With immigration raids increasing in scope and violence against Chicagoans, Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker fought back against Homeland Secretary Kristi Noem’s claims that the city is a “war zone” ― saying that it is the Trump administration itself turning Chicago into a war zone by flooding the city with federal agents.
“They’re raiding neighborhoods where, instead of going after the bad guys, they’re just picking up people who are brown and Black and then checking their credentials,” the Democratic governor told CNN’s “State of the Union” on Sunday. “Are you a U.S. citizen? I don’t know about you, but I don’t carry around papers that say I’m a U.S. citizen. So you can imagine, people are getting detained, they’re getting arrested, U.S. citizens.”
Pritzker’s comments come less than a week after hundreds of federal immigration agents violently raided a building of families overnight in the South Shore neighborhood, ransacking apartments and dragging about 130 people outside ― among them elderly people and children who were separated from their families, zip-tied and held for hours, some naked.
The raid drew national backlash against immigration officials, who claimed without evidence that gang members were in the building. Pritzker said that the Department of Children and Family Services are investigating the incident and what happened to the children and elderly involved.
