge Kathleen Williams—appointed by former President Barack Obama to the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida—ordered the closure of the facility within 60 days.
However, on Thursday, Circuit Judges Elizabeth Branch and Barbara Lagoa blocked Williams' decision, concluding that "the balance of the harms and our consideration of the public interest favor a stay of the preliminary injunction."
Judge Adalberto Jordan, an Obama appointee, issued a brief but scathing dissent. He wrote that the majority "essentially ignores the burden borne by the defendants, pays only lip service to the abuse of discretion standard, engages in its own factfinding, declines to consider the district court's determination on irreparable harm, and performs its own balancing of the equities."
The 11th Circuit's ruling was cheered by the US Department of Homeland Security, Republican Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier, and Gov. Ron DeSantis, who declared in a video that "Alligator Alcatraz is, in fact, like we've always said, open for business."
Uthmeier's communications director, Jeremy Redfern, collected responses to the initial ruling by state and federal Democrats, and urged them to weigh in on social media. Florida state Sen. Shevrin "Shev" Jones (D-34) did, stressing that "cruelty is still cruelty."
In a Thursday statement, Florida Immigrant Coalition deputy director Renata Bozzetto said that "the 11th Circuit is allowing atrocities to happen by reversing the injunction that helped to paralyze something that has been functioning as an extrajudicial site in our own state! The Everglades Detention Camp isn't just an environmental threat; it is also a huge human rights crisis."
"Housing thousands of men in tents in the middle of a fragile ecosystem puts immense strain on Florida's source environment, but even more troublesome, it disregards human rights and our constitutional commitments," Bozzetto continued. "This is a place where hundreds of our neighbors were illegally held, were made invisible within government systems, and were subjected to inhumane heat and unbearable treatment. The fact that a facility embedded in so much pain is allowed to reopen is absolutely disheartening! The only just solution is to shut this facility down and ensure that no facility like this opens in our state!"
"Lastly, it is imperative that we as a nation uphold the balance of powers that this country was founded on," she added. "That is what makes this country special! Calling judges who rule against you 'activists' flies in the face of our democracy. It is a huge tell that AG Uthmeier expressed this as a 'win for President Trump's agenda,' as if the courts were to serve as political weapons. This demonstrates the clear partisan games they are playing with people's lives and with our democracy."
While Alligator Alcatraz has drawn widespread criticism for the conditions in which detainees are held, the suit is based on the government's failure to follow a law that requires an environmental review, given the facility's proximity to surrounding wetlands.
In response to the ruling, Elise Bennett, a senior attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity, told The Associated Press that "this is a heartbreaking blow to America's Everglades and every living creature there, but the case isn't even close to over."
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