The NPR Politics Podcast - Hundreds Of Immigrants Arrested In Chicago Lack Criminal Records

Episode Date: November 19, 2025

A look at more than 600 immigrants arrested since the Trump administration began amped up immigration enforcement efforts in Chicago finds almost none have convictions. We discuss what enforcement tactics looked like on the ground and what to expect as enforcement ramps up in Charlotte, North Carolina.This episode: voting correspondent Miles Parks, immigration correspondent Sergio Martínez-Beltrán, and senior national political correspondent Mara Liasson.This podcast was produced by Casey Morell and Bria Suggs, and edited by Rachel Baye.Our executive producer is Muthoni Muturi.Listen to every episode of the NPR Politics Podcast sponsor-free, unlock access to bonus episodes with more from the NPR Politics team, and support public media when you sign up for The NPR Politics Podcast+ at plus.npr.org/politics.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Hi, this is Josh from Richmond, Virginia. I'm not in any exotic locations. I'm not about to engage in any feats of athletic endurance. I'm not proposing to anyone. And I'm not standing on the precipice of any major life events. I'm just an ordinary guy about the drive home from work listening to the NPR Politics Podcast. And we are glad you are. This podcast was recorded at 1.37 p.m. on Wednesday, November 19th, 2025. Things may have changed by the time you hear. hear it. Here's the show. Josh, you're still special. You're special to us. Hey there. It's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Miles Parks. I cover voting. I'm Mara Liason, senior national political correspondent. An NPR immigration correspondent, Serio Martinez Beltran, is also here. Hi, Serio. Hey, y'all. Thanks for being here as always. And today on the show, we're talking about the Trump administration's recent immigration enforcement efforts.

Sergio, you have been spending some time reporting in Chicago. Tell us a little bit about what's been going on there. Yeah, you know, Miles, the tactics we saw federal agents use in Chicago, we haven't seen it anywhere else. I mean, federal agents with ICE and Border Patrol arrested people on the streets, they chase them down into businesses. There's one particular enforcement operation that we covered that I believe is emblematic of the Trump administration's harsh tactics. In September, in the South Shore neighborhood in Chicago, immigration agents raided a residential building, and it was like a movie.

A Border Patrol Black Hawk helicopter hovered over the building, heavily armed and mass agents rappeled down from it, and they busted the doors of many residents. More than 30 people were arrested that day. Only two, according to the H.S., had ties to criminal gangs. And even U.S. citizens, including at least one Air Force veteran, were handcuffed and detained for hours. And of course, the Trump administration, as it has done in the past, took this and other opportunities in Chicago to create made-for-TV moments, right?

They published a video on social media showing agents arresting people with dramatic footage and music in the background, you know, a show of force pretty much. Well, you alluded there to these arrests and what we know about whether people did or didn't have criminal records. Can you talk more broadly about what we know about the numbers in Chicago in terms of what we know. whether these people really were the sort of worst of the worst that the Trump administration talks so much about. Yeah, you know, Operation Midway Blitz was launched in September. According to a DHS spokesperson, more than 5,000 undocumented immigrants have been arrested.

Now, it's important to note that DHS has not provided any arrest data to back that claim. But last week, we were able to confirm with data from the Trump administration that hundreds of people arrested have no criminal record. The Justice Department submitted a list as part of an ongoing lawsuit that contains 614 names of immigrants arrested during Operation Midway Blitz and whose arrest may have violated a federal consent decree. Now, Miles, only 16 or 2.6% have a criminal record. Of that number, four half convictions, 12 were just arrested, and none of the arrests or convictions have to do with murder or rape.

And I say this because the Trump administration has said over and over that they're taking from the street, the worst of the worst, including rapists and murderers. But these numbers clearly contradict that narrative. 97% of the people in the list do not have a criminal record. Again, we don't know much about the 5,000 people arrested that big number because the administration has not provided that data. But we have this list, this sample of 614 people. And again, the only reason we know about them is because of this ongoing lawsuit in Chicago

and because we and PR were able to get a whole. of the list, because without that list, we would have been left with just the claims from the administration and no other evidence. Serio, do we have any information about how many U.S. citizens have been detained? I mean, that's a great question, Mara, because, you know, if you ask Homeland Security Secretary Christine Oem, she'd said that there's no American citizens who have been arrested or detained, but our own reporting and others show that that's just not true. We have talked to citizens who have been arrested and briefly detained in many of these operations. And even last month, ProPublica reported of at least 170 U.S. citizens who have been detained or arrested. So

