Another Bloody Weekend Puts Chicago in Trump’s Crosshairs; ICE Raid Now Underway
“Excuse me, do you know how many people were killed in Chicago last weekend? Eight. You know how many people were killed in Chicago the week before? Seven. … You think there’s worse than that? I don’t think so.”
Shortly before midnight on Friday, a 29-year-old man walked into the emergency room at Chicago’s Saint Anthony Hospital with multiple gunshot wounds. The man told police he was driving through the city when “someone in a white SUV drove past and started shooting.” He is currently listed in critical condition.
CBS News reports that at least seven people were killed and 12 others wounded over the weekend in Chicago. The article details each incident individually, noting the neighborhoods where the shootings occurred as well as the ages of the victims.
The article notes that “unless otherwise noted, no one was in custody in the shootings above.” Sadly, among all of these incidents, only one person of interest was “transported to the area for questioning,” and in another case, a suspect was arrested. The article describes the latter incident as follows:
At 3:46 a.m., in the 5500 block of West Thomas Street, police officers responded to a call of a burglary in progress involving a vehicle. Three suspects got into a sedan and fled south on Waller Avenue before intentionally crashing into two marked CPD squad cars near Waller and Chicago Avenue. One officer was pinned inside their vehicle and opened fire, shooting one of the suspects, who was taken to Stroger Hospital, where they were pronounced dead. One other suspect was arrested at the scene, but a third suspect escaped. Police recovered a gun that the third suspect discarded at the scene.
Coming on the heels of a bloody Labor Day weekend that left eight dead and more than 50 wounded by gunfire, the violence heightens the likelihood that President Donald Trump will follow through on plans to deploy federal troops to the city to crack down on crime.
ABC News reporter Selina Wang asked Trump on Sunday why he was targeting Chicago and Boston when other cities have more crime.
“Excuse me, do you know how many people were killed in Chicago last weekend? Eight. You know how many people were killed in Chicago the week before? Seven,” he replied. “You know how many people were wounded? 74 people were wounded. You think there’s worse than that? I don’t think so.”
ABC News' Selina Wang asked President Trump on Sunday why his administration has been targeting Democratic strongholds like Chicago and Boston rather than cities in red states, such as Memphis and St. Louis, that FBI data shows have higher crime rates. https://t.co/UOTm4h7142 pic.twitter.com/bym7tE8oaR
— ABC News Politics (@ABCPolitics) September 7, 2025
In the clip below, NBC News reporter Yamiche Alcindor asked Trump if he was threatening to go to war with Chicago.
Trump responded, “When you say that, darling, that’s fake news.”
“Why are you using the Department of Defense?” she asked.
Trump said, “Listen, be quiet. You don’t listen. You never listen. That’s why you’re second rate. We’re not going to war. We’re going to clean up our cities. We’re going to clean them up so they don’t kill five people every weekend. That’s not war. That’s common sense.”
🚨NBC News reporter Yamiche Alcindor asked President Trump if he was threatening to go to war with Chicago. Trump said that was ‘fake news’ despite her referencing his own TruthSocial post. 💯🇺🇸 pic.twitter.com/mM0rZwDd8C
— Buraq (@Buraq515) September 7, 2025
The hyper-partisan Alcindor was referencing Trump’s weekend post on Truth Social which features an AI-generated image of Trump as Lt. Colonel Kilgore from the film Apocalypse Now. Chicago is burning in the background. He writes: “‘I love the smell of deportations in the morning…’ Chicago is about to find out why it’s called the Department of WAR.”
The post was clearly intended as a taunt against Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker (D), amid his ongoing feud with the president over the possible deployment of National Guard troops to Chicago to curb violent crime.
And clearly, it worked. Pritzker snapped back.
The President of the United States is threatening to go to war with an American city.
This is not a joke. This is not normal.
Donald Trump isn't a strongman, he's a scared man. Illinois won’t be intimidated by a wannabe dictator. pic.twitter.com/f87Zek7Cqb
— Governor JB Pritzker (@GovPritzker) September 6, 2025
Naturally, thousands of demonstrators took to the streets in Chicago on Saturday to protest the Trump administration’s expected crackdown on undocumented immigrants as well as the prospect of National Guard troops in their city.
Anti-Trump protest now underway in downtown Chicago to oppose President Trump’s plan to send in the National Guard and federal agents to lower the city’s crime rate:
“This administration has waged war on anybody in this country who is a threat to white supremacy.”@theblaze pic.twitter.com/jvNfttWBaD
— Julio Rosas (@Julio_Rosas11) September 6, 2025
Lo and behold, on Monday morning, DHS announced it had just launched “Operation Midway Blitz,” in Chicago. An agency news release stated “This ICE operation will target the criminal illegal aliens who flocked to Chicago and Illinois because they knew Governor Pritzker and his sanctuary policies would protect them and allow them to roam free on American streets.”
The operation will honor Katie Abraham, a 20-year-old woman who was killed in a January 2025 car accident caused by an illegal alien who was drunk. He was deported in 2016, but reentered the U.S. under a false identity. Abraham’s parents tell their story in the video below.
