The perfect fascism of a raid in Chicago

Photo of Chicago apartment after the raid: The Triibe

This is what we must guard against.

Late on Tuesday, in the middle of the night, more than 300 federal agents conducted what appears to have been an immigration raid on a Chicago apartment complex. The federal agents, were said to have been from the U.S. Border Patrol, the FBI, and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms. Armed agents rappelled from a Blackhawk helicopter as it hovered above the roof of the apartment building during the raid.

Thirty-seven people were arrested. The entire population of the building was “detained” in plastic handcuffs for hours as the raid took place. Many people were held for as long as four and five hours wearing nothing but nightclothes. Several people, including adults and children, were “detained,” at least initially, while naked. They were made to sit on the ground on the street outside the building.

None of the agents identified themselves. The agents were armed and masked and wearing military-style clothing and gear, including helmets, bulletproof vests, boots, gloves, and were carrying pepper spray and other crowd-control materials.

No one in the building was shown a search warrant as doors of apartments were kicked down and people were dragged from the rooms where they lived and put in plastic handcuffs and moved outside. Children were said to have been handcuffed as well. Most of those “detained” in plastic handcuffs were U.S. citizens.

It is now three days later, and no photographs have emerged of the raid. Not a single photo has been published showing the raid in progress, persons being arrested, or persons detained inside or outside the apartment building, or the agents involved.

Newsweek and CNN reported that the Department of Homeland Security said that the apartment building was “tied to” the Venezuelan gang, Tren de Aragua. The New York Times reported that “federal officials said [the building] was frequented by members of the Tren de Aragua gang. CNN reported that “a number of those arrested had criminal histories that included aggravated battery and possession of a controlled substance.” It was unknown if those arrested who had criminal histories citizens or undocumented immigrants.

DHS has provided no evidence that people who live in the raided apartment building had “ties” to Tren de Aragua. DHS has provided no identities of the arrestees or those in the apartment building who were ousted from their apartments and “detained.” CNN reported that most of those seen “detained” outside the building during the raid were Black.

The Fourth Amendment to the Constitution is supposed to protect people in this country from unreasonable searches and seizures by government officials. This has over the years been interpreted to mean that searches of people’s homes, including apartments, cannot be conducted without a warrant issued by a judge. Probable cause must be provided to a judge to get a search warrant. No probable cause has been produced to justify the searches and arrests carried out by federal agents during the Chicago raid. Saying that the building’s premises were “tied to” a criminal gang is not probable cause.

Then we have the issue of this word “detain,” which in the context of the raid on the Chicago apartment building means that people were put in handcuffs and held by federal agents without being provided due process of law, including search or arrest warrants, or access to lawyers before they were questioned.

It appears from multiple reports that the people living in the building were required by federal agents to produce identification papers, including drivers’ licenses and birth certificates. A resident of a nearby building who witnessed the raid told WBEZ News, “Stuff was everywhere. You could see people’s birth certificates and papers thrown all over. It was wicked crazy.”

Americans are not required to carry proof of their identity or citizenship on their person. Being required to produce identity or citizenship papers is an illegal search unless there is probable cause that someone is in the country illegally or has committed a specific crime. The agents involved in the raid on the apartment building had no probable cause to believe that the people in their apartments were not citizens. They could not see through the doors that they kicked in. They had no probable cause to believe that crimes had been committed in the apartments, or that there were crimes in progress. They kicked in the doors without knowing who was in the apartments or what their immigration status was or if they had arrest records.

On every level, the raid in Chicago was illegal from beginning to end. The people who lived in those apartments had their privacy invaded and their rights under the Fourth Amendment violated. Apparently, those who were “detained” during the raid were not released until they provided proof of identity and citizenship.

The raid was what is called in the law “pretextual.” That is, a pretext was used to detain people who were then required to produce proof of identity and citizenship in order to be released from custody. The pretext in the case of the raid was the allegation, without evidence, that the building was “tied to” a criminal gang. Under such a pretext, the government could raid a building in New York City on Park Avenue because it is thought to be “tied to” illegal gambling or drugs. A home in your town or mine could be raided because someone alleged without evidence that it is “tied to” a criminal gang or illegal behavior.

I have watched multiple YouTube videos of police making pretextual traffic stops and then requiring drivers to produce their licenses. If they refused, they were taken out of their cars and “detained” until they could be identified by other means, usually by tracing the license plate on the car to the registration and getting the name that way. In the meantime, the driver was “detained for your safety and mine” by the traffic cop. Sometimes the pretext in the videos is rank racial profiling. A car with a Black driver will be parked in a “nice” neighborhood, and a police officer will require the driver to produce proof of identity because the car “looked suspicious.”

Black drivers have become used to being stopped on bogus pretexts and enduring a demand to identify themselves. Often while the stop is taking place, the police will bring in a K-9 drug dog that sniffs the vehicle from the outside. If the dog “alerts,” it is used as probable cause to search the inside of the vehicle. If drugs or weapons are found, the driver, and sometimes the passenger, are arrested. If nothing is found, the driver is released from handcuffs and allowed to proceed down the road.

These kinds of traffic stops are going on every day all over the country. The initial stop is illegal. The demand for identification is illegal. The detention of the driver is illegal. Few of those who undergo these illegal stops are wealthy enough to sue the police officers and departments for illegal arrest, but those who do regularly win their cases and monetary awards.

With what we have seen so far about the raid in Chicago, the government has moved from people’s cars to their homes in conducting illegal searches and seizures and wholesale violation of people’s Fourth Amendment rights. In one of the absurd “shadow docket” cases that the Supreme Court is using to support Trump’s authoritarian takeover of the federal government and now cities around the country, Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote a brief opinion allowing stop-and-frisk style behavior by federal agents based on the way someone looks or what their likely job is, supporting a DHS raid on a Home Depot in Los Angeles where immigrants were told to produce identity and citizenship papers and arrested.

The pattern is already here: Cops are stopping and detaining drivers based on their race or ethnicity. A federal raid was conducted this week in Chicago based on an unsupported allegation that an apartment complex where Black and Latino people live was “tied to” a criminal gang.

Trump’s masked and armed agents are already approaching people on the street in cities who look “suspicious” because of their race or ethnicity and requiring them to produce identity and citizenship papers. How long until they are doing the same thing in your town or mine, to me or you?

This isn’t a slippery slope to fascism. We’re already there.