there is people who are being arrested, even though the administration is saying that's not true. I mean, Mara, what does the administration say to this? Have they responded at all to this contradiction of, you know, they say that they're arresting these violent criminals? And yet, it sounds like the numbers are just showing otherwise. Yes, but it's almost as if violent criminals is in the eye of the beholder. I mean, the Trump administration says it's getting rid of people who are here illegally. Yes, in the beginning, it said that it would be deporting, it would be prioritizing removing violent criminals. That's clearly not what's happened. But what's interesting about that is that the public's opinion of Trump's immigration policies

will depend on whether they are narrowly focused on deporting criminals. On that, the public is very supportive. But overall, the public really has soured on Trump's immigration policies. Well, and that kind of gets to this point of like it's going to continue to be very important to kind of keep finding out about how this immigration enforcement is happening because Serio, it sounds like there's not been a lot of transparency from the federal government. How are you and other reporters, I guess, getting to the bottom of what is actually going on here? Yeah, I mean, we are working our sources. You know, we continue talking to people who provide us with information.

I think we talk about data often, right? But I think being on the ground is so important, right? When we were in Chicago, we were able to talk to so many people who were telling us these details of how they witnessed or experienced themselves, these enforcement operations. So we're doing that. And, of course, we continue to press the administration asking for numbers. I think it's important that, you know, when the administration say that 5,000 people have been arrested in Chicago, I think many.

folks want to know who are these people, right? Because if the administration says that they're keeping Chicago safe or making it safer by taking these people out, I think there is this public interest of who they are and why they were arrested and how dangerous they were. And the administration is not giving us that. Well, and then recently there were raids also in Charlotte, North Carolina. Can you tell us a little bit about what's going on there? Yeah. So over the weekend, DHS launched what they call Operation Charlotte's Web. And the big similarity here is that border patrol agents are having a significant presence in Charlotte. And that's exactly what happened in Chicago, too. And they're being led by Greg Bovino, who is a border patrol

commander, who was also the leading agent in Chicago. Now, that is unusual, right? It's usually ICE, immigration and customs enforcement, who does a lot of the interior enforcement. So having border patrol agents in Chicago and in other parts of the country conducting these types of operations, it's a departure from previous administration's enforcement approaches. And it's important to note here that, you know, Bovino has been the one shaping how to conduct this major enforcement operations in the city. It hasn't been ICE leaders as much. And we know these efforts are already scaring immigrants, those with legal status and those

undocumented. There are reports already miles that about 30,000 students were reported absent from the Charlotte Mecklenburg schools on Monday. I mean, you mentioned, Sergio, this idea that these raids often come with the production value, that there is like a made-for-TV movie or something in some of these cases. Marr, I wonder how much that plays into this in terms of how the Trump administration is picking even where to do their immigration enforcement efforts, specifically in kind of democratic-controlled places.

Sure. And Trump has been very explicit about this. He said he was going to go after blue states and blue cities. And that's true. Chicago is a blue city in a blue state. And Charlotte is a blue city in a what we think is a red state, sometimes acting a little purplish. But he's been pretty clear that that's what he wanted to do. In terms of making the movies, I mean, that's to send a message to his base that he is fulfilling his campaign promise to crack down on immigration and have the biggest mass deportation program in American history. Also sending the message to other immigrants that they should self-deport. They've been pretty clear about that. And then you have Democratic governors like J.B. Pritzker, who is the governor of Illinois, who's been saying over and over again, every chance he gets to say that the political goal of this immigration crackdown is to normalize the idea of having federal agents in the streets in Chicago so that around election time they will be posted near or in polling places to intimidate minority voters from coming to the polls. Yeah, I mean, I've been talking to voting officials recently who say, like, six months ago, that would have been something that they would have kind of shrugged off as crazy talk, but now it's kind of impossible to not see that as at least realistic. Let's take a quick break and more on all of this in just a moment.

On Wait Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me, famous actors remember their days of obscurity, like when Pedro Pascal remembered the stress of being a waiter. The logistical labor of meeting everyone's needs and the right man. or the, you know, the act one, the water, act through the drink. Listen to Wait, Wade, and the NPR app or wherever you get your podcast. And we're back. We've been talking about the Trump administration's immigration enforcement efforts in Chicago and then more recently in Charlotte, North Carolina. And Sergio, I want to take a little bit of a bigger picture look at all this.

How many people has the administration deported so far this year in total? So DHS says more than 500,000 people have been deported since January, but that figure seems to be inaccurate. Without a doubt, the pace of deportations has clearly increased by a lot under Trump, but DHS refuses to provide any evidence or additional information on how it got to that number. And data obtained by the deportation data project at UC Berkeley and UCLA showed that through June, the administration was conducting, give or take, 7,500 removals a week. When you do the math, I'm not a mathematician, I'm a journalist, but when you do the math, that's not enough people to get to that 500,000 number.

