federal agent

CHICAGO — Chicago has entered what many consider a new uneasy phase of a Trump administration immigration crackdown that has already led to thousands of arrests.

While a U.S. Border Patrol commander known for leading intense and controversial surges moved on to North Carolina, federal agents are still arresting immigrants across the nation’s third-largest city and suburbs.

A growing number of lawsuits stemming from the crackdown are winding through the courts. Authorities are investigating agents’ actions, including a fatal shooting. Activists say they are not letting their guard down in case things ramp up again, while many residents in the Democratic stronghold remain anxious.

“I feel a sense of paranoia over when they might be back,” said Santani Silva, an employee at a vintage store in the predominantly Mexican American neighborhood of Pilsen. “People are still afraid.”

Intensity slows, but arrests continue

For more than two months, the Chicago area was the focus of an aggressive operation led by Gregory Bovino, a Border Patrol commander behind similar efforts in Los Angeles and soon Louisiana.

Armed and masked agents used unmarked SUVs and helicopters throughout the city of 2.7 million and its suburbs to target suspected criminals and immigration violators. Arrests often led to intense standoffs with bystanders, from wealthy neighborhoods to working-class suburbs.

While the intensity has died down in the week since Bovino left, reports of arrests still pop up. Activists tracking immigration agents said they confirmed 142 daily sightings at the height of the operation last month. The number is now roughly six a day.

“It’s not over,” said Brandon Lee with the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights. “I don’t think it will be over.”

Suburb under siege

Bearing the brunt of the operation has been Broadview, a Chicago suburb of roughly 8,000 people that has housed a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement processing center for years.

Protests outside the facility have grown increasingly tense as federal agents used chemical agents that area neighbors felt. Broadview police also launched three criminal investigations into federal agents’ tactics.

Community leaders took the unusual step of declaring a civil emergency last week and moving public meetings online.

Broadview Mayor Katrina Thompson said the community has faced bomb threats, death threats and violent protests because of the crackdown.

“I will not allow threats of violence or intimidation to disrupt the essential functions of our government,” Thompson said.

Questionable arrests and detentions

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security has touted more than 3,000 arrests, but the agency has provided details on only a few cases in which immigrants without legal permission to live in the country also had a criminal history.

The Trump administration posts photos on social media of supposed violent criminals apprehended in immigration operations, but the federal government’s own data paint a different picture.

Of 614 immigrants arrested and detained in recent months around Chicago, only 16, less than 3%, had criminal records representing a “high public safety risk,” according to federal government data submitted to the court as part of a 2022 consent decree about ICE arrests. Those records included domestic battery and drunk driving.

A judge in the cases said hundreds of immigrant detainees qualify to be released on bond, though an appeals court has paused their release. Attorneys say many more cases will follow as they get details from the government about arrests.

“None of this has quite added up,” said Ed Yohnka with the American Civil Liberties Union of Illinois, which has been involved in several lawsuits. “What was this all about? What did this serve? What did any of this do?”

Investigations and lawsuits

The number of lawsuits triggered by the crackdown is growing, including on agents’ use of force and conditions at the Broadview center. In recent days, clergy members filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration, alleging they were being blocked from ministering inside a facility.

Federal prosecutors have also repeatedly dropped charges against protesters and other bystanders, including dismissing charges against a woman who was shot several times by a Border Patrol agent last month.

Meanwhile, federal agents are also under investigation in connection with the death of a suburban man fatally shot by ICE agents during a traffic stop. Mexico’s president has called for a thorough investigation, while ICE has said it did not use excessive force.

An autopsy report, obtained by the Associated Press last week, showed Silverio Villegas González died from a gunshot fired at “close range” to his neck. The death was declared a homicide.

In October, the body of the 38-year-old father who spent two decades in the U.S. was buried in the western Mexico state of Michoacan.

A chilling effect

Many of the once bustling business corridors in the Chicago area’s largely immigrant communities that had quieted down were seeing a buzz again with some street vendors slowly returning to their usual posts.

Andrea Melendez, the owner of Pink Flores Bakery and Cafe, said she has seen an increase in sales after struggling for months.

“As a new business, I was a bit scared when we saw sales drop,” she said. “But this week I’m feeling a bit more hope that things may get better.”

Eleanor Lara, 52, has spent months avoiding unnecessary trips outside her Chicago home, fearful that an encounter with immigration agents could have dire consequences.

Even as a U.S. citizen, she is afraid and carries her birth certificate. She is married to a Venezuelan man whose legal status is in limbo.

“We’re still sticking home,” she said.

Tareen and Fernando write for the Associated Press.

RALEIGH, N.C. — Federal agents have now arrested more than 250 people during a North Carolina immigration crackdown centered around Charlotte, the state’s largest city, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security said Wednesday.

