The Weekly Sift

Whatever this is about, it’s not public safety.

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I went to graduate school in Chicago during the 80s and lived there for six years. I’ve been back many times since and marveled at how much safer the city is today than 40-50 years ago. Then, I had a car stolen and two bicycles. My future wife was accosted on a sidewalk, and managed to push her attacker away. But in recent years, I have walked anywhere I wanted, including a number of places I would not have dared in the 80s, despite being younger, fitter, and less cautious then.

One neighborhood I stayed away from then, perhaps foolishly, was the Hispanic area on the near South Side. But a few years ago, I went to the National Museum of Mexican Art on 19th Street. A lovely middle-class neighborhood has grown up in that area, and the museum itself is wonderful. These days, Mexican-American can be just another Chicago ethnicity, like Italian-American or Irish-American.

There is, of course, still crime in Chicago (as there is not just in every city, but in small towns as well), and places I would not want to go at night. But in every measurable way, the city is much safer now. You can see that if you take the famous Architecture Boat Tour on the Chicago River. The gentrification of downtown began in the 1970s with the Marina Towers, which were built to be a fortress against the rest of Chicago: You could park your car and even moor your boat without exposing yourself to the public. But as the decades went by, the buildings became more and more open to the city, built to highlight the public riverwalk. From the river, you can see the record of the gradual unfolding of Chicagoans’ confidence.

So I have taken it personally when Trump has repeatedly smeared Chicago as a crime-ridden hellhole. And in particular, I object to his scapegoating of Hispanic immigrants as some kind of vermin to be eliminated.

Saturday, the regime announced it was sending 300 federalized National Guard troops to Illinois. Governor Pritzker says the troops will come from Texas. The governor has sued to stop this invasion, making claims similar to the ones that have been successful in Portland. (More on Portland below.)

I have to wonder what troops can do that other federal agents aren’t already doing. Agents from ICE, the Border Patrol, the FBI, BATF, and DHS have been wearing military fatigues, sporting heavy weapons, and conducting military-style attacks.

Federal agents rappelled from Black Hawk helicopters. Dozens of others, their faces hidden behind masks, arrived in moving trucks. In total, 300 officers stormed a South Side apartment building that Department of Homeland Security officials say harbored criminals.

Maybe, maybe not. But the building also contained US citizens and families with children.

Armed federal agents in military fatigues busted down their doors overnight, pulling men, women and children from their apartments, some of them naked, residents and witnesses said. Agents approached or entered nearly every apartment in the five-story building, and U.S. citizens were among those detained for hours.

… The feds also claimed the South Shore neighborhood was “a location known to be frequented by Tren de Aragua members and their associates,” but DHS gave no evidence to support the assertion, and authorities did not confirm that any of the people arrested were members of the Venezuelan gang.

Alleged Tren de Aragua members have been charged and detained in the city as recently as August. But the Chicago Sun-Times has found little evidence tying them to violence in Chicago.

Rodrick Johnson, 67, is one of many residents who were detained by federal agents during the South Shore raid. A U.S. citizen, he said agents broke through his door and dragged him out in zip ties.

Johnson said he was left tied up outside the building for nearly three hours before agents finally let him go.

Many of the residents were said to be Venezuelan. I wonder if the regime would be similarly brutal in a White neighborhood.

Last Sunday, though, masked agents in military style dress marched through some of the most upscale and touristy parts of the city, not far from where you’d board that boat tour I mentioned.

Agents, some masked, walked north on Michigan Avenue from Millennium Park toward the Wrigley Building. They then walked down Wacker Drive near Trump Tower, while some headed to the Riverwalk. They then made their way to River North.

The point here could only have been intimidation. They were not pursuing criminals or making arrests. Governor Pritzker has it right:

One thing is clear: none of what Trump is doing is making Illinois safer. This is not about fighting crime or about public safety. This is about sowing fear and intimidation and division among Americans.

Portland. Yesterday’s announcement sounded like a classic good-news/bad-news joke: Trump was pulling the last 300 federalized California National Guard troops out of Los Angeles … so that he could send them to Portland. He had previously tried to federalize Oregon National Guard troops to invade Portland, but a federal judge he appointed himself blocked that plan with a temporary restraining order in response to a lawsuit from Oregon Governor Tina Kotek, the mayor of Portland, and numerous other state and local officials.

Judge Karin Immergut observed that in an earlier case (concerning Los Angeles) the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals had overturned a similar restraining order because courts owe “a great deal of deference” to a president’s judgment that conditions on the ground justify his decision to deploy National Guard troops. Specifically, that the federal government is unable to execute the laws with less extraordinary forces.

But Immergut contrasted the relatively peaceful situation of Portland (where the most serious protests had happened in June, but by September had faded to predominantly nonviolent protests drawing 20-50 people per day) with the more serious situation in LA prior to the president’s declaration.

Here, this Court concludes that the President did not have a “colorable basis” to invoke § 12406(3) to federalize the National Guard because the situation on the ground belied an inability of federal law enforcement officers to execute federal law. The President’s determination was simply untethered to the facts.

In a hearing Sunday night, Judge Immergut asked a Trump administration attorney: “How could bringing in federalised national guard from California not be in direct contravention of the [decision] I issued yesterday?”

She extended her order to block the Trump regime from deploying any National Guard troops to Portland.

I’m encouraged by the fact that an appointee from Trump’s first term sees the law this way. I hope some similarly-minded judge gets the Chicago case.