Chicago’s South Shore was angry with immigrants. The federal raid changed some minds.
Yvette Moyo knows what it’s like to live in an unwanted place. Her family moved to Chicago’s South Shore neighborhood in 1964, at a time when the influx of black families was facing resistance from the white residents who had long controlled the community. She remembers the strict warnings to avoid whites-only areas, such as the nearby Lake Michigan beach. She remembers when her brother broke his nose in a city park.
And so, last month, when hundreds of masked and armed federal agents stormed an apartment building not far from where she lives, Ms. Moyo felt the weight of history. With a Black Hawk helicopter hovering overhead, agents pulled residents out on a late September night, who included dozens of Venezuelan migrants, but also black American citizens.
“There’s a sense of compassion for people in our area who are experiencing some trauma because people don’t want them there,” she says. “That’s something I definitely understand.”
Why did we write this?
Chicagoans grapple with “Operation Midway Blitz,” an aggressive federal immigration enforcement campaign. A raid on a large apartment in the South Shore, a historically black neighborhood, revealed lingering sympathy and resentment over the city’s support for immigrants.
The raid in Chicago’s South Shore neighborhood, during which federal agents detained 37 immigrants, was the largest and most widespread action yet in what the Trump administration has dubbed “Operation Midway Blitz.” The US Department of Homeland Security launched the campaign in early September to arrest “criminal illegal aliens” in and around Chicago. But the department’s tactics, including using tear gas on protesters, detaining American citizens, and… Fatal shooting An illegal immigrant, he sparked angry protests, legal challenges, and sharp opposition from local political leaders. On Tuesday, a federal judge ordered Gregory Bovino, a senior Border Patrol official leading the immigration crackdown in Chicago, to wear a body camera and file daily incident reports. The order was temporarily stayed on Wednesday by a federal appeals court.
Within South Shore, the majority-Black neighborhood that hugs Lake Michigan, the apartment raid brought into stark relief the mixed and often complex perspectives of immigrants streaming into Chicago beginning in 2022. More than 51,000 “asylum seekers” arrived between 2022 and 2024. according to City, including 30,000 people Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s office says By bus there. The influx overwhelmed Chicago, which struggled to accommodate them. It also angered many black residents, who felt the city was spending precious resources on new arrivals while ignoring unmet needs in their communities, many of whom struggle with poverty, crime and high rates of incarceration. These concerns and others continue to resonate on the South Shore.
Ten months into President Donald Trump’s anti-immigration campaign, polls indicate that A Majority of voters support strong border control and righteous Deportation of people who are in the United States illegally. At the same time, most Americans want to see a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants who abide by the law and live in the country for a long time. And consent is weakensg because of the type of aggressive tactics used to apprehend immigrants on the South Shore and beyond.
“I really sympathize with them,” says South Shore resident Stephanie Stinson, who lives in a block of brick cottages and trees still adorned with faded signs from last spring break. “They have children. They escaped an oppressive situation and now their necks are being trampled on.” She adds: “I support justice and keeping us safe. But I do not support bullying tactics.”
But not everyone feels this way. “They made a lot of noise – music late at night,” says a man who lives across the street from the raid and gives his name only as Mark. He says federal agents “did what they were supposed to do.”
Changes on the South Shore
The raid, which took place in the early morning hours of September 30, was notable not only for its sheer size, involving a helicopter and several federal agents, but also for its location. It happened not in one of Chicago’s well-established Latino neighborhoods, as many of the raids have done, but in a black neighborhood. The South Shore has historically been middle-class (former First Lady Michelle Obama grew up here) but in recent years has struggled with poverty, gangs, shuttered businesses and boarded-up apartment buildings.
Tensions over the influx of migrants to the South Shore arose long before last month’s raid. For more than two years, the city of Chicago has tried to turn the shuttered South Shore High School into a migrant shelter. Residents responded saying they had not been consulted. Many did not want to house a large group of immigrants among them.
“You don’t want it to turn into a hangout,” says Larry Pettway, a forklift driver who lives across the street from the school.
The shelter never opened. But over the following months, immigrants began moving into apartment buildings throughout the South Shore, aided by housing vouchers and other assistance from the city. They registered their children in local schools. They looked for work, bought — and repaired — old cars, and socialized with black residents at local stores and on job sites. They stood in line every Tuesday and Saturday with other low-income residents to receive food at Windsor Park Evangelical Lutheran Church, located just a few blocks from the building that was raided.
