US immigration enforcement using military hardware and tactics on civilians

George Chidi

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Even without the national guard, law enforcement agencies of the federal government have been using military hardware and tactics on civilian targets.

At a low-rent apartment complex on Chicago’s south shore, people started hearing the boots hit the roof around one in the morning. The oh-dark-thirty immigration enforcement raid in the early hours of 1 October featured an air assault from helicopters. Officers went door to door in the building, using charges to blow the hinges off doors and flash-bang grenades to clear apartments. They hauled men, women and children from the building in zip ties and often little else, ostensibly to capture undocumented gang members.

The troubled apartment building at 7500 S South Shore Drive hadn’t passed an annual inspection since 2022. With the remains of doors and furniture and the bloodied, scattered belongings of former tenants in tatters, it may struggle to pass another.

“So many of these people remain without shelter or a place to live because it essentially rendered their homes and that entire apartment complex uninhabitable,” said Colleen Connell, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Illinois. She described the apartment raid as a military-style attack. Days afterward, the building looked like a war zone, which may be the point.

Addressing an assembly of high-ranking military officers last week, Donald Trump in impromptu comments called for the military to use American cities as “training grounds for our military”. The comment was a continuation of his belligerence toward cities full of Democratic voters and populations of color, delivered a couple of weeks after he meme-posted an image cribbed from the war movie Apocalypse Now about going to “war” in Chicago.

American cities should be 'training grounds for our military', says Donald Trump

For those on the receiving end of federal force from masked agents in military fatigues, a flash-bang grenade thrown by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) agent or a soldier may be a distinction without a difference.

Mónica Solórzano was standing next to the mayor of Carpinteria, a farm town in southern California, watching Ice raid a marijuana farm when a flash-bang grenade went off at her feet.