By Aiden Frasier
[Editorial Note: as ICE intensifies its attacks on the migrant masses as a part of the greater tendency towards fascism, The Partisan highlights the neighborhood defense struggle being taken up by grassroots organizations across the country, such as the People’s Defense Committee, Unidos por el Pueblo, the Borikén Liberation Front, and the Revolutionary Student Union. Guided by class-conscious principles and programs, they have been organizing Neighborhood Defense Units for long-term defense against the Old State, linking the struggle of the migrant masses to tenant struggle and workplace struggles. Fight ICE terror, join the militant and class-conscious neighborhood movement!]
Over the last months, since September 9, Chicagoans have become accustomed to the terror campaign waged by Trump’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement known as Operation Midway Blitz. The sight of masked men jumping out of unmarked cars to kidnap our neighbors has turned from a rarity into an everyday occurrence. People are terrorized, they’re exhausted from constantly being vigilant, looking over their shoulder. There is a vain hope that the attacks will become less intense or less frequent. In an interview with 60 Minutes on November 3 Trump denied the possibility of either change. The reporter briefly described some of the outrages committed by ICE in Chicago and asked Trump if he believed the campaign had gone too far. Trump responded “No, I don’t think they’ve gone far enough… We’re just getting started in Chicago.”
Another common hope, similarly vain, is that this campaign can somehow be stopped or mitigated by democrat aligned politicians like JB Pritzker or Brandon Johnson. In reality, they are not against a deportation campaign, just in this particular manifestation under Trump. In a recent speech Pritzker began, tellingly, by addressing it to “all patriotic Americans.” He went on to say that “when Kristi Noem says they’re removing the ‘worst of the worst’ we all wish that is what they were doing… Please, when you find dangerous criminals, remove them. Let’s all work together, federal and state law enforcement to arrest the bad guys.”
Despite this, the people refuse to allow the situation to become the norm. Every day, in all parts of the city, resistance takes place. Neighbors patrol their blocks and watch for known ICE vehicles, send warnings to those in danger, and use their bodies and vehicles to slow or stop their movement. The development of the struggle shows that the people of Chicago are willing and wanting to spontaneously stand up to defend their city. They have faced this incursion creatively, combating it with varying means and methods. As the mass resistance expands and contracts, what is also clear is that the piecemeal, unorganized and undisciplined fight the masses are waging now, although beautiful and righteous, is not fit to effectively battle, much less to end the crisis. What we need to face this enemy is first and foremost a clear idea of who they are: their tactics, their forces, resources, methods and ultimately their purpose.
What is Operation Midway Blitz?
Midway Blitz represents the opening of a new phase of anti-migrant policy where the function of ICE as an organization meant to defend the dictatorship of the capitalist class has been brought to the forefront.
Since the beginning of the year, ICE has arrested 2,011 people, of which 1,469 were detained. Of those 1,469 detained, 1,044 were deported. Now, since the beginning of the terror campaign on September 9, 1,500 have been arrested in just four weeks.1 Although the number of deportations in the January to September period is lower than the previous years of ICE activity under Biden (3,266 deported during the same time period last year, 2,392 deported during that time in 2023, 1,645 deported in the same time period in 2022, and 1,799 deported in that time in 2021), the frenzied pace set by Operation Midway Blitz has Trump set to far outpace his predecessor.2
The department of Homeland Security, which controls ICE, has billed the operation as “(targeting) Criminal Illegal Aliens Terrorizing Americans in Sanctuary Illinois.” This framing makes the easy sell to the MAGA base that the DHS and ICE are ‘cleaning up the streets’ and ridding the city of the foreign gangs and cartels which they paint in the fascist imagination as running rampant. In reality, undocumented immigrants, including those who have never committed a violent crime and who are a source of fear to no one, are being systematically kidnapped and disappeared. The terror imposed on the people of Chicago is a direct result of the ongoing gestapo-like State violence and nothing else.
