During a Sunday morning appearance on Fox & Friends, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said that “gangs, cartel members, and known terrorist organizations have placed bounties on the heads of several of our law-enforcement officers.” She added that specific officers and agents have been targeted with offers such as $2,000 to kidnap them and $10,000 to kill them, and that the suspects have circulated the officers’ photos through their networks.
She said protective details have been assigned to those individuals, and some operations have been altered to keep officers safe. Noem described the situation as dangerous and unprecedented.
In a post on X, she wrote, “These violent riots are not about free speech. This is the rule of law vs. anarchy. We will win.”
No one is surprised that gangs and cartels would put bounties on law enforcement. What is far more troubling — and unexpected — is that American citizens themselves would resort to lawlessness and violence against those charged with upholding U.S. immigration laws.
A case in point: Border Patrol agents conducting a routine patrol on Saturday morning in Chicago came under attack by activists who used their cars to ram ICE vehicles and ultimately boxed them in, according to a Department of Homeland Security report. When the officers “exited their trapped vehicle,” Chicago resident and U.S. citizen Marimar Martinez, who was armed, allegedly tried to run them over, “forcing the officers to fire defensively.”
According to a press release from the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of Illinois:
Martinez drove off but paramedics discovered her and her vehicle at a repair shop about a mile away. Martinez was taken by ambulance to a hospital, where she received treatment for gunshot wounds.
Martinez, 30, and Anthony Ian Santos Ruiz, 21, a second driver involved in the incident, were charged with “using their vehicles to assault, impede, and interfere with the work of federal agents in Chicago.”
Ruiz also drove away after the collisions, but law enforcement located him and his vehicle at a gas station about a half block away, the complaint states. Both defendants remain in law enforcement custody, pending initial appearances in federal court in Chicago.
In a Saturday post on X, Assistant Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security Tricia McLaughlin reported that Martinez was named last week in a CBP “intelligence bulletin for doxing agents and posting online, ‘Hey to all my gang let’s f*** those mother f***ers up, don’t let them take anyone.’”
More disturbing still were reports that Chicago police officers were told not to provide assistance to the surrounded border patrol agents. Fox News obtained an internal dispatch on Sunday that revealed “Chicago police officers were ordered by their chief of patrol not to respond.”
This corroborated similar reports from multiple media outlets.
The dispatch read:
PLEASE CHIEF OF PATROL NO UNITS WILL RESPOND TO THIS AS RELATED FROM 04-Oc5-2025/12:34:44…CALLER IS 1 OF APPROX 30 ARMED PATROL AGENTS (ICE) WHO ARE BEING SURROUNDED BY A LARGE CROWD OF PEOPLE REQUESTING CPD.
The Chicago Police Department denied the allegations in a statement which said, “To clarify misinformation currently circulating, CPD officers did in fact respond to the shooting scene involving federal authorities on Saturday to maintain public safety and traffic control.”
However, “two longtime, ranking Chicago police sources” told Fox that CPD’s “statement was false — and that internal communications tell a very different story.”
According to Fox, the sources “sharply rejected the department’s assertion that officers responded to calls for help from ICE agents who were rammed and surrounded by protesters on Saturday, telling Fox News the official statement is, in their words, ‘COVER THEIR A– BULLS–T!!'”
The President of the Illinois State Fraternal Order of Police Chris Southwood issued a blistering statement in response to CPD’s reported refusal to help federal agents:
The number one unwritten rule in law enforcement is that we respond to any calls from officers in distress. What would have happened if the local police were facing threats and nearby federal officers were told not to assist? Whether you agree about immigration enforcement or not, when a law enforcement officer is in trouble, nothing should stand in the way of fellow officers rendering assistance.
If it is true that CPD officers were instructed not to assist federal agents — and the evidence increasingly suggests that it is — the directive likely originated with Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker.
Efforts by Pritzker and other blue state governors to resist federal deportation operations within their jurisdictions are becoming as dangerous as the gangs and cartels placing bounties on the heads of federal agents. The situation is rapidly reaching a fever pitch. A nation in which state officials openly defy federal law — as the Confederate states did in the lead-up to the Civil War — cannot long survive as a united republic. Defiance of federal authority in the name of ideology erodes not only the rule of law but the very cohesion that holds the country together.
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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