state legislator

CHICAGO — Hoan Huynh was going door to door informing businesses of ramped-up immigration enforcement on Chicago’s North Side when the Democratic state lawmaker got an activist notification of federal agents nearby.

He followed agents’ vehicles and then honked to warn others when he was pulled over. Masked federal officers pointed a gun at him and a staffer, attempted to break his car window and took photos of their faces before issuing a warning, he recounted.

“We were nonviolent,” Huynh said of Tuesday’s incident, part of which was captured on video. “We identified ourselves as an elected official and my hands were visible.”

As the Trump administration intensifies an immigration crackdown across the nation’s third-largest city and its suburbs, elected officials in the Democratic stronghold have been increasingly caught in tense encounters with federal agents. Members of the Chicago City Council and their staffers as well as state legislators and congressional candidates report being threatened, handcuffed and detained in recent days.

The tense political atmosphere comes as President Trump has vowed to expand military deployments and jail Gov. JB Pritzker and Mayor Brandon Johnson — both Democrats — over immigration policies the Republican claims protect criminals.

Illinois Democrats deem the actions to be scare tactics and a calculated acceleration. The clashes, amid constant arrests of immigrants and protesters, have emerged as a top campaign issue in the state’s March primary, where an unusually high number of congressional seats are open.

“This is an escalation with the interests of creating fear and intimidation in my community and in all of Chicago,” said Alderman Mike Rodriguez, whose ward includes heavily immigrant and Latino neighborhoods.

During an enforcement operation Wednesday in the city’s Mexican enclave of Little Village and adjacent suburb of Cicero, at least eight people, including four U.S. citizens, were detained, he said.

Two of those citizens work in his office, including Chief of Staff Elianne Bahena, and were held for hours, he said. Bahena also serves on an elected police accountability council. Rodriguez said they did nothing wrong but didn’t offer details.

“Trump sent his goons to my neighborhood to intimidate, and in the process of helping people out, my staff got detained,” he said Thursday amid continued federal presence in Little Village. Among other things, agents deployed chemical agents and detained a 16-year-old, activists and elected officials said.

Though the operation’s focus has been concentrated in Latino neighborhoods and suburbs, federal agents have been spotted all over the city of 2.7 million and its many suburbs. Word of pedestrian and traffic stops outside schools, stores, courts and an O’Hare International Airport parking lot used by rideshare drivers have triggered waves of frustration amid the city’s active immigrant rights network and residents who follow vehicles, blow warning whistles and take videos.

The Department of Homeland Security has defended its operations, including the detention of U.S. citizens, saying they are temporarily held for safety. The agency, which didn’t answer questions about Rodriguez’s staff, accused Huynh of “stalking” agents.

Homeland Security Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said agents had to assess whether he was a threat.

“This behavior is unbecoming of a public servant and is just another example of sanctuary politicians putting our officers at risk,” she said in a statement.

Also this week, City Council member Jessie Fuentes filed a federal tort claim seeking $100,000 in damages after agents grabbed and handcuffed her this month at a hospital. She said she was checking on a person who was injured while being pursued by immigration agents and asked for a signed judicial warrant on the person’s behalf. She was handcuffed and let go outside the hospital. She wasn’t charged.

“It is indeed a frightening time when unidentified federal agents shove, grab, handcuff and detain an elected official in the exercise of her duties,” said Jan Susler, Fuentes’ attorney.

Huynh, who was elected to the Illinois House in 2022, is running for Congress to replace retiring U.S. Rep. Jan Schawkosky, among four open House seats in safely Democratic territory. Other candidates in the crowded primary have also publicized their opposition outside a federal immigration processing center, including Kat Abughazaleh, who was thrown on the ground by federal agents as she protested.

For Huynh, who came to the U.S. in the 1990s from Vietnam and was granted political asylum, the feeling is familiar.

“My family came as refugees from the Vietnam War, where people were being picked up by the secret police all the time. We believed in the American ideal of due process,” he said. “It is very concerning that in this country right now and very disturbing right now that we are living under this authoritarian regime.”

Tareen writes for the Associated Press.

Frank McCourt will have to pursue his proposed Dodger Stadium gondola without legislation that would have limited potential legal challenges to the project.

After The Times reported on the legislation, Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass and the City Council publicly opposed it, asking a state Assembly committee to strip the language that would have benefited the gondola project or kill the bill entirely.

