A cloud over Mexican celebrations in Chicago

President Trump's plan to dispatch National Guard troops and immigration agents into Chicago has put many Latino residents on edge, prompting some to carry their U.S. passports and giving others pause about openly celebrating the upcoming Mexican Independence Day.

- By CHRISTINE FERNANDO, BEN FINLEY, MELINA WALLIN, Saran Raza AND SOPHIA TAREEN

PRESIDENT Trump's plan to send National Guard troops to Chicago has put a damper on Mexican Independence Day events there. Above, people rally in the city for immigrant and refugee rights on Saturday.

Though the holiday falls on Sept. 16, celebrations in Chicago span more than a week and draw hundreds of thousands of participants. Festivities kicked off with a Saturday parade through the heavily Mexican Pilsen neighborhood and will continue with car caravans and lively street parties.

But this year, the typically joyful period coincides with Trump’s threats to add Chicago to the list of Democratic-led cities he has targeted for expanded federal enforcement.

His administration has said it will step up immigration enforcement in Chicago, as it did in Los Angeles, and would deploy National Guard troops. In addition to sending troops to Los Angeles in June, Trump deployed them last month in Washington as part of his unprecedented law enforcement takeover of the nation’s capital.

Trump posted an illustration of himself on his social media site Saturday as the Robert Duvall character in “Apocalypse Now” — the war-loving Lt. Col. Bill Kilgore — against a Chicago skyline ablaze with flames and helicopters.

“Chicago about to find out why it’s called the Department of WAR,” he posted, along with “I love the smell of deportations in the morning,” referencing a famous Kilgore line from the 1979 Vietnam War film. Trump has ordered the Defense Department to be renamed the Department of War.

“The President of the United States is threatening to go to war with an American city,” Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker wrote on X. “Illinois won't be intimidated by a wannabe dictator.”