Over the weekend, heightened immigration enforcement actions in and around Chicago led to muted Halloween and Day of the Dead celebrations, with residents reporting a noticeable decline in festivities.
At least one Halloween parade was canceled. "There were a lot less parades," Ernesto, a resident of a largely Latino Chicago neighborhood, told NPR. He requested his last name be withheld, out of fear of his employer retaliating against him for speaking to the media. "The fear," he says, "has been more palpable with each passing day."
Last week, Democratic Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker called for federal agents to pause "Operation Midway Blitz" (the Chicago immigration enforcement campaign) during the Halloween weekend. "If you are unwilling to cease operations and leave our city, can we at least agree that our children should not be victims, especially on Halloween?" Pritzker asked.
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem called the request "shameful."
"We're absolutely not willing to put on pause any work that we will do to keep communities safe," she responded in a press conference.
On Friday, clashes between protesters and immigration agents erupted near a middle school in Evanston, a suburb north of Chicago. Witnesses shared video footage of an agent holding a man down and repeatedly hitting him in the head.
In a statement to NPR, a DHS spokesperson said that "agents observed they were being aggressively tailgated by a red vehicle. As agents tried to make a U-turn, the red car crashed into Border Patrol. A hostile crowd surrounded agents and their vehicle, and began verbally abusing them and spitting on them. As Border patrol arrested one individual, who actively resisted arrest, pepper spray was deployed spray to deter the agitator and disperse the crowd. Three U.S. citizens were arrested as a result of their violence against law enforcement."
DHS also told NPR that five undocumented immigrants from Mexico were arrested during the operation. According to the agency, all five were in the U.S. without papers, and had criminal histories, including trespassing charges and multiple illegal entries into the U.S.
Evanston Mayor Daniel Biss, a Democrat, responded to the incident in a press conference on Friday.
"Just today, ICE agents have assaulted Evanston residents, beaten people up, grabbed them, abducted them, taking people off the street once again because of the color of their skin," he said. "It is an outrage. Our message for ICE is simple: Get the hell out of Evanston."
ICE is currently holding nearly 60,000 people in detention, the highest number in years. Most of them do not have criminal records. This year has also been the deadliest on record for people in immigration detention since the early 2000s, with at least 20 people dying so far.
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