Last Saturday, anti-deportation activists in Chicago took their protest to a dangerous new level: using their cars to ram and box in Immigration and Customs Enforcement vehicles. Even more troubling, when the agents called the Chicago Police Department for assistance, they discovered that the chief of patrol had issued a stand-down order, according to CPD dispatch recordings and internal communications.
Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson responded to the incident by signing an executive order creating “ICE-free zones” from which federal immigration agents would be prohibited from operating. The Marxist mayor said he was acting to “rein in this out-of-control administration. This means that city property and unwilling private businesses will no longer serve as staging grounds for these raids.”
TRUMP TO MEET WITH VOUGHT ‘OF PROJECT 2025 FAME’ TO DETERMINE WHICH AGENCIES TO CUT
In a sane world, it would be unthinkable for a city mayor to dictate to a U.S. president which federal laws they will or will not permit to be enforced. Yet in this case, the hubris extends all the way to Gov. JB Pritzker (D-IL), who filed a joint lawsuit with the mayor that same day to block the Trump administration’s lawful deployment of 400 National Guard troops to the state. In a Wednesday post on Truth Social, President Donald Trump wrote, “Chicago Mayor should be in jail for failing to protect ICE Officers! Governor Pritzker also!”
Nowhere is this dynamic more visible than in Portland, Oregon, where often violent nightly “protests” outside the local ICE field office have raged for months. According to a White House news release, “since early June, antifa militants have laid siege to the ICE field office in south Portland. The terrorists have violently breached the facility by using a stop sign as a battering ram, hurled explosives and projectiles, burned American flags, viciously assaulted, attacked, and injured officers, doxed officers, berated neighbors, and even rolled out a guillotine.”
The Trump administration has tried to deploy National Guard troops to the city to end the violence, but local and state leaders refuse to acknowledge, let alone confront, the unrest. Those who actually live and work in Portland describe a city in distress. Portland business owner Amy Nichols told Fox News her establishment had recently been broken into for the 10th time. “We need help here and something needs to be done, so if [the National Guard] is what we need to do to get our leaders paying attention to what’s happening in Portland, then I think it’s a good thing. We’ve been struggling for a long time — since 2020.” The owner of a Portland coffee shop said, “We struggle every day, every week, with the crime and the drugs and just the unsafeness that comes with being here in our city right now. It’s like our leaders have abandoned public safety for us.”
In the meantime, elected officials gaslight the public by framing Portland as calm and orderly. Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-OR) claims that the violence in Portland is fake and is actually being staged by law enforcement. He tells constituents, “It’s Trump creating the chaos because he wants violence and chaos to justify more authoritarian power. This is an incredibly perilous moment for our nation.”
In a scene reminiscent of Pritzker’s carefully choreographed “morning stroll” along Chicago’s Lake Shore Drive, his attempt to prove the city’s safety after a particularly bloody Labor Day weekend, Rep. Maxine Dexter (D-OR) recorded a video from Portland’s Broadway Bridge, describing the city as “peaceful.”
All the while, these politicians have been aided and abetted by a network of federal judges. On Saturday, a district court judge and first-term Trump appointee temporarily blocked the Trump administration from deploying Oregon National Guard troops to quell the violence in Portland, claiming that Trump’s description of the city as a “war zone” was “simply untethered to the facts.” Conditions there, she said, were not sufficiently “violent or disruptive” to warrant the presence of federal troops. When the Trump administration tried to deploy California National Guard troops to Oregon on Sunday, the judge issued a second restraining order blocking any National Guard troops from serving in the state.
Note: On Wednesday, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously voted to lift the TRO on Trump’s mobilization of Oregon National Guard troops. The state then sued the Trump administration to stop the deployment of troops.
TRUMP’S SHUTDOWN WORKFORCE THREATS COULD BACKFIRE
The underlying problem here is clear. Democrats’ contempt for Trump began the moment he launched his 2015 presidential campaign. Since then, it has calcified into an all-consuming obsession — one that leaves virtually nothing off-limits in their effort to oppose him. Desperation has replaced rationality, and resistance for its own sake has become the Democratic goal. The rule of law has been sacrificed on the altar of hatred for one man.
A republic cannot stand when public servants abandon the laws they are sworn to enforce. When defiance becomes doctrine, the line between dissent and disorder begins to blur. Free speech is a sacrosanct American value, but politicians who actively obstruct the enforcement of federal law must face legal consequences for doing so.
