In Chicago, Mexican Independence Day celebrations shadowed by Trump’s threats

CHICAGO — President Trump’s plan to dispatch National Guard troops and immigration agents into Chicago has put many Latino residents on edge, prompting some to carry their U.S. passports and giving others pause about openly celebrating the upcoming Mexican Independence Day.

Though the holiday falls on Sept. 16, celebrations in Chicago span more than a week and draw hundreds of thousands of participants. Festivities kicked off with a Saturday parade through the heavily Mexican Pilsen neighborhood and will continue with car caravans and lively street parties.

But this year, the typically joyful period coincides with Trump’s threats to add Chicago to the list of Democratic-led cities he has targeted for expanded federal enforcement.

His administration has said it will step up immigration enforcement in Chicago, as it did in Los Angeles, and would deploy National Guard troops. In addition to sending troops to Los Angeles in June, Trump deployed them last month in Washington, D.C., as part of his unprecedented law enforcement takeover of the nation’s capital.

Trump posted an illustration of himself on his social media site Saturday as the Robert Duvall character in “Apocalypse Now” — the war-loving Lt. Col. Bill Kilgore — against a Chicago-skyline ablaze with flames and helicopters.

“Chicago about to find out why it’s called the Department of WAR,” he posted, along with “I love the smell of deportations in the morning,” referencing a famous Kilgore line from the 1979 Vietnam War film. Trump has ordered the Defense Department to be renamed the Department of War.

“The President of the United States is threatening to go to war with an American city,” Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker wrote on the social platform X. “Illinois won’t be intimidated by a wannabe dictator.”

Although details about the promised Chicago operation have been sparse, there’s already widespread opposition as protesters marched through downtown Saturday evening. State and city leaders have said they plan to sue the Trump administration.

Debate over postponing festivities

The extended Mexican Independence Day celebrations reflect the size and vitality of Chicago’s Mexican American community. Mexicans make up more than one-fifth of the city’s population and about 74% of its Latino residents, according to 2022 U.S. census estimates. Most of Chicago’s nearly 3 million people are Black or Latino.

Parade and festival organizers have been divided over whether to move forward with precautions or postpone, in hopes that it will feel safer for many participants to have a true celebration in several months’ time. El Grito Chicago, a downtown Mexican Independence Day festival set for next weekend, was postponed this week by organizers to protect people.

“But also we just refuse to let our festival be a pawn in this political game,” said Germán González, an organizer of El Grito Chicago.

In Pilsen and Little Village, two of the city’s best-known neighborhoods, with restaurants, businesses and cultural ties to Mexican culture, residents expressed disappointment that the potential federal intervention instilled such fear and anxiety in the community at a time usually characterized by joy, togetherness and celebration of Mexican American heritage.

Celebrating, with precautions

Saturday morning, some paradegoers grabbed free, bright-orange whistles and fliers from volunteers standing outside the Lozano branch of the Chicago Public Library. “Blow the whistle on ICE!” the fliers read, encouraging a nonviolent tactic to raise alarm if they saw agents.

Marchers held up cardboard signs painted with monarch butterflies, the migratory species that travels between the U.S. and Mexico. Many cheered, “Viva Mexico!”

Drivers of vintage cars honked their horns and a drummer kept time for a group of dancers bedecked in feathers. Horseback riders clip-clopped down the street, and one lifted up a large Mexican flag.

Claudia Alvarez, whose 10-year-old daughter was nearby riding a pony, said it’s important that politicians see people out celebrating, though the crowd seemed smaller this year.

“At these hours you should be able to see plenty of people in the streets enjoying themselves, but now there’s not really a lot of people,” she said.

Fabio Fernandez, 39, owner of an art and T-shirt company with a residency at a Pilsen streetwear shop, called it “troubling” and “disheartening” that the possibility of federal intervention has dampened celebrations.

He said there’s a mood of anxiety in the neighborhood, which has translated to lower sales and reduced foot traffic for local businesses such as his.

