A procurement document issued by Immigration and Customs Enforcement has inadvertently revealed how long agents could be deployed to Chicago in the next phase of Donald Trump’s federal takeover in Democratic-led cities.
The Office of Acquisition Management filing, dated Sept. 5, is a justification for a sole-source contract awarded to Stahla Services, a Nebraska-based provider of “portable lavatory and laundry trailers.”
Issued “for urgent use for operations in the Chicago area”, the requisition order indicates the White House is planning for a stay of a month or more as part of ICE’s imminent sweep of the Windy City.
In requesting more temporary toilets at the Naval Station Great Lakes where agents will be headquartered, the office lets slip that ICE does not currently have sufficient bathroom access to support its forces arriving at the base.
“The naval station facilities currently available cannot accommodate the influx of personnel required for enforcement removals operations,” the document admits.
More significantly, it also states, “The period of performance is 28 days and does not include any optional periods,” suggesting federal agents will be active in the area for four weeks.
The Independent has reached out to ICE for more information about the operation, its timeframe and its goals.
Having already clashed with the Democratic leadership of California and D.C. this summer by sending in the National Guard to support local law enforcement contrary to their wishes, President Trump has talked about staging further federal interventions in blue cities to tackle urban crime, which he insists is out of control.
Trump faced fresh criticism from Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey over the weekend after ICE’s agents returned to Boston for “Operation Patriot 2.0.”
Healey dismissed the prospect of more raids in search of undocumented migrants as “political theater,” a “political power grab” and “an attempt to intimidate,” although the Department of Homeland Security has insisted the action is necessary after it made 1,500 arrests in May.
ICE’s operation in Chicago looks likely to be even less warmly received, with city mayor Brandon Johnson and Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker both speaking out angrily against the prospect in advance.
Mayor Johnson said at a Labor Day rally last Monday: “This is the city that will defend the country. We’re going to defend our democracy… we’re going to protect the humanity of every single person in the city of Chicago.”
A day later, Gov. Pritzker told a press conference: “I’m aware that the President of the United States likes to go on television and beg me to call and ask him for troops. I find this extraordinarily strange as Chicago does not want troops on our streets.”
Pritzker also accused ICE of “terrorizing” people and claimed: “They don’t actually care if you’re here and undocumented, they just care if your skin color is a little off of theirs, and if you’re Latino, they’re just going to target you.”
Then, on Saturday, Trump himself poured gasoline on the tensions by posting an AI-generated meme of himself as Lt. Col. Kilgore (Robert Duvall) from Francis Ford Coppola’s Vietnam War movie Apocalypse Now (1979) with the catchphrase: “I love the smell of deportations in the morning…”
He was subsequently asked whether he intended to go to war with Chicago and answered: “We’re not going to war. We’re going to clean up our cities. We’re going to clear them up so they don’t kill every five people every weekend. That’s not war. That’s common sense.”
When it was put to him by a reporter that he was targeting Democrat-run Boston and Chicago rather than Republican-run cities with higher crime rates like Memphis and St Louis, he replied: “Do you know how many people were killed in Chicago last weekend? Eight. Do you know how many were killed in Chicago the week before? Seven.
“Do you know how many people were wounded? Seventy-four people were wounded. You think there’s worse than that? I don’t think so.”
Details on the Chicago sweep remain scarce but Trump’s border czar Tom Homan told CNN’s State of the Union on Sunday that will it will commence this week.
