Immigration and Customs Enforcement announced Sunday that it has launched coordinated "targeted operations" in Chicago to enforce immigration laws and "preserve public safety and national security," Newsweek reported.
Since Trump's return to office, ICE has been granted expanded authority as the administration reversed a long-standing policy that prohibited agents from carrying out raids at sensitive locations, including churches, hospitals, and schools.
ICE raids have been confirmed in multiple states nationwide since Trump's inauguration, including in Minnesota, California, and Colorado.
The ICE statement on Sunday said that an interdepartmental collaboration involving the FBI; Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives; Drug Enforcement Administration; Customs and Border Protection; and U.S. Marshals Service had started "enhanced targeted operations today in Chicago to enforce U.S. immigration law and preserve public safety and national security by keeping potentially dangerous criminal aliens out of our communities."
Acting Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove told The Associated Press, "We will support everyone at the federal, state, and local levels who joins this critical mission to take back our communities. We will use all available tools to address obstruction and other unlawful impediments to our efforts to protect the homeland. Most importantly, we will not rest until the work is done."
It is not known how many people were taken into ICE custody on Sunday.
Vice President JD Vance told CBS News' "Face the Nation" on Sunday, "We're going to enforce immigration law. We're going to protect the American people. Donald Trump promised to do that."
He added that in regard to the updated order permitting ICE to enter sensitive spaces, "we empowered law enforcement to enforce the law ... I desperately hope it has a chilling effect on illegal immigrants coming into our country."
Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker told CNN's "State of the Union" on Sunday that if is violent criminals "they're picking up, we're all for it ... [but] they're going after people who are law-abiding, who are holding down jobs, who have families here, who may have been here for a decade or two decades. Why are we going after them? These are not people who are causing problems in our country."
The Lincoln Project, a conservative group that criticizes Trump, posted on X: "Trump ordered MAGA in Congress to kill the border bill because he never wanted to solve the immigration crisis, he wanted a spectacle. ICE raids and mass deportations send a very clear and hateful message he concocted from the start."
Additional immigration raids are expected to take place across the country over the next few weeks.
Brian Freeman ✉
Brian Freeman, a Newsmax writer based in Israel, has more than three decades writing and editing about culture and politics for newspapers, online and television.
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