The numbers worried some people. The level of support for immigrants from Chicago officials angered even many sympathetic South Shore residents. Chicago ruled $639 million In the “New Arrivals Mission” to resettle asylum seekers between 2022 and 2025.
“People were not happy,” says Joyce Gittens, who runs the food pantry at Windsor Park Church and is an immigrant from Liberia. She sympathizes with immigrants. “The United States is still a nation of immigrants,” she says. But she adds: “We felt that our needs should have been met. We have homeless people living under bridges, on vacant lots.”
“It’s unfortunate that people tend to pit against each other for resources,” says Ms. Moyo, founder of Real Men Charities, Inc., and a prominent South Shore figure. “It’s true that black people need more resources, and that people looking for a better life and being delivered to our doorstep need compassion.” “We can do both at the same time,” she says.
Dimitri Lewis is a young carpenter on the South Shore. He began working jobs with immigrants early, communicating through hand gestures and mobile phone translation apps.
“They did nothing wrong at all,” he says. “There was never a time when they tried to bully us.” He feels a sense of commonality with immigrants. “Their battle is deportation,” he says. “Our fight is injustice”
Some residents see an echo of their families’ journeys to Chicago in search of a better life. “Because my family immigrated from the South to the North after World War II, I understand the whole concept,” says Arlivia Williamson, a volunteer at Windsor Park Church. “Everyone came from somewhere else.”
Meanwhile, the scale of last month’s raid, the military’s show of force, and the intensification of aggressive tactics throughout the Chicago area have brought to mind some of the darkest moments in the Black American experience.
“We’re descended from people who had to deal with the Ku Klux Klan and arson and lynching,” says state Sen. Robert Peters, whose district includes the South Shore. “We will never be OK with masked government agents kidnapping people.”
In fact, it wasn’t just the echoes of their history that troubled some of the South Shore’s black residents. The raids caused many to worry about their future.
“I think a lot of people feel as though it’s going to get worse, and that this is just a prelude to what they’re going to do to African Americans,” Ms. Williamson says. “When they’re done with the immigrants, they’ll go after African Americans. It’s part of the ‘Make America White Again’ program.”
Stress about jobs and society
When immigrants first started moving into the large building at 7500 South Shore Drive early this year, many neighbors weren’t happy about it, says James Warren, who runs an apartment complex on the same street. “They felt that Venezuelans would take the jobs and take over society,” he says.
But it didn’t work out that way. “It’s not as bad as we thought,” he says. “I even gave some of them a job cleaning things. They didn’t bother anyone. They just wanted to work.”
However, there was a lot of trouble. A nearby beach became a hot spot on the weekend, with loud music and occasional violence, as local gang members confronted the new arrivals. “It was chaos,” says Mr. Warren, whose apartment complex is next to the beach. Meanwhile, the drug trade in the building, which had been a problem long before the immigrants arrived, continued, he says, with some immigrants involved. A Venezuelan man was shot dead in the building in June.
“They’re not fully integrated into the community,” says Charles Szymanski, a South Shore resident who lives a block away. “They were the loudest group in the neighborhood.”
However, he says the raid disturbed him. “You can sit and read about things and look at pictures, and you get used to it, because it’s there. And when you see it happening firsthand, suddenly it hits you. These are real people. This is a real situation. Migrants [aggravated] me the past two summers. “But I don’t think anyone wanted this to happen.”
Mr. Warren says the raid was “more like an insurrection than an arrest.” He was particularly offended when he saw the children being dragged from the building. “They were crying,” he says. “They were traumatized. They were screaming for their parents.”
A view from inside the apartment raid
Tennell Lewis lives on the third floor of the building at 7500 South Shore Drive. She remembers how empty and abandoned the building was before the immigrants arrived, with rats, trash and strangers wandering through. The new residents have made the building “lively.” She did not establish friendship with any of them, but rather received them in the halls and in the elevator. She tried to help and answer their questions as best she could. He reassured her that the building had many residents. There weren’t many strangers around.
Although the situation was far from perfect, most of the immigrants were “good people,” she said.
“I have a good feel for people. I didn’t feel any hard feelings with most of them. … Some of the guys seemed like other guys in the neighborhood. I didn’t feel any more threatened by them than the other guys here.”
On September 30, she was awakened by the sound of a grenade across the hall. Agents opened her door and demanded to know who was living there. Ms. Lewis uses a wheelchair, and they did not force her outside, as they did to many others. But she thought the raid was wrong. It took her neighbors.
“They’re already here,” she says. “They are human beings.”