Trump Administration Says It Has Begun Immigration Crackdown in Chicago

In Chicago, advocates for immigrants said they saw several arrests on Sunday, but were uncertain of the scale of federal action.

The Trump administration said on Monday that it had begun a crackdown on illegal immigration in Chicago, though local officials and advocates for immigrants around the city said they had seen only a handful of arrests.

The Department of Homeland Security issued a news release announcing the operation, which it called Operation Midway Blitz, and said it would target undocumented immigrants who had criminal records.

“No city is a safe haven for criminal illegal aliens,” said Tricia McLaughlin, the assistant secretary for public affairs at Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Local officials and immigrants’ advocates said that Chicagoans were bracing for arrests, but that few had been witnessed as of Monday afternoon. At least three people were arrested on the Southwest Side of Chicago on Sunday, according to the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights, which closely tracks immigration enforcement activity.

To some degree, local officials said, the actions so far in Chicago looked to have a typical pace of ICE arrests on a given day. In Illinois, ICE has made at least 1,400 immigration arrests since Mr. Trump took office, a much lower rate per capita than in other immigrant-heavy states like New York. More than a thousand of those arrests have been in the Chicago area.

Jeylú B. Gutiérrez, a City Council member, said on Monday that three people in her ward had been detained, including a street vendor who sold flowers. Another person was arrested as he waited for a bus, she said.

Ms. Gutiérrez, after driving her children to school on Monday morning, said that the neighborhood had less traffic than usual, suggesting that people were staying home from work and school.

“They’re targeting hardworking people in the community,” she said.

On a plaza downtown, faith leaders from around the city gathered to show solidarity with immigrant communities and to decry the Trump administration’s announced deployment of ICE agents.

Nearly a dozen churches, synagogues and Islamic organizations began collaborating several weeks ago, when Mr. Trump alluded to plans for more immigration enforcement, said Matt DeMateo, pastor and chief executive of New Life Centers, a church and community center based in a heavily Latino community on the Southwest Side.

The churches are building a network to pool donations and provide assistance to families if raids and arrests take place.

“The message that he was going to war with Chicago,” Mr. DeMateo said of a social media post that Mr. Trump shared over the weekend, “made us feel that there is a literal target on all our backs.”

The president’s post contained an image depicting Mr. Trump with helicopters, billowing flames and the Chicago skyline, and read: “Chicago about to find out why it’s called the Department of WAR.”

Gov. JB Pritzker of Illinois, a Democrat, said on Monday that his office had received no formal communication from the Trump administration.

“Like the public and press, we are learning of their operations through their social media as they attempt to produce a reality television show,” Matt Hill, a spokesman for Mr. Pritzker, said in a statement.

Mr. Trump has focused on Chicago for weeks, after large-scale immigration raids in Los Angeles and Washington, D.C. In Chicago, at least 150,000 people in the city of 2.7 million are undocumented, estimates show, making up about 8 percent of households.

Hundreds of Department of Homeland Security officials were expected to stage the operation from a naval base outside Chicago.

Mr. Pritzker said that his administration was ready to fight Mr. Trump in court if the president expanded the operations beyond immigration and ordered National Guard troops to enter the city. Mr. Trump has repeatedly threatened to send troops to Chicago, saying that policing in the city needs federal help.

Legal experts have questioned whether Mr. Trump, who has also sent National Guard troops to Los Angeles and Washington, would have the authority to send National Guard troops to Chicago over the governor’s objections.

In Latino neighborhoods around Chicago, anxiety had settled in. On a street corner by a car dealership on the Southwest Side of Chicago, flowers sat in a small vase with a pink notecard taped on it that read “nadie es ilagal,” Spanish for “no one is illegal.”

Celene Morin, 34, who lives in the area, said she had heard about the arrest of the flower vendor on Facebook. She said she did not personally know the vendor, but she would occasionally buy flowers from him.

“He’s such a nice man,” Ms. Morin said. “He doesn’t cause any trouble.”

Ms. Morin said that she had heard of many people in the neighborhood who were afraid to go out amid reports of an immigration crackdown nearby.

“I feel bad for everyone,” Ms. Morin said, adding that she had heard of neighbors who were now afraid to go to the doctor.

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Jesus Jiménez and Andy Grimm contributed reporting.

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