CHICAGO (WGN) – Federal immigration authorities Wednesday morning met with Speaker of the House Mike Johnson at their field office amid a push by the Trump Administration for more widespread enforcement in cities including Chicago.
Johnson’s visit comes on the heels of nationwide protests in cities across the country stemming from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) operations and raids.
During his visit to the ICE field office, Johnson toured the facility and met with local staff and officers to thank them and discuss efforts to secure the border and enforce immigration policies.
A WGN News crew was part of a small group at the House Speaker’s visit and had the opportunity to ask him questions on the administration’s immigration policies, concerns being raised by opponents and lawmakers, and the response to recent sweeps locally.
Trump has promised ICE will expand immigration crackdowns and the number of deportations following nationwide ‘No Kings’ protests Saturday. He specifically took aim at Chicago and other Democrat-led sanctuary cities.
On Monday, WGN TV News sat down with Sam Olson, field director of Chicago’s ICE field office, to discuss recent immigration crackdowns locally.
When asked what Chicago ICE officials have been directed to do and what people can expect to see, Olson said officers will be in the streets, seven days a week, working to enforce immigration law.
“We have, unfortunately, a lot of targets to go after. There’s a lot of people who are here, that are here illegally with criminal convictions, here with final orders of removal and our officers are out there daily,” Olson said.
Announced by the White House last week, ICE arrests have topped 100,000 under Trump, and border czar Tom Homan claimed things would not be slowing down, with workplace immigration enforcement set to “massively expand.”
Recent ICE arrests at locations in Chicago and Broadview, among other places, have led to protests and outrage.
In early June, at least 10 people were detained after they received texts telling them to come to a check-in appointment at a South Loop building of a government contractor that operates the Intensive Supervision Appearance Program (ISAP) for inmates, using ankle bracelets and other monitoring devices as an alternative to detention. On Father’s Day, a similar scene unfolded in Broadview, also at an ISAP office, as at least three people were detained after receiving texts.
In both cases, activists pushed back against the actions of ICE officers, protesting the arrests and demanding the release of detainees. Some local activists, including city council members, claimed people were illegally detained.
In some cases, family members told WGN TV News that despite regular check-ins with immigration officials, their family members did not know of an order of removal against them until they were in handcuffs.
ICE officials claim there is more to the story and anyone who was taken into custody during ISAP check-ins was detained with probable cause.
“With immigration, like I said, there’s a lot of people that we have the ability to target; our authorities are kind of wide-ranging. While we’re focusing on a lot of the criminals, there are a subset of those who are here illegally that have final orders of removal that were maybe on some type of reporting procedure, but at some point, they’ve already been already ordered removed by a judge, so again, we’re just enforcing that order,” Olson.
