Fighting for the First Amendment in Chicago

Journalists, clergy and demonstrators sue federal forces in Chicago for brutally suppressing their rights

For weeks now, federal agents have brutalized peaceful protesters and journalists gathering outside the ICE facility in Broadview, Illinois, near Chicago. They’ve thrown people to the ground, fired on them with pepper balls and rubber bullets, sprayed them with chemicals, and lobbed flash grenades and tear gas cannisters into the crowd.

In a new lawsuit filed this week against Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and others, plaintiffs including protesters, clergy, and journalists argue that federal forces are violating their First Amendment rights to peacefully protest, to exercise their religion, and to report on the federal agents’ activities.

At an initial hearing on Monday, federal district court Judge Sara Ellis sounded sympathetic to the plaintiffs, but rather than granting a temporary restraining order set another hearing for this afternoon.

The lawsuit is powerful, and worth reading. It alleges that

Never in modern times has the federal government undermined bedrock constitutional protections on this scale or usurped states’ police power by directing federal agents to carry out an illegal mission against the people for the government’s own benefit.

It describes a series of assaults on the plaintiffs, including Raven Geary, co-founder of Unraveled Press, a local media organization:

Plaintiff Geary, who always wears her press credentials as well as a helmet with “PRESS” on it, has been fired at by federal agents with pepper balls on several occasions, including on the morning of Friday, September 25, when she was hit directly in the face by an officer who shot her from approximately 30 feet away while she was standing in a public parking area, taking a picture of him.

Other plaintiffs include protesters like Leigh Kunkel, who was “struck in the back of the head and then in the nose by pepper balls shot by a federal officer from close range” while peacefully protesting.

One plaintiff in particular stands out as a resistance hero: the Rev. David Black, whose story is movingly told by Jack Jenkins of the Religion News Service:

Last month, the Rev. David Black stood in front of a Chicago-area U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility and spread his arms wide. Adorned in all black and wearing a clerical collar, the pastor looked up at a group of masked, heavily armed ICE agents on the roof and began to pray.

“I invited them to repentance,” Black, a minister in the Presbyterian Church (USA), said in an interview. “I basically offered an altar call. I invited them to come and receive that salvation, and be part of the kingdom that is coming.”

But when Black began to lower his arms a few seconds later, the agents responded to his spiritual plea by firing pepper balls, or chemical agents that cause eye irritation and respiratory distress, video footage shows. One struck Black in the head, exploding into a puff of white pepper smoke and forcing him to his knees. Fellow demonstrators rushed to his aid, and as the pastor rubbed his face in pain, the agents continued to fire.

“We could hear them laughing,” Black said.

The moment agents shoot Black in the head is captured in this video. Black was also sprayed in the face the week before, as you can see in this dramatic photo taken by Ashlee Rezin of the Chicago Sun-Times

Other Lawsuits

Two other major lawsuits are at play in Illinois.

• The State of Illinois and the city of Chicago filed suit on Monday to block Trump’s deployment of the military to Chicago. In an emergency hearing, federal district Judge April Perry declined to grant an immediate injunction, instead scheduling another hearing for Thursday. The result is that Texas National Guard members arrived outside Chicago on Tuesday afternoon.

• And a federal district judge ruled on Tuesday that federal immigration agents illegally arrested nearly two dozen people earlier this year without warrants in violation of a 2022 consent decree.

Also in Chicago

Mayor Brandon Johnson called for criminal charges Tuesday against federal agents who violate a new executive order banning them from using city land to carry out their deportation operations.

Gov. JB Pritzker on Tuesday accused Trump of wanting to send troops into Chicago and Portland because he is mentally impaired.

“This is a man who’s suffering dementia,” Pritzker said in a telephone interview with the Chicago Tribune. “This is a man who has something stuck in his head. He can’t get it out of his head. He doesn’t read. He doesn’t know anything that’s up to date. It’s just something in the recesses of his brain that is effectuating to have him call out these cities.”

Trump responded on Wednesday by calling for Johnson and Pritzker to be jailed for their resistance.

The New York Times (gift link) published an article on acts of resistance in Chicago:

At elementary schools on the West Side, parents have organized to stand guard at dismissal time. Some construction businesses are keeping their warehouse doors open to keep an eye out for ICE agents. Owners of small businesses are doing their own deliveries, to protect their Latino employees from driving through the city streets.

And here’s an inspirational video showing Chicago residents running off immigration agents trying to abduct a man.

Meanwhile in Portland

A federal judge temporarily blocked the Trump administration from deploying any National Guard in Portland. Karin Immergut, a Trump appointee, wrote that “this is a nation of Constitutional law, not martial law.” She also refuted Trump’s assertion that troops were needed in Portland because it is “war-ravaged.” “The President’s determination was simply untethered to the facts,” she wrote.

The ICE facility in Portland that has been the center of non-war-like protests was the site on Tuesday night of an inflatables dance party.

And social media captured a Portland police officer threatening ICE agents with arrest if they drove into a crowd of protesters.

Pope Speaks Up for Immigrants

Reuters reports:

Pope Leo told U.S. bishops visiting him at the Vatican on Wednesday that they should firmly address how immigrants are being treated by President Donald Trump’s hardline policies, attendees said, in the latest push by the pontiff on the issue.

Leo, the first U.S. pope, was handed dozens of letters from immigrants describing their fears of deportation under the Trump administration’s policies during the meeting, which included bishops and social workers from the U.S.-Mexico border.

The pope also expressed support for the resistance, meeting privately “with a group of about 100 American Catholics involved in ministry with migrants on Tuesday evening, thanking them for their work.”

What’s Italy Got That We Don’t?

The Associated Press reports:

More than 2 million people across Italy rallied in over 100 cities Friday for a one-day general strike to support the residents of Gaza and a humanitarian aid mission, Italy’s largest union said.

Italian unions proclaimed the strike after the Global Sumud Flotilla that was trying to break Israel’s naval blockade to deliver aid to Gaza was intercepted by Israeli naval forces Wednesday night. Protests and demonstrations have sprung up all over Europe and globally since then, but they have been particularly strong in Italy.

So why can’t we call a general strike here, for democracy?

Other Lawsuits

• A federal judge blocked a new ICE policy to automatically lock up unaccompanied migrant children in adult detention centers on their 18th birthday when they “age out” of shelter care.

• The American Federation of Government Employees filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration for altering out-of-office emails of furloughed Education Department employees to blame Democratic senators for the ongoing shutdown.

What Next?

• Johns Hopkins professor Henry J. Farrell writes that “Trump will fail in remaking American politics if people and institutions coordinate against him, which is why his administration is targeting businesses, nonprofits and the rest of civil society, proposing corrupting bargains to those who acquiesce and punishing holdouts to terrify the rest into submission.”

• Clara Jeffery, the editor-in-chief of Mother Jones, calls for the “soft succession” of blue states that could become “the proving ground of a new confederacy.”

• Author and lawyer Thomas Geoghegan calls for a blue-state compact – “an embryonic constitutional convention… to put forward a prototype for a new type of American government, for a post-Trump country, that carries forward part of the existing institutional framework that is worth preserving, alongside radical change in response to Trump.”

Don’t Forget!

There will be No Kings events all over the country (and the world) on October 18.