Officials of the sanctuary city of Chicago have vowed to oppose the criminal alien roundup currently underway there and around the US. ICE and its partners, the FBI and the ATF, have been experiencing that this week.
A reporter from the New York Post embedded within an ICE team yesterday on a mission that netted only two arrests after five hours searching. The reporter watched as agents arrested Diego Antonio Montero, 24, a Venezuelan national who had entered the US illegally in May 2023. This week, while being placed in a caged van, Montero predicted in Spanish that he would be set free by a judge soon, because he was “not a criminal.”
Montero’s record says otherwise. Last year he was charged by local police with criminal trespass, battery, and aggravated assault with the use of a deadly weapon, but failed to appear in court. He was also wanted by the DHS, for having missed a court date. The agents took Montero in this week, though they were forced to release two others, whom they had already handcuffed. While the two did have criminal backgrounds, it turned out they had “applied for asylum and were out on bond and therefore immune from arrest.”
It is rules like this (and the restriction on not knocking before 6:00 am) that make life difficult for the ICE teams. Even though armed with a mandate and a direct order from the President, as ICE now is, it has trouble apprehending suspects in cities like Chicago, whose leaders are determined to resist the roundup. For one thing, the agents are rarely supplied with warrants, meaning their targets can be arrested only if they open the door. And pro-migrant organizations and immigration lawyers are making sure their clients are told not to answer the agents’ “knock and talks.” They are giving the illegals flyers that say, for example, “I do not wish to speak with you, answer your questions or sign or hand you any documents based on my 5th Amendment rights under the United States Constitution.” Moreover, Chicago police are prohibited from questioning, arresting, or prosecuting “individuals solely on suspicion of being undocumented,” which the city regards as non-criminal behavior.
Border Czar Tom Homan said, in that regard, “Sanctuary cities like Chicago are making it very difficult. I call everything they’re doing ‘How to Escape ICE.’ But we’re fighting back. We have some plans in the pipeline that are going to increase our chances of making it easier for ICE to make more arrests. As it is, having all these teams out and with help from the ATF and other agencies is like a force multiplier. Our guys are doing a great job and we aren’t going away.”
For more, see the NY Post.