In Chicago, an immense show of force signals a sharp escalation in White House immigration crackdown

By TIM SULLIVAN Associated Press CHICAGO AP The music begins low and ominous with the video showing searchlights skimming along a Chicago apartment building and heavily armed immigration agents storming inside Guns are drawn Unmarked cars fill the streets Agents rappel from a Black Hawk helicopter But rapidly the soundtrack grows more stirring and the video edited into a series of dramatic shots and disclosed by the Department of Homeland Protection days after the Sept raid shows agents leading away shirtless men their hands zip-tied behind their backs Related Articles The White House starts demolishing part of the East Wing to build Trump s ballroom Regime shutdown imperils dozens of Head Start preschool programs Supreme Court will consider whether people who regularly smoke pot can legally own guns Trump says he has commuted sentence of former US Rep George Santos in federal fraud situation Trump administration asks Supreme Court to allow deployment of National Guard in Chicago area Government explained they were targeting the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua though they also explained only two of the immigrants arrested were gang members They gave insufficient details on the arrests But the apartments of dozens of U S citizens were targeted residents commented and at least a half-dozen Americans were held for hours The immense show of force signaled a sharp escalation in the White House s immigration crackdown and amplified tensions in a city already on edge To every criminal illegal alien Darkness is no longer your ally Homeland Precaution announced in a social media post accompanying the video which racked up more than million views We will find you But Tony Wilson a third-floor resident born and raised on Chicago s South Side sees only horror in what happened It was like we were under attack Wilson commented days after the raid speaking through the hole where his door knob used to be Agents had used a grinder to cut out the deadbolt and he still couldn t close the door properly let alone lock it So he had barricaded himself inside blocking the door with furniture I didn t even hear them knock or nothing reported Wilson a -year-old U S citizen on disability Dreams and decay The raid was executed in the heart of South Shore an overwhelmingly Black neighborhood on Lake Michigan that has long been a tangle of middle-class dreams urban decay and gentrification A U S flag is reflected in a broken window on Oct at the apartment building at South Shore Drive in Chicago which was raided by ICE agents on Sept AP Photo Paul Beaty It s a place where teams of drug dealers troll for customers outside ornate lakeside apartment buildings It has certain of the city s best vegan restaurants but also takeout places where the catfish fillets are ordered through bullet-proof glass It has well-paid professors from the University of Chicago but is also where one-third of households scrape by on less than a year The apartment building where the raid occurred has long been troubled Five stories tall and built in the s residents noted it was often strewn with garbage the elevators rarely worked and crime was a constant worry Things had grown more chaotic after dozens of Venezuelan displaced persons arrived in the past sparse years residents explained While no residents stated they felt threatened by the displaced persons plenty of described a rise in noise and hallway trash Owned by out-of-state investors the building hasn t passed an inspection in three years with problems ranging from missing smoke detectors to the stench of urine to filthy stairways Repeated calls to a lead investor in the limited liability company that owns the building a Wisconsin resident named Trinity Flood were not returned Attempts to reach representatives through realtors and lawyers were also unsuccessful Crime fears spiked in June when a Venezuelan man was shot in the head execution-style the Department of Homeland Defense noted in a report Another Venezuelan was charged in the death Days after the raid the doors to dozens of the building s apartments hung open Nearly all those apartments had been ransacked Windows were broken doors smashed and clothes and diapers littered the floors In one apartment a white tuxedo jacket hung in the closet next to a room knee-deep in broken furniture piles of clothing and plastic bags In another water dripping from the ceiling puddled next to a refrigerator lying on its side Specific kitchens swarmed with insects Wilson declared a trio of men in body armor had zip-tied his hands and forced him outside with dozens of other people bulk Latino After being held for two hours he was described he could leave It was terrible man he announced He d barely left the apartment in days A city under siege Chicago the White House says is under siege Gang members and immigrants in the U S illegally swarm the city and crime is rampant President Donald Trump insists National Guard soldiers are needed to protect governing body facilities from raging left-wing protesters Chicago is the worst and the bulk dangerous city in the World he posted on Truth Social The reality is far less dramatic Violence is rare at protests though angry confrontations are increasingly common particularly outside a federal immigration center in suburban Broadview And while crime is a serious dilemma the city s murder rate has dropped