There are about to be 10,000 new ICE and Border Enforcement Officers on the streets. The one big, beautiful bill, gave immigration enforcement probably the biggest boost in funding of any government agency. Are they on the streets yet? And what do you expect to happen when that many new officers are deployed. DHS continues to hire and they continue to train these new hires. So I think the expectation is that they might start hitting the streets next month.

But certainly, once they hit the street, I think we're going to see a surge of federal agents in other cities potentially. But right now, I think that's why we're seeing so many border patrol agents in the interior conducting this enforcement operations. Well, and it's important to note that, you know, these sorts of operations don't just impact the people who are arrested in them, they are felt community-wide. Serio, what can you tell us a little bit about how the communities in these places have been affected?

Immigrant communities are terrified. They really are rethinking every step they make, right? Should they go to work? Should they take a different route? Should they send kids to school? Our conversations with many immigrants show they just don't feel safe anywhere in the U.S. And I'm not only talking about undocumented folks. I'm also talking about those with green cards or visas, those who have a legal status.

They're scared because we've seen the Trump administration arresting folks with legal status as well. Now, in terms of non-immigrant communities and citizens, many of them have decided to push back. They're protesting. They're also creating volunteer groups to patrol the streets and alert communities of the presence of ICE and border patrol. And they're documenting the arrests. They're taking videos and sharing them on social media and with immigrant rights groups to help. identify the agents, the immigrants, and eventually challenged their detention. I mean, Mara, do you think that this, kind of what we're seeing right now, is what people

who voted for President Trump in 2024 were imagining? I mean, the people who voted for him, are they happy with what they're seeing? I think that some of them are, for sure. Some of them are against immigration in general. But what I think is so interesting, this was one of Trump's core promises, mass deportation. And even though recently, he's been talking about why it's important to have more H-1B visas, and that is a subject for another podcast. For the moment, his immigration policies overall are unpopular, and that was a surprise. They were unpopular across the board, mostly because Democrats and independents don't like them. But the one part of his immigration policies that were popular was deporting criminals.

And he has gone so far beyond that that I think that that's one of the reasons why overall immigration is no longer a positive for him. except for among his very core base. Do you think that matters, Sergio, in terms of how the administration plans the next year of immigration enforcement? I think it does. But I think the Trump administration at the end of the day, in a way, is delivering in their promise that they were going to deport undocumented immigrants. Right.

They said the worst of the worst. But in order to hit that number that the administration initially promised of a million deportations a year, you really have to take a lot of people out, right? You really have to go for the criminals, but also for those who don't have a criminal record. It's the only way to hit that number, especially, right, what we're seeing right now. They're not unpaced to even hit 500,000 at this point. So, I mean, I think it's something they're definitely thinking about. Yeah, and I think that the president has always followed a base-first political policy and communications policy. His core base wants him to deport people.

And he is very, very tuned in to them. And I think he's going to continue to do this. This is a core belief for some of the top officials in the White House, Stephen Miller, for instance. I mean, I do wonder what kind of tale these sort of policies are going to have in the future, even if a future administration changes tact. Sergio, do you see these, you know, really aggressive raids having a long-term impact with how communities kind of deal with immigration enforcement officers? Miles, that's something that some of my sources in law enforcement worry about.

I mean, they worry that these tactics will hamper their relationship with the community and that people will just feel like they can't even trust the local police, right? Because that call could lead to an immigration arrest. I had this conversation with Sarah Saldana, who served as Director of Ice under President Obama. She says the force and the theatrics used in Chicago said, president. She says that when the emphasis is on instilling fear, supposed to making the community safer, neighbors tend to not want to cooperate. And that could lead to more people opposing law enforcement. And that could be dangerous for everybody. The protesters, the

immigrants, law enforcement. And we've also heard concerns about how this could lead to confronts President Trump to invoke the Insurrection Act and go after others. I mean, ending on the politics here, Mara, do you think this is an issue that you expect to come up in the midterm elections? I mean, specifically, are Democrats going to go out of their way to bring this stuff up? I think in some districts, yes, this is a midterm election. It's not a national election. And in some communities where large numbers of Hispanic workers have been either scared enough to stay home and not come to work or deported, it's affected the local community. And yes, I think you'll hear Democrats talk about that.

Will they talk about it as a general national critique of Trump? Probably not. I think affordability, cost of living is going to be much more of an overall unifying message for Democrats in 26. All right. We can leave it there for today. Thank you so much for being here, Sergio. You're welcome. I'm Miles Parks. I cover voting. And I'm Mara Liason, senior national political correspondent. And thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast. Thank you.