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US immigration authorities began making arrests in Chicago on Sunday targeting undocumented residents living in the “sanctuary city”.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement confirmed on social media site X that its agents, along with several federal agencies including the FBI, began operations in the Midwestern city. Border tsar Tom Homan was in Chicago for the raid, as was acting deputy attorney-general Emil Bove.

The operation targeted about 270 “known criminals,” according to television personality Phil McGraw, who joined ICE officers and agents at their Chicago command center and livestreamed events for his Merit channel. TV.

Donald Trump did immigration the central issue of his campaign, promising “mass deportations”. Chicago has been under lockdown for more than a week after news outlets reported the administration’s plans for the raids, with fewer people venturing out into heavily immigrant neighborhoods.

Less than a fifth of metro Chicago’s population was born outside the US, according to the US Census, a group that includes people with immigration statuses ranging from naturalized citizens to the undocumented. Mexicans make up the largest group born outside the US, followed by people from India and Poland.

About 52,000 immigrants have arrived in the city since August 2022, when Texas governor Greg Abbott began busy people from the border to Chicago, among other Democrat-controlled cities.

As a sanctuary city since the 1980s, Chicago adopted policies that limit cooperation with federal authorities to enforce immigration law.

The City Council voted this month to reject a proposal that would have weakened the protections, and the Chicago Transit Authority has displayed ads in train and bus stations directing riders to the city’s “Know Your Rights” website. , which outlines how to interact. immigration authorities.

Homan has spoken out in recent months about “collateral” arrests, detaining undocumented people when they are in the presence of someone for whom ICE has an arrest warrant. That would violate a 2022 court settlement and make residents of some states jailed for such arrests without a warrant eligible for immediate release from custody.

On Sunday, Homan agreed when McGraw, also known as “Dr Phil”, suggested that the collateral arrests were the result of local authorities refusing to cooperate with ICE, prompting agents federal to make arrests in city neighborhoods.

“That’s the game they want to play, game, we’re going to do it,” Homan said.

Immigration advocates fear that the executive orders issued by Trump last week constitute a sweeping attempt to dismantle due process protections.

Expedited removal, which is deporting people without a judicial hearing or legal counsel, usually applies to people detained within 100 miles of the US border.

Trump is trying to expand it nationwide for anyone who cannot prove to the satisfaction of an ICE agent that they have lived in the US for at least two years.

Mary Meg McCarthy, executive director of the Chicago-based National Immigrant Justice Center, said many of the orders violate US law and the constitution.

Trump’s rhetoric of “familiar brutality and dehumanization . . . now paired with the full force of the executive branch and Congress, will unleash deep suffering on our longtime immigrant neighbors and people who have recently arrived to seek refuge”, he said.