The U.S. Department of Homeland Security closed its command center Friday afternoon at Naval Station Great Lakes in North Chicago, ending a two-month-plus stay in conducting immigration enforcement operations in the Chicago area as part of Operation Midway Blitz.
Gregory Jackson, the chief of staff to North Chicago Mayor Leon Rockingham Jr., said he learned from an official at the naval base that DHS was leaving the building it has used as its command center since Sept. 5.
What to know about immigration enforcement raids in Chicago after 3 months
It was not immediately clear what the closing of the naval station command center means to the future of federal immigration enforcement operations in Lake County and the rest of the Chicago area.
Rockingham said everyone in Lake County can rest a little easier with DHS, the U.S. Border Patrol and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents leaving North Chicago.
“The departing of DHS (and) ICE operations from Naval Station Great Lakes provides our residents, especially our Latino community, with a sigh of relief, but I am certain it does the same for Lake County,” he said.
For more than two months, federal immigration enforcement agents have apprehended hundreds of allegedly illegal residents in the Chicago area — some of whom were actually U.S. citizens — and, according to local officials, spread fear in the community.
“Nothing positive can come from fear, and that is what has been prevalent in many communities throughout the greater Chicagoland area,” Rockingham said.
U.S. Rep. Brad Schneider, D-Highland Park, said in a text that the America he knows is represented by the poem at the base of the Statue of Liberty — Emma Lazarus’ words “send me tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free” — not the one represented by President Donald Trump’s administration.
“It is not a nation that pepper-sprays, tear-gases, shoves, drags or threatens its people,” Schneider said. “That’s exactly the reality that the Trump administration has brought to Chicagoland for the past several months.”
Schneider said Trump and his “deputies” have used “terror, violence and intimidation as a central feature of their immigration enforcement effort.” Their actions scarred hardworking people rather than catching criminals.
“We will not soon forget the terror they brought,” Schneider said. “We continue to stand strong, stand together, and stand against the brutalities masked ICE and CBP agents have inflicted on beautiful and welcoming communities, in Chicagoland and across the country.”
Waukegan Mayor Sam Cunningham, whose city was the target of numerous raids by Border Patrol and ICE agents, said in an email Friday afternoon that his city’s values are unchanged, even as the immigration enforcement agents appear to be leaving Lake County.
“We will keep investing in the needs of all our residents, regardless of their immigration status,” Cunningham said. “Waukegan is, and will continue to be, a community that welcomes and supports immigrants. That commitment is unchanged.”
Dulce Ortiz, the executive director of Mano a Mano Family Services and a Waukegan Township trustee, has overseen rapid response teams that have been monitoring agents as they have arrested people around the county.
Ortiz said in an email that the departure of the Border Patrol agents led by Gregory Bovino may be welcome, but she anticipates ICE will continue to detain people whether they are in the country legally or not.
“Bovino left town with many of his agents after having brutalized and abducted so many of our neighbors and community members — violating their rights in the process,” Ortiz wrote in the email. “Even with him gone, ICE continues to have a major presence in Illinois.”