So, if we understand the DHS framing to be a farce, what is the true purpose of this operation? Ultimately, it serves as a part of the ongoing fascistization effort by the capitalist ruling class to resolve the developing economic crisis and with it, the sharpening of the main contradiction between the capitalists and the workers. As the capitalists seek to prevent the fall in prices due to overproduction, they begin to destroy productive forces, with the immigrant masses who provide cheap labor being the first to be targeted. At the same time, the capitalists seek to compensate for their losses in the crisis by placing the burden on the working class, stripping workers of their jobs and democratic rights: the immigrant masses are again an easy target. Finally, the deportations marked the removal of various legal restrictions placed on violent organs like ICE and BPD, as the ruling class militarizes the society to put down the growing people’s resistance. As the Trump regime carries out these attacks, they prepare public opinion by launching an ideological offensive, fanning up hatred against the immigrant masses and oppressed nations. To the MAGA base, the most clear enemy is the immigrant which they see as replacing them.
So, we can see how this dual purpose manifests; on the one hand, the economic crisis must be mitigated with the deportation of immigrant workers as a starting point; on the other hand, a show has to be made of removing the immigrant population violently and traumatically to strike fear into the rest of that population and all workers in general. Trump had admitted that some immigrants, like those who tend to American farms are so vital to the economy that they cannot be deported: indeed, the importation of a workforce from oppressed countries to the United States has become a new feature of the US society and economy. This fact alone made these sections of the working class the most vulnerable to reactionary attacks.
If we understand this purpose, the tactics and methods of ICE make more sense. And if we understand both their purpose and methods, we will be much better equipped to defeat both.
What are the methods of Operation Midway Blitz?
As part of Operation Midway Blitz, ICE has, as a rule, utilized unmarked cars, plain clothes agents, and face masks to both add to the unpredictability of their attacks and the atmosphere of fear. For the immigrant masses today, any vehicle or any person they cross paths with could be targeting them. To add to this atmosphere of fear, the incursions into our neighborhoods have also been sporadic and unpredictable. One day, a neighborhood can be swarmed with ICE and face many attacks, and in the following days, there can be few to no instances of ICE activity.
What has been predictable is their targeting of community hubs, restaurants, food stands, grocery stores, laundries, groups of day laborers who gather around hardware stores, etc… Their attacks have not only been limited to these community hubs but have also targeted entire apartment buildings. In the majority Black neighborhood South Shore, on September 30, ICE removed all the residents at 7500 S. South Shore Drive by force handcuffing and zip tying the residents as they forced them from their apartments into the street and into the back of rented trucks. That many of these people were American citizens was of little consequence. The state has provided no information on who was (and is still) detained.
Another method of attack has been completely random and individual, highlighting the need for hyper-local rapid response teams. ICE agents have targeted individual and vehicles at random, detaining and arresting people with only the barest pretense of profiling them as “illegal immigrants.” Not only are our Latino communities harassed and attacked by ICE, but in the Black communities, ICE agents, claiming to search for “Haitian immigrants,” have begun to mete out the same terror to Latino and Black Chicagoans alike.
The resistance in Chicago has already become a beacon for the rest of the country, as the masses are becoming educated on the true nature of imperialism through class struggle. At the same time, without solid organizations and a clear proletarian politics towards socialist revolution, these struggles cannot succeed and will fall into reformism. We not only have a broad desire to resist but the bravery and enthusiasm to fight back. What is needed now is to take diffuse resistance, our individual and small group actions, to link them up and coordinate them within our neighborhoods, on our blocks, our streets, and in our buildings, coupled with revolutionary propaganda and education. Spontaneous resistance is inspiring, but organized resistance is indispensable. Chicago neighborhood-based mass organizations taking up the struggle against militarization—Borikén Liberation Front, Unidos por el Pueblo, and People’s Defense Chicago—published a statement which said the same more eloquently: “The rebellion is there but it is diffuse, unorganized. To harness it we need to develop neighborhood units which can struggle and organize their closest neighbors against all their enemies, fighting the small to gain experience to resist even bigger ones.”
