Trump's Gilded Age and State-Sponsored Terror

Trump partied like its 1928, but Chicago remained on high alert after roving caravans of federal agents used chemical agents, pummeled people and threatened to shoot bystanders.

Illustration by Riley Levine

This Halloween, we saw two very different pictures of America. At Mar-a-Lago, fabulously wealthy oligarchs and their government friends partied all night in flapper costumes like it’s 1928. But everywhere else in America, as the President’s favorites are lavished with flowing champagne, the rest of us are facing the consequences of their excessive recklessness.

Meanwhile, furloughed federal workers struggled to pay bills, Americans faced dramatically higher health insurance premiums, millions of children and families worried about going hungry with the loss of SNAP benefits. But the president bragged about a new marble White House bathroom and its fancy fixtures, and enjoyed his decadent Roaring Twenties costume party that featured “Gatsby-esque” fan dancers, some even perched inside oversized champagne glasses.

While he wined and dined, Trump delivered government sponsored terror on the streets of Chicago. Despite Governor J.B. Pritzker’s request that federal agents stand down on Halloween to let children just be children, Trump’s roving caravans of federal agents — one group helmed by top border official Greg Bovino — once again hunted down working people and attacked peaceful protestors in multiple city and suburban locations.

The New York Times reported:

“Federal immigration agents fanned out across Chicago and its North Shore suburbs on Halloween, chasing suspects through front yards, driving S.U.V.s onto sidewalks and using chemical agents during confrontations with furious residents.”

It was so disturbing that the normally staid Chicago Tribune had a headline that blared: “On Halloween, ‘state-sponsored terror’ in Chicago and the north suburbs.”

State-Sponsored Terror

Now in its eighth week, Trump’s attack on Chicago became especially violent in Evanston, a suburb directly north of the city.

Once again, it involved another questionable car accident. Did the driver intentionally crash into federal agents as they claim or did the federal agents cause the crash as they have done repeatedly in Chicago? Federal agents immediately arrested the driver of the car in question. In the ensuing chaos, a local resident says the federal agents threatened to shoot him when he questioned what the agents were doing.

The local news outlet Evanston Roundtable reports:

“Matthew said he started filming when he saw a border patrol officer “forcibly putting a female into the back seat” of a federal vehicle. “He [the agent] was being very violent with her. I said ‘You got to stop that,’ and he said, ‘Step back or I’ll [expletive] shoot you,‘” Matthew said. “I step back, and then I continue to record, at which point he turned around and pointed a gun at me.”

Eyewitness accounts and videos taken by bystanders, Rapid Response team members and local reporters are equally jarring. They show:

• Agents violently pummeling a young man on the ground

• One agent pointing his weapon twice at people filming with their cellphones

• Multiple occasions of agents threatening to or actually firing pepper spray at people

• Nearby schools on lock down because of the ICE activity

• Arresting and detaining at least three U.S. citizens

Evanston Mayor Daniel Biss responded to the incident by telling ICE to “get the hell out of our city.” He added:

“What federal agents are doing in Evanston right now is monstrous. On Halloween, when our families are supposed to be out enjoying the very best of our community, ICE and CBP are terrorizing Evanston and the northern suburbs while instilling fear across the Chicagoland area. This is despicable behavior, and everyone involved should be ashamed.”

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Trick-or-Treating on High Alert

Last week, just moments before a neighborhood Halloween parade, government agents tear sprayed tear gas on a residential city block. In the face of these attacks, neighbors and community groups made big safety changes for subsequent Halloween and Day of the Dead — or Día de los Muertos festivities. Some events were canceled, others moved indoors. There were also candy drives, whistle packing parties, and growing group chats focused on ICE alerts.

I talked to one suburban parent who told me:

“ICE was driving around schools. Kids were afraid. So we had to organize a large group with several white adults so that our kids’ Latino friends could trick or treat with us, their parents could stay home, & everyone would feel safe.”

In Chicago’s Logan Square, neighbors blocked off streets to create a safer area for kids and families to trick-or-treat. In many communities, whistle wearing volunteers on high alert walked alongside or stood watch on neighborhood streets in order to warn families if ICE or CBP were prowling nearby.

In Little Village, hundreds of volunteers were also carefully watching the streets for unwanted federal agents as costumed children marched down 26th Street in the mostly Latino Chicago neighborhood. Little Village has been hit hard by ICE/CBP raids, so hundreds of volunteers responded to a call for parade monitors. One organizer told the local CBS TV station:

“The volunteers are trained to do a human chain. In case they want to grab a kid or a child, we will block them from getting to them. We will not impede, we will not interfere, but we will not let them grab our children.”

This city has endured much in the past months as federal agents continue their unwarranted and violent attacks. Instead of going after criminals, they increasingly rely on racial profiling to snatch people busy at work doing landscaping and painting projects or simply getting a haircut at the local barbershop. American citizens continue to be arrested and detained. School lockdowns, with adults standing watch outside, are common. Tear gas has regularly been deployed across the city without warning.

In his glittering Mar-a-Lago ballroom, the President thinks Americans can be intimidated, coerced, and terrorized. On the streets of Chicago, Americans are proving him wrong. And word is getting out to the rest of the country. Nearly 70 percent of Americans now disapprove of Trump’s armed ICE raids.

Jennifer Schulze is a longtime Chicago journalist. She’s on Bluesky @newsjennifer.bsky.social and Substack at “Indistinct Chatter.” Read the original column here.