Overnight on Tuesday, Sept. 30, federal agents from different agencies raided an apartment building on the South Side of Chicago, the nation’s third-largest city by population. Armed federal agents in military fatigues busted down doors, pulling men, women and children — some of them allegedly naked — from their apartments, residents and witnesses told the Chicago Sun-Times.

A spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security said agents with Border Patrol, the FBI and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives arrested 37 people without legal immigration status, including some with criminal records. The spokesperson claimed the South Shore neighborhood is “a location known to be frequented by Tren de Aragua members and their associates.”

“Due to the size of this operation, DHS law enforcement is continuing to gather more information on those arrested and will provide more information when available,” the spokesperson said. “Federal law enforcement officers will not stand by and allow criminal activity flourish in our American neighborhoods.”

  • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.worldOP
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    8 hours ago

    Can’t get these fuckers to go after real crime

    Targeting the South Side of Chicago is deliberate, precisely because its the place where all the “criminals” live. This is part of the meta-narrative of all big cities being these festering hives of violence and robbery. It’s the same justification Israelis have used to purge Gaza and the West Bank. Hell, its the justification the Rapid Support Forces in Sudan, the Hinduvistas invading Kashmir, and the GRU along the Russian border have been using.

    • sadfitzy@ttrpg.network
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      3 hours ago

      To be fair, parts of Chicago have major problems with crime and gang culture.

      We really shouldn’t pretend that gangbangers haven’t earned at least some of the criticism directed towards them.

      • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.worldOP
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        3 hours ago

        To be fair, parts of Chicago have major problems with crime and gang culture.

        That’s been the historical line. But even the more violent parts of Chicago are only violent by volume. Per capita, they’re at or below the national average.

        Chicago’s also got a problem of over-policing, particularly in the wake of the 90s “Tough on Crime” bloating of the CPD staff and budget. More cops with a mandate to catch criminals will find more people to arrest for crimes. Even as crime rates fall, the per-capita population of cops only ever seems to rise. Because cops aren’t equipped to treat the causes of crime, only to suppress the symptoms, you end up with neighborhoods where people are too terrified of the cops to leave their homes.

        That’s before you get into Police Gangs (an epidemic in the LAPD and LASD and certainly not unknown in Chicago). White nationalists love to join the police, the sheriff’s department, and the various FBI/National Guard/ICE/DEA whenever they can sneak in. And police are useful intermediaries for cartels and other criminal enterprises (and white collar rackets - debt collectors, unscrupulous landlords, insurance fraudsters) because they protect one another from indictment and prosecution.

        “Crime” and “Gang Culture” tend to be code words for “Black people trying to work together to make a living”. By contrast, a police helicopter bombing of an apartment block or a series of BLM activists burned alive in their own cars, is totally under reported.

        If MLK was alive today, the police would have tagged him as a gang member by now.