On Friday, the committee stripped the language and moved ahead with the remainder of the bill, which is designed to expedite transit projects in California. Under the now-removed language, future legal challenges to certain Los Angeles transit projects would have been limited to 12 months.

The language of the bill did not cite any specific project, but a staff report called the gondola proposal “one project that would benefit.”

A court fight over Metro’s approval of the environmental impact report for the project is at 17 months and counting.

In a letter to state legislators in which she shared the council resolution opposing the language in question, City Councilwoman Eunisses Hernandez said the language would amount to “carve outs” from a worthy bill in order to ease challenges to “a billionaire’s private project.”

McCourt, the former Dodgers owner, first proposed a gondola from Union Station to Dodger Stadium in 2018. The project requires approvals from four public agencies, including the City Council, which is expected to consider the gondola after the completion of a city-commissioned Dodger Stadium traffic study next year.

In Sacramento, the Athletics are mired in last place, struggling to fill the minor league ballpark they call home. That does not mean our state capitol is lacking for some serious hardball.

California legislators, meet our old friend, Frank McCourt.

McCourt, the former Dodgers owner, first pitched a gondola from Union Station to Dodger Stadium in 2018. The most recent development, from May: An appellate court ordered a redo of the environmental impact report, citing two defects that needed to be remedied.

At the time, a project spokesman categorized those defects as “minor, technical matters” and said they could be “addressed quickly.”

In the event of another lawsuit challenging the gondola project on environmental grounds, McCourt and his team want to guarantee any such suit would be addressed quickly.

On Monday, state legislators are scheduled to consider a bill designed in part to put a 12-month limit on court proceedings related to environmental challenges to certain transit projects. The current challenge to the gondola project is 16 months old and counting.

The bill, in all its legislative prose, does not cite any specific project. However, a state senate analysis calls the gondola proposal “one project that would benefit.”

Sen. Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco), the bill’s author, said he had not met with any of the lobbyists from the McCourt entities registered to do so. Wiener said he included the gondola-related language in the bill at the request of legislators from the Los Angeles area.

“To me, it was a no-brainer,” Wiener told me.

A rendering of the proposed gondola that would transport fans from Union Station to Dodger Stadium.

(LA Aerial Rapid Transit)

The larger purpose of the bill: cutting red tape for buses, bikes, trains, ferries and any other mode of transit that might get you out of your car. If a gondola can do that, he said, bring it on.

“We need more sustainable transit options in California,” he said. “We need to make it easier for people to get around without having to drive.

“When you get cars off the road, it benefits the people who don’t have to drive, but it also benefits drivers, because it means there are fewer drivers on the road.”

The Senate analysis listed 52 organizations in support of Wiener’s bill, none opposed. Weiner told me he had not heard from anyone in opposition.

That was concerning to Jon Christensen of the L.A. Parks Alliance, one of the two groups that filed the long-running environmental lawsuit against the gondola project.

Christensen, whose coalition recently scrambled to hire its own Sacramento lobbyists, said he has no problem with expediting legal proceedings. What he has a problem with, he said, is a bill that “singles out one billionaire’s project for favoritism.”

Nathan Click, the spokesman for Zero Emissions Transit (ZET), the nonprofit charged with building and operating the gondola, said the bill simply extends a provision of previous legislation.

“The vast majority of Angelenos want and deserve zero emission transit solutions that reduce traffic and cut harmful greenhouse gas emissions,” Click said.

Click declined to say why project proponents felt compelled to pursue inclusion in this legislation if the environmental challenge already had been reduced to what he had called “minor, technical matters” two months ago. Project opponents maintain ridership estimates for the gondola are overly optimistic.

In the end, what happens in Sacramento might not matter much.

The gondola project still requires approvals from the City Council, Caltrans, Metro and the state parks agency. The latest target for a grand opening — 2028, in time for the Olympic baseball tournament at Dodger Stadium — likely would require construction to begin next spring. No financing commitment has been announced for a project estimated to cost $385 million to $500 million — and that estimate undoubtedly has risen in the two years since it was shared publicly.

There is nothing improper or unusual about lobbyists advocating for the interests of big business, but it’s not cheap. Over the past five years, according to state records, McCourt’s gondola company has spent more than $500,000 to do so.