“Come back to 18th Street. Support small businesses here. They’re still working hard as hell to keep their businesses alive,” he said.

Alejandro Vences, 30, became a U.S. citizen this year, “which gives me some comfort during this time,” he said while eating pozole verde at a Mexican restaurant. Still, he said, the anxiety is palpable.

“For us, our Independence Day has always been a celebration of our culture,” he said. “It’s always been a celebration of who we are. It feels like we don’t get to celebrate our culture in the same way.”

Churches urge calm resistance

On Sunday, churches across Chicago turned up their response from the pulpit. Some worked to quell fears about detention and deportation while others addressed the looming possibility of more law enforcement on the streets of the nation’s third-largest city.

The Rev. Marshall Hatch urged congregants of a prominent Black church on Chicago’s West Side to carry identification, stay connected to family and protest as the city readied for an expected federal intervention.

“You need to start telling people about your whereabouts, so you don’t disappear,” Hatch said during Sunday services at New Mount Pilgrim Missionary Baptist Church. “We’re not going to despair. We’re not going to feel threatened. We’re not going to give up and give in to fascism and authoritarianism.”

Among the church attendees was Lester Burks, a 74-year-old U.S. Army veteran who said a military presence in Chicago would be threatening.

“I don’t want soldiers here,” he said. “They are trained to fight.”

Details on the expected intervention have been sparse, including its focus and when it’s expected to begin. Trump’s top border policy advisor Tom Homan said Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Union” that federal law enforcement action will come to Chicago this week. He also promised more worksite enforcement operations like the massive one at a Hyundai plant in Georgia.

“You can expect action in most sanctuary cities across the country,” he said.

The Trump administration has repeatedly targeted, and unsuccessfully sued, over Chicago’s sanctuary laws, which are among the strongest in the nation. His administration launched a nationwide immigration enforcement operation in the city in January.

There is no official definition for sanctuary policies or sanctuary cities. The terms generally describe limits on local cooperation with Immigration and Customs Enforcement. ICE enforces U.S. immigration laws nationwide but sometimes seeks state and local help.

This time, the Department of Homeland Security plans to use a military base north of the city and has alerted leaders of another suburb that they’ll use a federal immigration processing center there for an operation that will potentially last 45 days. Meanwhile, Trump has said he might send National Guard troops to New Orleans before Chicago.

New Mount Pilgrim is located in the city’s West Garfield Park neighborhood, a largely Black neighborhood that has faced persistent crime and years of disinvestment, including five schools that closed in 2013 as part of the largest mass public closure in U.S. history.

The church has often called for action against street violence even as Chicago’s rates of violent crime have dropped substantially in recent years as part of a national trend. Its large stained glass art installations depict the lives of slaves and memorialize Black people killed by violence. On Sunday, the church celebrated the groundbreaking of a nearby arts and activism center it said was part of the solution.

“We’re not calling for military, we’re calling for resources,” Hatch told congregants. “We know that there is a correlation between resources and violence.”

Elsewhere in the city, other churches worked to remind people of their rights when it comes to interactions with immigration agents, urging them to carry necessary documents.

The feeling of being on edge was familiar to many in Chicago, and the expected operation put a damper on the city’s usually festive Mexican Independence Day celebrations. Church leaders said the January immigration operation in Chicago had a chilling effect on attendance at immigrant-heavy and Latino churches as people stayed home.

Clergy said they were preparing for the same in the weeks ahead.

“It feels like anything can happen at any moment,” said the Rev. Paco Amador of New Life Community Church in the predominantly Mexican Little Village neighborhood. “It would be irresponsible not to talk about this.”

Fernando, Finley, Walling, Raza and Tareen write for the Associated Press. Fernando, Walling and Tareen reported from Chicago, Finley from Norfolk, Va., and Raza from Sioux Falls, S.D. AP writers Morgan Lee in Santa Fe and Cal Woodward in Washington contributed to this report.