AMY GOODMAN: A federal judge in Chicago has refused the Illinois attorney general’s request to immediately block the Trump administration from deploying hundreds of National Guard troops to the state, instead saying she’ll hear arguments on Thursday. This is in contrast to Portland, Oregon, where a federal judge appointed by President Trump did issue a restraining order to stop Trump from sending troops. Illinois Governor Pritzker said Monday he would not back down.

GOV. JB PRITZKER: Since the beginning of this invasion, families have been snatched up off the streets or removed from their homes, zip-tied and detained for hours, including especially U.S. citizens and legal residents of our state. And in the words of CBP chief patrol agent Greg Bovino, they’re being chosen by how they look.

AMY GOODMAN: Also on Monday, Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson announced he had signed an executive order to stop federal immigration agents from using certain city-owned spaces.

MAYOR BRANDON JOHNSON: The order establishes ICE-free zones. That means that city property and unwilling private businesses will no longer serve as staging grounds for these raids.

AMY GOODMAN: This comes after an overnight ICE raid on a Chicago apartment complex days ago, when ICE agents, wearing fatigues and carrying guns, rappelled from a Black Hawk helicopter and zip-tied children and U.S. citizens while carrying out arrests. A neighbor described the terrifying ordeal to ABC 7 Chicago.

EBONI WATSON: They was terrified. The kids was crying. People were screaming. They looked very distraughted. I was out there crying when I seen the little girl come around the corner, because they was bringing the kids out, too, had them zip-tied to each other. That’s all I kept asking: Where’s the morality? Where’s the human? One of them literally laughed. He was standing right here. He said, '[bleep] them kids.'”

AMY GOODMAN: Meanwhile, Friday, federal agents handcuffed Chicago Alderperson Jessie Fuentes and briefly detained her when she asked if they had a signed warrant for a man they were trying to detain at a hospital.

JESSIE FUENTES: He has constitutional rights.

FEDERAL AGENT 1: No.

JESSIE FUENTES: Do you have a signed —

FEDERAL AGENT 1: No. You need to leave.

JESSIE FUENTES: — judicial warrant for me?

FEDERAL AGENT 1: Turn around. You’re impeding. Turn around and leave.

FEDERAL AGENT 2: Yeah. He is under —

FEDERAL AGENT 1: I am going to arrest you if you do not leave.

FEDERAL AGENT 2: He is under arrest.

JESSIE FUENTES: Do you have a signed judicial warrant?

FEDERAL AGENT 2: You are going to be placed under arrest.

JESSIE FUENTES: Do you have a signed judicial warrant for me?

FEDERAL AGENT 1: You need to leave.

AMY GOODMAN: For those who can’t see, the agent then pulled her hands behind her back and handcuffed her. The video was shared in a report by the news outlet Book Club Chicago, which is part of a coalition of Chicago journalists and activists who filed a new lawsuit with the ACLU of Illinois against the Trump administration over a pattern of, quote, “extreme brutality,” unquote, by federal agents during protests at the Broadview ICE detention center in a Chicago suburb. In this CBS News Chicago story, correspondent Asal Rezaei describes how she was attacked while reporting at the ICE jail.

ASAL REZAEI: An ICE agent that was masked pointed his weapon and shot directly at my car. He saw that my window was open, and he shot right here. You can see the point of impact right there.

MARISSA SULEK: You can see white powder exploded on the hood of her car, windshield, and even engulfed the inside.

ASAL REZAEI: And I was sitting right there with my window open. A lot of it went inside of my car and on my face. I immediately felt it burning. I started throwing up.

AMY GOODMAN: For more, we’re joined by Ed Yohnka, director of communications and public policy for the ACLU of Illinois.

Ed, thanks so much for being with us. There’s so much to discuss here, I mean, one lawsuit after another, most recently yesterday, the filing of the lawsuit around the deploying the federalized troops to Chicago. Apparently, Governor Abbott allowed the troops to go from Texas, and they’re in Indiana right now. But talk about the judge’s ruling and the other lawsuits, as well, that you’re a part of.

ED YOHNKA: Sure. So, the state of Illinois and the city of Chicago, as you say, filed a lawsuit yesterday to challenge the federalization of National Guard and deploying them here, for a very simple reason: There’s no emergency, and there’s no justification for having done — or, for having guards or troops here in the city of Chicago or in the Chicagoland area.

In fact, what we have seen over the last few weeks is the escalation of violence and chaos on behalf of ICE agents, or conducted by ICE agents, everything from, you know, marching up and down in fatigues and pulling families out of parks, marching up and down Michigan Avenue, pulling families out of parks, to, as was described in our lawsuit yesterday with a coalition of legal organizations, you know, taking on what we’ve seen is, you know, just the indiscriminate firing of projectiles and chemical weapons at the Broadview detention center and — or, processing center, which has become a detention center.

So, what we’re seeing, and, you know, in the other clips you played, is just this escalation of violence. And when anybody protests, then that’s seized upon by the administration as a claim for the need to bring in further forces. But further forces are just going to escalate tensions here. They’re not going to make things better.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Ed, could you talk about that, this remarkable raid that occurred last week at an apartment complex that the ICE were claiming that it was a hotbed for Tren de Aragua, a Venezuelan gang? Can you talk about what actually happened there?

