Crime & Law
Donald Trump Says Brandon Johnson, JB Pritzker ‘Should Be in Jail’ Over Chicago Police Response to ICE Protests
President Donald Trump called early Wednesday morning for Mayor Brandon Johnson and Gov. JB Pritzker to be jailed, escalating the crisis engulfing the nation’s third largest city.
Trump’s comments, posted to his social media platform, came a day after 200 Texas National Guard troops under the command of federal officials arrived at a military facility near Joliet over the vehement objections of Pritzker and Johnson.
“Chicago Mayor should be in jail for failing to protect Ice Officers! Governor Pritzker also!” Trump wrote, referring to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement personnel.
Both Johnson and Pritzker said they were uncowed by the president’s threats.
“This is not the first time Trump has tried to have a Black man unjustly arrested,” Johnson said. “I’m not going anywhere.”
Pritzker responded on social media.
“I will not back down,” Pritzker said. “Trump is now calling for the arrest of elected representatives checking his power. What else is left on the path to full-blown authoritarianism?”
U.S. District Court Judge April Perry scheduled a hearing at 11 a.m. Thursday to decide whether to grant the temporary restraining order requested by Chicago and Illinois officials that would block the deployment of Texas National Guard troops into Chicago.
Perry ordered Trump administration lawyers to tell her by midnight Wednesday when National Guard troops “will arrive in Illinois; what municipalities within Illinois troops will be sent to and what the scope of the troops’ activities will be once here.”
It is unprecedented for a governor to send National Guard troops into another state over the objections of that state’s elected officials at the request of the president.
No riots have been reported in Chicago, even as protesters have been tear-gassed and shot with pepper pellets by federal agents outside an ICE processing facility in west suburban Broadview.
Community organizations have been working to identify the location of federal agents in Chicago neighborhoods to warn undocumented immigrants of their presence. Groups have distributed whistles and created text and phone networks to sound the alarm.
Federal agents have displayed “unprecedented escalations of aggression” against Chicagoans in recent days, including the dispersal of chemical agents near a Logan Square elementary school, the decision to detain Chicago Ald. Jessie Fuentes (26th Ward) as she objected to the presence of federal agents in a hospital, the raid of an Austin Walmart store and the detention of four people outside a Bronzeville shelter on Oct. 1 by masked federal agents who jumped out of unmarked vans.
Johnson and Pritzker were particularly critical of the conduct of federal agents who raided a South Shore apartment building on Sept. 30. Approximately 300 federal agents conducted the late-night raid, with some landing on the building from Blackhawk helicopters, according to a video produced by federal officials and posted on social media.
Nearly all of the residents of the building were detained, including four children who are U.S. citizens.
Brighton Park Confrontation
Trump offered no evidence that the two Democrats failed to protect federal immigration officers, but his post came amid a political firestorm triggered by a heated confrontation between Brighton Park residents and federal agents Saturday.
Chicago police officials have been blasted for their response after federal agents shot a Chicago woman who was charged with ramming a vehicle driven by an U.S. Customs and Border Protection agent, sparking protests.
Dozens of Chicagoans converged on the scene of the shooting to protest the actions of federal agents in a neighborhood home to many Latino residents.
Chicago Police Department Chief of Patrol Jon Hein sent a message to police directing them to not respond to a call for service from armed Border Patrol agents surrounded by the crowd, according to a screenshot of an internal department message posted on X by Ald. Raymond Lopez (15th Ward).
That record documents a report that about 30 agents had been “surrounded by a large crowd of people” and the chief of patrol stating, “no units would respond.”
But dozens of CPD officers were pulled from other assignments and sent to the area near the shooting at 39th Street and south Kedzie Avenue.
After federal agents armed with military-style weapons and combat fatigues fired tear gas and pepper balls at the crowd, CPD in their regular uniforms separated protestors and the agents.
Federal agents left the area nearly four hours after the protests began, after again deploying tear gas. Twenty-seven CPD officers were exposed to tear gas during the protest, Snelling said.
Snelling defended the department’s response on Monday, telling reporters officers were not told to “stand down” and said his officers and command staff had been unfairly slandered by people posting misinformation online.
“Our officers were out there throughout the entire event,” Snelling said. “I would never tell our officers to stand down, because if our officers were in trouble and we needed help from other officers, I would expect those officers to step in and help us.”
Criticism of Hein was amplified online by several members of the City Council who frequently tout their pro-police votes and picked up by online Trump supporters.
However, Snelling said there were “lots of miscommunications” and that the department had commissioned an after-action report to learn from what happened.
Snelling forcefully defended Hein, a 29-year CPD veteran.
