Crime & Law
Immigration Raids Detained 100 People in Chicago Area, Top Cop Says, But He Doesn’t Know How Many Have Criminal Records
Chicago Police Supt. Larry Snelling addresses the news media on Tuesday, Jan. 28. 2025. (WTTW News)
Approximately 100 people have been detained by federal officials in the Chicago area as part of ramped-up immigration enforcement efforts ordered by President Donald Trump, but it is unclear how many of them had criminal records, Chicago Police Supt. Larry Snelling said Tuesday.
Snelling used his appearance alongside Mayor Brandon Johnson at City Hall to attempt to tamp down fears that undocumented immigrants will have their lives upended as Trump makes good on his promise to conduct the “largest domestic deportation operation in American history.”
“There is a level of fear out there that we have to bring down,” Snelling said, acknowledging that Trump’s return to office has prompted many Chicagoans to stop going to school and work because they fear being detained by federal agents.
Chicago’s Welcoming City ordinance and self-proclaimed status as a sanctuary city are designed to encourage undocumented immigrants to seek help from city officials for health care or protection from the Chicago Police Department without fear of exposing themselves or their families to deportation.
Despite Snelling’s attempt to reassure the tens of thousands of undocumented immigrants and their relatives who live in Chicago, Trump administration officials have repeatedly vowed to deport everyone who is in the United States without authorization, calling the act of crossing the United States’ border without permission a crime.
Federal officials on Jan. 21 lifted restrictions on two key federal immigration agencies — Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection — that prevented agents from carrying out deportation efforts at sensitive locations, including churches, schools, hospitals, shelters and community centers.
Tom Homan, the former acting director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Trump’s pick to serve as his “border czar,” has vowed to initially focus efforts to deport undocumented immigrants who have been convicted of serious crimes, but said undocumented immigrants who agents encounter will also be detained.
Bloomberg News reported that 260 people were targeted in the Chicago area on Sunday, although only seven had criminal arrest warrants. Snelling said he could not confirm that report.
The Chicago Sun-Times reported that one man apprehended by federal immigration agents had a 2005 felony conviction for drug possession, but had not been in trouble since, according to his daughter.
Snelling said federal agents had told CPD leaders that they were targeting those with criminal records, and he said he had no reason to think they were targeting otherwise law-abiding undocumented immigrants attempting to work and raise their families in Chicago.
“What we have not seen is federal agents running through Chicago, looking for children, going to work locations and grabbing people,” Snelling said, decrying “misinformation” being spread by people he did not name.
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials have released few details about who they were seeking and why those people had been targeted.
Homan told CNN on Monday that his agents would pursue “national security” or “public safety” threats into schools, hospitals and churches.
“We’ll go where we’ve got to go,” Homan said, after expressing frustration that efforts led by Chicago officials and immigration advocates to educate undocumented immigrants had made deportation efforts “very difficult.”
“For instance, Chicago (is) very well educated,” Homan said. “They call it ‘know your rights.’ I call it how to escape arrest, ... how to hide from ICE.”
Homan said he was willing to play a “cat and mouse game” until “every one of them gone.”
Johnson said repeatedly Tuesday that Trump was actively working to instill fear throughout Chicago, actions that Johnson called “unconscionable and abhorrent.”
That effort will fail, Johnson said.
“Chicago is built different,” Johnson said. “We are not going to be afraid.”
Contact Heather Cherone: @HeatherCherone | (773) 569-1863 | [email protected]