On its website, DHS lists several of “the worst of the worst criminal illegal aliens—including gang members, drug traffickers, kidnappers, and rapists—who were RELEASED back on to Illinois streets because of Governor Pritzker’s sanctuary policies. These criminal illegal aliens remain at large.”
Maybe ICE will find some of them this week. Let’s hope.
DHS is launching Operation Midway Blitz in honor of Katie Abraham who was killed in a drunk driving hit-and-run car wreck caused by criminal illegal alien Julio Cucul-Bol in Illinois.
This ICE operation will target the criminal illegal aliens who flocked to Chicago and Illinois… pic.twitter.com/OjbgtTE1Au
— Homeland Security (@DHSgov) September 8, 2025
Elizabeth writes commentary for Legal Insurrection and The Washington Examiner. She is an academy fellow at The Heritage Foundation. Please follow Elizabeth on X or LinkedIn.
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Comments
1. Chicago is in deep doo doo as far as crime is concerned.
2. Trump wants to come & help reduce the crime.
3. They do not like Trump nor his plan.
4. They believe that their plan to do nothing is better.
The street gangs are a part of Chicago’s government. That corruption twists the state government, and as a result the entire state is a criminal paradise.
Chicago and IL are broke now. The schools need a billion, the city needs a billion. The public transit people need 700 million to piss away on an enterprise that people avoid. They also want 8 Billion to expand southward that same service. City and state are both losing residents constantly. We need a DOGE visit in the worst way but Pritzker will never agree. Or bankruptcy.
Sounds like North Mexico?
It’s actually mystifying. I could see if Chicago had their own plan to crack down on murders and crime but they don’t have one. They are just intent on Trump not doing anything. Any city plagued with crime they are unable or unwilling to control refusing federal help is not a good look
Compared to two or three years back, Chicago has been relatively calm. This time of year they have been well past 400 homicides. As of today they are only at 304.
One thing I have seen stated in other websites is that the reason Chicago’s death rate has dropped isn’t so much that there’s fewer shootings in standings, as there is better and more advanced emergency medical techniques now.
Nah, they just don’t know how to count
There’s supposedly a amount of statistical shenanigans at the Cook County Medical Examiner. I can’t say what is a normal backlog but their website as of a couple minutes ago lists 1,600+ deaths as yet ‘undetermined’ and another 600+ as ‘pending’ a determination. Until a determination is made those deaths aren’t slotted into the categories of natural causes, homicide, suicide and so on. Conveniently this keeps those deaths out of official causes of death statistics which would seem to create a deliberately skewed lower total number of homicides.
So they do know how to count, but don’t want to
Lies, damned lies, and statistics. Chicago does all three.
Or at minimum they realize that others can count and are potentially acting to obscure the numbers.
I wonder how many deaths they are going to try and blame on Covid or Monkeypox. They also just happened to die with a bullet hole in them.
bs…that that is reason
they do lie about or plea down charges or in fact eliminate charges against their street armies
Back in the 90’s there was over a thousand murders a year. Crack business wars. Kinda like the 1920’s during prohibition.
Chicago was a lot safer with the Italians in charge and mayor Daly, the original one
I’m sick of Pritzker. I’m sick of that turd of a Shitcago mayor and the previous turds before him. I’m sick of the people of Shitcago and Illinois who vote these turds into office. Let them have the government they want.
Withdraw ICE for the city. in fact ship more illegals to the city and more immigrants. Let them choke on them. Let the city burn. But run ads highlighting the decay of the city and Illinois and put the blame squarely on the dramacrats where it belongs.
I’d also rent billboards around the city and put up running totals of the numbers of citizens shot dead or killed with the statement you got this because you vote dramacrat,
“Herd” the illegals into the sanctuary cities in blue states all over the country. Let them choke of them.
With an approval rating hovering around 10% it appears Chicagoans are also sick of Johnson. Pritzker has a 15% favorability rating so isn’t doing much better. These are the guys attacking Trump for trying to do something about crime.
tds is the evil that thrives on anti american anti semitic energy
msm whose pronouns are …she /it/they/mentally ill know that they are at the forefront of the the savagery that their blmplo blankets onto society
and they are proud of it
even when their own are done in by one of their own…nada…means nothing to them
if the federal government stopped allllll monies going to these lefty sh holes
they’d be broke in no time
Feed children
STARVE a socialist
Chicago and IL are broke now. The schools need a billion, the city needs a billion. The public transit people need 700 million to piss away on an enterprise that people avoid. They also want 8 Billion to expand southward that same service. City and state are both losing residents constantly. We need a DOGE visit in the worst way but Pritzker will never agree. Or bankruptcy.
Did Scott Adams consult on Johnson’s new haircut?
Shouldn’t there be TWO peaks?
Gov Pritzker has an approval rating of about 14%
Mayor Johnson has an approval rating hovering around 10%
It appears that Chicago and Illinois in general are pretty well finished with both of them.
“Finished?”
Watch them get re-elected.
So true! They have managed to convince enough gullible patsies that they are more tolerable than any of the alternatives, and that’s enough to get them repeatedly elected in a society with such dismal expectations We have a “long” history of similar behaviors down here in Louisiana. “Yeah, he’s a crook, but he’s OUR crook!”