Immigration agents becoming increasingly aggressive in Chicago

Portraying the city, a Democratic stronghold, as war-ravaged and lawless, US President Donald Trump has authorised the deployment of 300 US troops to Chicago amid his crackdown on illegal immigration, Sophia Tareen reports

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STORMING an apartment complex by helicopter as families slept. Deploying chemical agents near a public school. Handcuffing a Chicago City Council member ata hospital.

Activists, residents and leaders say increasingly combative tactics used by federal immigration agents are sparking violence and fuelling neighbourhood tensions in the nation’s third-largest city.

“They are the ones that are making it a war zone,’ Illinois governor JB Pritzker said Sunday on CNN.

“They fire tear gas and smoke grenades, and they make it look like it’s a war zone.”

More than 1,000 immigrants have been arrested since an immigration crackdown started last month in the Chicago area. The Trump administration has also vowed to deploy National Guard troops in its agenda to boost deportations.

But US citizens, immigrants with legal status and children have been among those detained in increasingly brazen and aggressive encounters which pop up daily across neighbourhoods in the city of 2.7 million and its many suburbs.

Activists and residents were taking stock Sunday at an apartment building on Chicago's South Side where the Department of Homeland Security said 37 immigrants were arrested recently in an operation that’s raised calls for investigation by Pritzker.

While federal agents have mostly focused on immigrant-heavy and Latino enclaves, the operation early Tuesday unfolded in the largely Black South Shore neighbourhood that's had a small influx of migrants resettled in Chicago while seeking asylum.

Agents used unmarked trucks and a helicopter to surround the five-story apartment building. NewsNation, which was invited to observe the operation, reported agents “rappelled from Black Hawk helicopters.”

‘Agents then went door to door, woke up residents and used zip ties to restrain them.