The operation that began over the weekend is the latest phase of Republican President Trump’s aggressive mass deportation efforts that have sent the military and immigration agents into Democratic-run cities — from Chicago to Los Angeles.

Immigration officials have blanketed the country since January, pushing detention counts to all-time highs above 60,000. Big cities and small towns across the country are targeted daily amid higher-profile pushes in places such as Portland, Oregon, where more than 560 immigration arrests were made in October. Smaller bursts of enforcement have popped up elsewhere.

The push to carry out arrests in North Carolina expanded to areas around the state capital of Raleigh on Tuesday, spreading fear in at least one immigrant-heavy suburb.

The number of arrests so far during what the government has dubbed “ Operation Charlotte’s Web ” was about double the total announced by DHS officials earlier this week. The department said in a statement that agencies “continue to target some of the most dangerous criminal illegal aliens.”

Their targets include people living in the U.S. without legal permission and those who allegedly have criminal records.

Federal officials have offered few details about those arrested. They’ve also remained quiet about the scope of the enforcement operations across North Carolina and where agents will show up next, keeping communities on edge.

The crackdown in Charlotte has been met with pockets of resistance and protests.

About 100 people gathered outside a Home Depot store in Charlotte on Wednesday, where federal agents have been spotted multiple times since the surge started. Protest organizers briefly went inside the store with orange and white signs that read, “ICE out of Home Depot, Protect our communities.”

Arrests in Charlotte have created a chilling effect in immigrant neighborhoods — school attendance dropped, and small shops and restaurants closed to avoid confrontations between customers and federal agents.

Fear also spread in parts of Cary, a Raleigh suburb where officials say almost 20% of the population was born outside the U.S. At a shopping center home to family-run ethnic restaurants, there was little traffic and an Indian grocery store was mostly empty on Tuesday.

Just days after beginning the crackdown in North Carolina, Border Patrol agents were expected to arrive in New Orleans by the end of the week to start preparing for their next big operation in southeast Louisiana, according to documents obtained by The Associated Press and three people familiar with the operation.

Around 250 federal border agents are set to descend on New Orleans in the coming weeks for a two-month immigration crackdown expected to begin in earnest on Dec. 1.

Gregory Bovino, the Border Patrol commander tapped to head the Louisiana sweep, has been on the ground in North Carolina this week, leading the operation there as well. Bovino has become the Trump administration’s leader of the large-scale crackdowns and has drawn criticism over the tactics used to carry out arrests.

DHS has declined to comment on the operation. “For the safety and security of law enforcement, we’re not going to telegraph potential operations,” spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin said.

Robertson writes for the Associated Press. AP reporters Elliot Spagat, Erik Verduzco in Charlotte, and John Seewer in Toledo, Ohio, contributed to this report.

WASHINGTON — Hurling a sandwich at a federal agent was an act of protest for Washington, D.C., resident Sean Charles Dunn. A jury must decide if it was also a federal crime.

“No matter who you are, you can’t just go around throwing stuff at people because you’re mad,” Assistant U.S. Atty. John Parron told jurors Tuesday at the start of Dunn’s trial on a misdemeanor assault charge.

Dunn doesn’t dispute that he threw his submarine-style sandwich at a U.S. Customs and Border Protection agent outside a nightclub on the night of Aug. 10. It was an “exclamation point” for Dunn as he expressed his opposition to President Trump’s law enforcement surge in the nation’s capital, defense attorney Julia Gatto said during the trial’s opening statements.

“It was a harmless gesture at the end of him exercising his right to speak out,” Gatto said. “He is overwhelmingly not guilty.”

A bystander’s cellphone video of the confrontation went viral on social media, turning Dunn into a symbol of resistance against Trump’s months-long federal takeover. Murals depicting him mid-throw popped up in the city virtually overnight.

“He did it. He threw the sandwich,” Gatto told jurors. “And now the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia has turned that moment — a thrown sandwich — into a criminal case, a federal criminal case charging a federal offense.”

A grand jury refused to indict Dunn on a felony assault count, part of a pattern of pushback against the Justice Department’s prosecution of surge-related criminal cases. After the rare rebuke from the grand jury, U.S. Atty. Jeanine Pirro’s office charged Dunn instead with a misdemeanor.

Customs and Border Protection Agent Gregory Lairmore, the government’s first witness, said the sandwich “exploded” when it struck his chest hard enough that he could feel it through his ballistic vest.

“You could smell the onions and the mustard,” he recalled.

Lairmore and other agents were standing in front of a club hosting a “Latin Night” when Dunn approached and shouted profanities at them, calling them “fascists” and “racists” and chanting “shame.”

“Why are you here? I don’t want you in my city!” Dunn shouted, according to police.

Lairmore testified that he and the other agents tried to de-escalate the situation.