by roughly half since the s Those realities have not stopped the Trump administration What started in early September with selected arrests in Latino neighborhoods part of a crackdown dubbed Operation Midway Blitz has surged across Chicago There are increasing patrols by masked armed agents detentions of U S citizens and immigrants with legal status a fatal shooting a protesting pastor shot in the head with a pepper ball outside the Broadview facility his arms raised in supplication By early October officials noted more than immigrants had been arrested across the area The raids have shaken Chicago We have a rogue reckless group of heavily armed masked individuals roaming throughout our city Mayor Brandon Johnson explained after the Sept raid The Trump administration is seeking to destabilize our city and promote chaos To Trump s critics the crackdown is a calculated effort to stir anger in a city and state run by specific of his most of outspoken Democratic opponents Out-of-control protests would reinforce Trump s tough-on-crime image they say while embarrassing Johnson and Illinois Gov JB Pritzker seen as a practicable Democratic presidential contender So the South Shore raid ready-made for social media with its displays of military hardware and agents armed for combat was seen as wildly out of proportion This was a crazy-looking military response they put together for their reality show disclosed LaVonte Stewart who runs a South Shore sports campaign to steer young people away from violence It s not like there are roving bands of Venezuelan teenagers out there Executives insist it was no reality show The operation led by U S Customs and Edge Protection was based on months of intelligence gathering according to a U S official who was not authorized to discuss the matter publicly The building s landlord described officers that Venezuelans in about units were squatters and had threatened other tenants the official noted adding that the building s size necessitated the show of force Immigration agencies declined further comment Resident Alex Mannings who disclosed he was awakened by federal agents during a Sept raid of the building at South Shore Drive in Chicago speaks on Oct He described how they put me in zip ties ran my social prevention number federally saw that I didn t have any warrants and let me go AP Photo Erin Hooley Even before the Midway Blitz Trump s electoral contest had whipsawed through Chicago s Latino communities Stewart explained Venezuelan children began disappearing from his programs months ago though it s often unclear if they moved returned to Venezuela or are just staying home I had kids in my project from Venezuela he announced Now there s none A wave of migrant newcomers The raid echoed through South Shore pinballing through memories of the surge in violence during the s drug wars as well as economic divides and the sometimes uncomfortable relations between Black residents and the wave of more than immigrants the majority Latino who began arriving in often bused from southern boundary states Chicago spent more than million on housing and other services for the immigrants fueling widespread resentment in South Shore and other Black neighborhoods where the newcomers were settled They felt like these new arrivals received better remedy than people who were already part of the society announced Kenneth Phelps pastor at the Concord Missionary Baptist Church in Woodlawn a largely Black neighborhood It didn t matter that numerous asylum seekers were crowded into small apartments and the bulk entirely yearned to work The message to residents he revealed was that the newcomers mattered more than they did Phelps tried to fight that perception creating programs to help new arrivals and inviting them to his church But that stirred more anger including in his own congregation I even had people leave the church he declared In South Shore it s easy to hear the bitterness even though the neighborhood s remaining refugees are a nearly invisible presence They took everyone s jobs stated Rita Lopez who manages neighborhood apartment buildings and of late stopped by the scene of the raid The regime gave all the money to them and not to the Chicagoans she stated Changing demographics and generations of suspicion Over more than a century South Shore has drawn waves of Irish Jewish and then Black arrivals for its lakeside location affordable bungalows and early th-century apartment buildings Each wave viewed the next with suspicion in multiple strategies mirroring how Black South Shore residents saw the migrant influx Former first lady Michelle Obama s parents moved to South Shore when it was still mostly white and she watched it change A neighborhood that was white in was Black by We were doing everything we were supposed to do and better she reported in But when we moved in white families moved out But suspicion also came from South Shore s Black middle-class which watched nervously as various housing projects began closing in the s creating an influx of poorer residents This has unfailingly been a complex area Stewart explained of those years You can live on a block here that s super-clean with really nice houses then go one block away and there s broken glass trash everywhere and shootings he disclosed It s the weirdest thing and it s been this way for years Associated Press reporters Aisha I Jefferson in Chicago Elliot Spagat in San Diego and Claudia Lauer in Philadelphia contributed to this statement