“You can’t be pro police when you need something, and then anti when it’s politically advantageous,” Snelling said. “This man has served this city with honor, and I’m going to stand with him till the end.”
Leadership of the Fraternal Order of Police Lodge 7 took a vote of no confidence in Hein’s leadership Tuesday.
Johnson forcefully defended the police response to the events on Saturday, calling the decision by federal agents to deploy tear gas in the presence of unmasked CPD officers “unconscionable.”
“The president of the United States of America is literally pitting law enforcement against law enforcement,” Johnson said.
Chicago Police and Federal Agents
Saturday’s events were the latest flashpoint in the increasing tension between Chicago police officers and federal agents amid the Trump administration’s escalating effort to detain and deport thousands of undocumented immigrants by using military force.
The first clash occurred June 4, when CPD supervisors and officers responded to a federal raid on a South Loop immigration office that triggered a protest and drew widespread condemnation.
CPD officials were accused by several members of the Chicago City Council and immigrant rights groups of violating the city’s Welcoming City ordinance, which prohibits all city employees from assisting federal immigration agents in nearly all cases.
Chicago police officers arrived at the building after getting 911 calls from an ICE employee, the Department of Homeland Security and an alert from a CPD internal monitoring unit, officials said.
Officers did not know a mass arrest of immigrants was underway when they arrived and left the building once that became clear, officials said.
However, several alderpeople said during a committee hearing that they witnessed CPD actively helping ICE agents conduct the mass arrests by clearing the way for agents to make arrests by blocking streets, protecting ICE vehicles, and “escorting” ICE agents to their destinations, making it easier for them to “abduct” people.
After that incident, Snelling said CPD would not immediately dispatch officers to reported immigration enforcement operations.
Instead, a supervisor will be sent to the scene and ordered to determine whether the incident only involves federal officials enforcing federal immigration laws, Snelling said.
If the incident is an immigration enforcement operation, Chicago police officers will not be dispatched, Snelling said.
“If we know that it’s only immigration enforcement going on, our officers will not be in those areas assisting in any way when it comes to immigration enforcement,” Snelling said.
Johnson told reporters that policy was still in place, and was followed on Saturday.
“We had to put this clear protocol in place so that everybody knows that when our police department shows up, their first job is to make sure that scene is protected and people are being serviced,” Johnson said.
However, Snelling indicated that he would take a different approach to future confrontations between federal agents and Chicagoans.
“I want to be clear about one of the things that we’re going to do now,” Snelling said. “What we’re going to do and this is my decision, because I need to be firm on this, when we show up to a scene, and a crowd gathers, CPD is going to step out there. We’re going to make sure that we maintain that scene, that we keep people calm. This is our city, and we’re going to make sure that we bring some type of calm and resolution to whatever’s going on.”
Snelling on Monday warned Chicagoans not to interfere with federal agents conducting immigration enforcement actions, and echoed prosecutors’ version of what happened on Saturday.
“If you box them in with vehicles, it is reasonable for them to believe that they are being ambushed and that this could end in a deadly situation and it’s reasonable for them to use force based on those conditions,” Snelling said. “Do not box in any law enforcement officer. You are breaking the law when you’re doing that and you’re putting yourself in danger.”
However, that series of events has been contested by attorneys for the two Chicagoans accused of ramming the vehicle driven by federal agents.
Video from a body-worn camera of a Border Patrol agent involved in the incident shows an officer saying, “Do something, b----,” before pulling over and shooting the woman five times, the woman’s attorney said in federal court Monday, according to the Chicago Sun-Times.
Despite the fact that Snelling refused to criticize federal officials’ actions on Saturday, including the gassing of 27 officers, federal officials said on social media Tuesday he lied about what happened.
“Not only did Chicago’s leaders refuse to send support to federal law enforcement officers in danger, now they’re lying about it,” read the post, which included a picture of Snelling. “Disgusting.”
That post includes audio of a dispatcher telling police officers that had been dispatched to 39th Street and Kedzie Avenue after a report that federal officers had been surrounded by a large crowd to “hold off.”
“They were saying that they were being surrounded by that large crowd, and they were requesting the police — we’re not sending? I’m waving off all the cars heading to 39th Place and Kedzie?” a dispatcher asked.
“Those are the orders we are being given,” an unidentified officer responds.
Snelling acknowledged his department and his officers were caught in the middle of the larger conflict between the Trump administration and local officials.
“One thing about law enforcement, I’ll tell you this right now,” Snelling said. “You’re damned if you do and damned if you don’t. Well, we accept that.”
Contact Heather Cherone: @HeatherCherone | (773) 569-1863 | [email protected]
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