“He was red-faced. Enraged. Calling me and my colleagues all kinds of names,” he said. “I didn’t respond. That’s his constitutional right to express his opinion.”

After throwing the sandwich, Dunn ran away but was apprehended about a block away.

Later, Lairmore’s colleagues jokingly gave him gifts making light of the incident, including a subway sandwich-shaped plush toy and a patch that said “felony footlong.” Defense attorney Sabrina Schroff pointed to those as proof that the agents recognize this case is “overblown” and “worthy of a joke.”

Parron told jurors that everybody is entitled to their views about Trump’s federal surge. But “respectfully, that’s not what this case is about,” the prosecutor said. “You just can’t do what the defendant did here. He crossed a line.”

Dunn was a Justice Department employee who worked as an international affairs specialist in its criminal division. After Dunn’s arrest, Atty. Gen. Pam Bondi announced his firing in a social media post that referred to him as “an example of the Deep State.”

Dunn was released from custody but rearrested when a team of armed federal agents in riot gear raided his home. The White House posted a highly produced “propaganda” video of the raid on its official X account, Dunn’s lawyers said.

Dunn’s lawyers have argued that the posts by Bondi and the White House show Dunn was impermissibly targeted for his political speech. They urged U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols to dismiss the case, calling it a vindictive and selective prosecution. Nichols, who was nominated by Trump, didn’t rule on that request before the trial started Monday.

Dunn is charged with assaulting, resisting, opposing, impeding, intimidating and interfering with a federal officer. Dozens of Trump supporters who stormed the Capitol were convicted of felonies for assaulting or interfering with police during the Jan. 6 attack. Trump pardoned or ordered the dismissal of charges for all of them.

Kunzelman writes for the Associated Press.

WASHINGTON — Throwing a sandwich at a federal agent turned Sean Charles Dunn into a symbol of resistance against President Trump’s law-enforcement surge in the nation’s capital. This week, federal prosecutors are trying to persuade a jury of fellow Washington, D.C., residents that Dunn simply broke the law.

That could be a tough sell for the government in a city that has chafed against Trump’s federal takeover, which is entering its third month. A grand jury refused to indict Dunn on a felony assault count before U.S. Atty. Jeanine Pirro’s office opted to charge him instead with a misdemeanor.

Securing a trial conviction could prove to be equally challenging for Justice Department prosecutors in Washington, where murals glorifying Dunn’s sandwich toss popped up virtually overnight.

Before jury selection started Monday, the judge presiding over Dunn’s trial seemed to acknowledge how unusual it is for a case like this to be heard in federal court. U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols, who was nominated to the bench by Trump, said he expects the trial to last no more than two days “because it’s the simplest case in the world.”

A video that went viral on social media captured Dunn hurling his subway-style sandwich at a Customs and Border Protection agent outside a nightclub on the night of Aug. 10. That same weekend, Trump announced his deployment of hundreds of National Guard troops and federal agents to assist with police patrols in Washington.

When Dunn approached a group of CBP agents who were in front of the club, which was hosting a “Latin Night,” he called them “fascists” and “racists” and chanted “shame” toward them. An observer’s video captured Dunn throwing a sandwich at an agent’s chest.

“Why are you here? I don’t want you in my city!” Dunn shouted, according to police.

Dunn ran away but was apprehended. He was released from custody but rearrested when a team of armed federal agents in riot gear raided his home. The White House posted a highly produced “propaganda” video of the raid on its official X account, Dunn’s lawyers said. They noted that Dunn had offered to surrender to police before the raid.

Dunn worked as an international affairs specialist in the Justice Department’s criminal division. After Dunn’s arrest, U.S. Atty. Gen. Pam Bondi announced his firing in a social media post that referred to him as “an example of the Deep State.”

Before trial, Dunn’s lawyers urged the judge to dismiss the case for what they allege is a vindictive and selective prosecution. They argued that the posts by Bondi and the White House prove Dunn was impermissibly targeted for his political speech.

Julia Gatto, one of Dunn’s lawyers, questioned why Trump’s Justice Department is prosecuting Dunn after the Republican president issued pardons and ordered the dismissal of assault cases stemming from a mob’s attack on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

“It’s an obvious answer,” Gatto said during a hearing last Thursday. “The answer is they have different politics. And that’s selective prosecution.”

Prosecutors countered that Dunn’s political expressions don’t make him immune from prosecution for assaulting the agent.

“The defendant is being prosecuted for the obvious reason that he was recorded throwing a sandwich at a federal officer at point-blank range,” they wrote.

Dunn is charged with assaulting, resisting, opposing, impeding, intimidating and interfering with a federal officer. Dozens of Trump supporters who stormed the Capitol were convicted of felonies for assaulting or interfering with police during the Jan. 6 attack. Trump pardoned or ordered the dismissal of charges for all of them.

Kunzelman writes for the Associated Press.