Ken White, a criminal defense attorney and former assistant U.S. attorney who goes by Pope Hat on social media, posted a thread on BlueSky an hour ago about the Blackhawk Down-style ICE raid that happened overnight on Tuesday on the Southside of Chicago.
Have you heard about this raid?
It hasn't gotten much national media attention — maybe because there isn't dramatic video — other than one story in the New York Times (gift link). Other than that, everything I've seen so far has been people on BlueSky reposting outrage from Chicago people, or stories from the Chicago media. (Sun Times story here.)
The outline of the story:
In the middle of the night on September 30, 2025, DHS (CBP, FBI, ATF and you have to assume ICE) sent about 300 enforcers to a five-story apartment complex that's occupied by Black and brown people on Chicago's Southside. Some of the enforcers arrived by helicopters and rappelled down to the building. Some came from military-style vehicles.
Doors were broken down on many or all of the apartments. Flashbang grenades were used, terrifying children (and adults too, I imagine!)
No warrant(s) were shown for or to anyone, though of course DHS says they had a judicial warrant for at least some people. There's no proof of this. They say the helicopter entry was needed because the dangerous, ghostly Tren de Agua gang is known to inhabit the building. They gave no evidence for this.
They hauled everyone in the building out in whatever the people were or were not wearing, zip-tied. People in their 60s and older. Children, separated from their parents.
They put the Black people in one set of UHauls and the brown people (people they perceived to be immigrants) in another. After hours of being hog-tied, the Black people were generally let go. The immigrant-perceived people, well... let's assume they are all being detained somewhere with no access to counsel.
The Black, U.S. citizen residents returned to find their apartments trashed and some belongings gone. According to the Sun Times, a woman from across the street said, “Stuff was everywhere. You could see people’s birth certificates, and papers thrown all over. Water was leaking into the hallway. It was wicked crazy.”
DHS says it arrested 37 people from this raid. How many of them are actually guilty of anything violent or anything at all, and even if some number of them are, is traumatizing all the other people in the building the way to arrest them? No, it is not.
According to ABC7 Chicago, a neighbor said, "I kept asking, 'What is the morality?' One of them laughed. He said, 'Fuck them kids.'"
DID YOU KNOW THIS HAPPENED?
Why is it not the top story in this country?
Here's most of Ken White's thread:
[There's a gulf in this country] between people who think this [raid] is bad and think it is good. The gulf is between those of us who think the government shouldn’t treat people that way and people who think we are stupid, un-American Marxists to think that.
The gulf is between people who see this as brutal and inhuman, and people who see the victims of this as inhuman. The gulf is between people who speak our opposition and people who think that makes us unpatriotic, unreliable, someone to be mocked with sombrero videos.
The other side of this is not merely saying “you can’t make an omelette without breaking eggs,” it‘s people who say “lol fuck those eggs.” It’s between decency and thuggish, swaggering, nihilistic evil.
This is not merely about indifference to the brutality against the least of us that is characteristic of our system; that happens under every administration. This is about brutality being the goal, because it makes evil people happy to see others brutalized.
If you are stuck in the [Megan] McArdlian view "we can't think of the other side of evil" — which I view as sociopathic — I have to ask, is there ANYTHING they can do that will make you call it evil? Is there ANYTHING they can do that won't make you say "I should focus on finding common ground?"
To which Rex Dinero replied:
you might call it the gulf of america
Some other BlueSky comments:
Surreal moment for America. Needless to say, if the normal police ever pulled something like this — pulling every single person out of an apartment building and handcuffing them to run warrant checks — they would be sued into oblivion. Yet ICE is going to get away with it entirely.
Aaron Reichlin-Melnick
Remember when Republican pundits used to threaten to shoot Census workers if they knocked in their door?
David Waldman @kagrox.bsky.social
Use "Kavanaugh Stops" for when DHS officers grab US citizens on the street and detain them for anywhere from 20 minutes to a couple days, and "Kavanaugh Raids" for when DHS officers raid a worksite or apartment building and detain US citizens for hours/days while they check everyone there.
Aaron Reichlin-Melnick
meanwhile, on Ghorman…
P. Djéli Clark [sorry, this is an Andor reference]
the government should not be able to smash into your home and drag you into the street for no reason. it's kind of a core civil right, perhaps THE core civil right.
C. Henry @henryhenryhenry.com
People who don’t think this is fascism “yet” aren’t seeing members of their own ethnic group get brutalized and kidnapped by masked men with guns. Some of us already live in the future. Spoiler alert: It’s fascism.
Gil Durán
2 comments:
“Have you heard about this raid?”
I have to answer yes. It's the lead story in Letters from an American today. It's in the Chicago Sun-Times, but not, as far as I can tell, in the Tribune. It gave me a jolt — I know that street’s name. It should be national news.
It has been slow on the uptake, though, right, given how outrageous it is. Because it's a Black neighborhood, I would say, and it was at night with no video I've seen on social media (except what has now been released as a "sizzle reel" by DHS). That it's not in the Chicago Tribune is terrible.
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