ED YOHNKA: Yes. And, you know, Juan, you know how just incredible and, you know, remarkable this is, as a Chicagoan. Last week, what we saw was, in the middle of the night, hundreds of heavily armed ICE agents, you know, masked up, attacked a single apartment building, broke into that building, rappelled off of a Black Hawk helicopter to get to the roof of the building, then proceeded to go through the building and kick down every single door that they could, take whomever they found into custody, and then, as we know, release some of those people hours later because they either had no background, criminal background, they were green card holders, and, in many cases, you know, they were citizens, including zip-tying children, zip-tying children out in the streets of Chicago, separating them from their families and then hauling them away, as well.

You know, this is just — you know, and we have not yet, to this hour, heard any justification or rationalization for why it was that they needed this kind of overwhelming force. There’s not been charges brought against anybody. There’s been no explanation. There’s been no production of a warrant in public to justify why an entire apartment building was attacked. Even if there was a person or set of people in the building that they wanted to try to detain, they didn’t need to literally render, you know, a hundred people unhoused because they’ve created a situation where they can’t go back into the building.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And have they — have there been any reports of who was actually detained or where the people are?

ED YOHNKA: No, that’s been very difficult to find out, Juan. In fact, you know, our lawyers have spent the last several days trying to talk to people who lived in the building, trying to talk to neighbors and others around there, to see if we can find out where these people were taken to, to see what happened to them, to hear about their experiences firsthand. But the reporting on this is just awful.

AMY GOODMAN: Can you talk about the possibility of President Trump invoking the Insurrection Act, and how rare this is?

ED YOHNKA: It would be incredibly rare, Amy. As you know, the Insurrection Act has been used only a few times in our country’s history. And the purposes of the Insurrection Act are in no way, shape or form met in the city of Chicago. There is no invasion here. There is no armed conflict going on. There is no, you know, sabotage to the actions of the federal government.

And in fact, the courts and the government and everyone else is proceeding and operating in the normal fashion. You know, just to make the point, yesterday, government lawyers stood against state lawyers in a federal courthouse and in a federal courtroom to raise the question about whether or not National Guard was available. Police stopped people yesterday in the city of Chicago. ICE continued to make raids in the city of Chicago. There is nothing here that justifies something as extreme as declaring that there is an insurrection, which requires, you know, troops and allowing troops to engage in practices that take them beyond just, quote-unquote, “providing protection” for federal officials.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And could you talk, Ed, also about the response of local city officials? There was an extraordinary press conference by Police Superintendent Snelling yesterday, where he said that some — more than 20 Chicago police officers were actually hit with tear gas at Broadview, fired by ICE agents.

ED YOHNKA: Actually, that was at a protest after a person was shot in the Brighton Park neighborhood — 

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Oh, Brighton Park, I’m sorry, yeah.

ED YOHNKA: — on Saturday. CPD responded to that event because of the fact that there was shots fired. There was — you know, people had gathered around. There were people protesting, decrying the fact that ICE had once again shot someone, as we saw here a couple of weeks ago in a traffic stop. And in this instance, you know, CPD showed up to try to assist with crowd control, with clearing the traffic and allowing people to move on, and ICE, instead of letting CPD or any other official do their — other officials do their job, simply began to fire tear gas at the crowd.

This is the same thing, by the way, we’ve seen in Broadview. Last weekend, the Illinois State Police set up a protection zone at Broadview and tried to sort of create at least some barrier between ICE agents and others. And again, rather than working with local police, ICE just continued to behave in the way that they have for the past few weeks, to go through the crowd when they wanted to, to try to push back the crowd. You know, these are just these kind of bullying, goonish tactics that we’re just seeing them do anywhere. And it doesn’t matter if they’re, you know, trying — if they’re pushing back against protesters, against clergy members, against journalists or against the police. They just seem to think that they have the power to act and behave in whatever way they want.

AMY GOODMAN: Ed, we were just showing video put out by the Department of Homeland Security, as you were talking about the Black Hawk helicopter, ICE agents rappelling down from it, armed, automatic weapons, the agents moving into apartments. They’re putting it out because, presumably, they think this is good propaganda for them. Can you comment on this, the terror that these families felt, with faces not being obscured?

ED YOHNKA: Let me — thanks, Amy, for giving me the chance to speak to this. And let me start by noting they put out this propaganda reel before they ever explained what the actual rationale for the raid is. So, the most important thing for them was to have HD video of what was happening, not to actually speak to why this happened.

And what you’re — you know, what you see in that video, and I think what you hear from members of the community, is a complete terror, a sense of terror that their community, a working-class, Black and Brown community, is being targeted in this way by federal forces using this kind of militarized force. And it is — you know, it’s causing, you know, panic and terror and fear all across the community for many. There are people who are not leaving their homes every day out of fear. There are children who are not going to school. You know, restaurants and cafes and stores in some of our neighborhoods are suffering economically as the result of this fact. And all of this is in service of a reckless policy that is not in any way, shape or form making the city of Chicago or the Chicagoland area any more safe.

AMY GOODMAN: Thank you for being with us, Ed Yohnka, ACLU of Illinois director of communications.

Coming up, we go to Gaza as negotiators from Israel and Hamas are indirectly engaged in ceasefire talks. Stay with us.

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AMY GOODMAN: A rendition of “Cryin’ in the Streets” by Zeshan B, performing in our Democracy Now! studio.