Chicago Is Ground Zero for America’s ICE Crisis — and the Human Cost Is Unacceptable

By Dr. James S. Bridgeforth, M.Ed.

Chicago did not ask to become the proving ground for the federal government’s most aggressive immigration crackdown in a generation. Yet under Donald Trump’s revived directives, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has turned this city into the frontline of a dangerous political experiment: federalized policing without accountability, oversight, or consent from the people who actually live here. And the people could not be clearer.

New polling shows that 76% of Chicagoans, including 92% of African Americans, reject federalized policing in their neighborhoods. Across the nation, most Americans share that view. What they see in Chicago is not “law and order.” They see a federal agency unleashed—bypassing state protocols, overriding local authori