The images coming out of Chicago look like a war zone. Trump deployed the national guard, and Chicago residents are NOT having it. Mayor Brandon Johnson has now jumped into the ring, doing what he has promised to do since the start: limit federal agent capacity so that their jobs can become a lot harder to do, in an attempt to help his constituents.
Mayor Johnson has now signed an executive order aiming at limiting where federal agents can gather in the city, stopping them from using city-owned spaces for their immigration enforcement work.
The executive order has already taken effect and will stop federal immigration agents from using “city-owned or controlled parking lots, vacant lots, and garages as staging areas, processing locations, or operations bases for civil immigration enforcement activities.”
A ‘staging area” in the order means “any location used to assemble, mobilize, or deploy personnel, vehicles, or equipment for immigration enforcement operations.” Mayor Johnson describes this as creating “ICE-free zones”.
Mayor Johnson said:
“Our school parking lots are not for ICE to load their weapons, they are for Chicagoans who drop their kids off to learn. Our libraries are not for ICE to prepare for a raid, they’re for Chicagoans to read and relax. Our parks are not for ICE to set up checkpoints, they are for Chicagoans to play and enjoy.”
Mayor Johnson is not the only person standing up to Trump, either. Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker also announced over the weekend that Trump plans to deploy hundreds of National Guard members to Illinois and other states.
Pitzker told the public that Trump’s Department of Defense gave him an ultimatum to either call up National Guard members or have those members nationalized. He said:
“We must now start calling this what it is: Trump’s Invasion… It started with federal agents, it will soon include deploying federalized members of the Illinois National Guard against our wishes, and it will now involve sending in another state’s military troops.”
In short, the ongoing scenario in Chicago does well to highlight the growing tension between federal authority and local rule during Trump’s administration. With soldiers from the National Guard appearing in the city and federal immigration enforcement on the rise, Mayor Brandon Johnson is proving to be a strong champion of local self-government and the rights of citizens.
By signing on to an executive order restricting ICE access to city facilities, Johnson makes a statement: Chicago is standing firm against what he and many others see as an overreach of federal power. Governor Pritzker’s public criticism adds to the image of state opposition, generating the impression of a city and state in unison against what they call an unwanted militarization.
With photos resembling a war zone and inflammatory rhetoric on both sides, Chicago is now a hot-button issue in a broader national struggle over immigration, federal power, and whether local governments have the right to determine how and for whom their public spaces are used.
It must be nice to have elected officials looking out for you.
I agree that it looks great on the surface. But once you scrape off the figurehead Black pseudo-socialist mayor and all his ceremonial bullshit, it's just all the same corrupt, inept nepotistic idiots that have been there since the Daley administration still running the place. It's still almost impossible to get a building permit. Nothing ever changes, so we gave up on it and left.