Border Patrol launches Operation At Large in Chicago: ‘We’ve arrived”

CHICAGO – Border patrol agents came to Chicago Tuesday morning to start “Operation At Large,” targeting undocumented immigrants.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection commander Gregory Bovino announced their arrival in the city with a half-minute-long video posted to X, showing agents and vehicles on city streets.

“Well, Chicago, we’ve arrived!” the post read. “Operation At Large is here to continue the mission we started in Los Angeles—to make the city safer by targeting and arresting criminal illegal aliens.”

The backstory:

The deployment comes a day after Gov. JB Pritzker addressed President Donald Trump’s immigration policies, saying mass deportation efforts and threats to deploy the federal forces have created widespread fear.

“People are frightened about the potential of military troops coming to our neighborhoods. People are fearful of masked men in unmarked vans who could grab them on a street corner because of how they look or how they sound,” Pritzker said.

Last week, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) launched Operation Midway Blitz in Chicago, named in honor of Katie Abraham, a 20-year-old woman who was killed in January in a drunk driving crash in Champaign, Illinois. Authorities said the driver, who fled the scene but was arrested days later on a bus in Texas headed for the Mexican border, was a Guatemalan national in the country illegally.

ICE officials said they arrested at least 13 people in Chicago in the operation. Federal officials said those arrested include “dangerous criminal illegal aliens” with prior convictions or pending charges for crimes ranging from sexual assault of a child to armed robbery and domestic violence. Among them were individuals from Mexico, Guatemala, India and Kyrgyzstan.

Big picture view:

ICE has been ramping up its mass deportation efforts since Trump took office in January, including in large cities such as Los Angeles and Washington, D.C.

In recent weeks, Trump has expressed interest in cracking down on crime in Chicago after a multi-agency surge in D.C. has led to a reported decrease in crime and hundreds of immigration-related arrests.