An appearance by U.S. Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem at the annual Christmas tree ship ceremony at Navy Pier led one of two downtown protests on Saturday — one targeting immigrant raids and the other the brewing military conflict in Venezuela.
The Navy Pier Christmas ceremony is a tradition in which crew members offload approximately 1,200 trees from the USCGC Mackinaw onto trucks to donate to families in need.
During a brief speech Saturday morning, Noem thanked everyone involved in organizing the event and wanted those in attendance to “recognize that we’re bringing them news of happiness and peace.”
Dozens of protesters gathered more than an hour before Noem spoke, but were moved back to Polk Bros. Park by Chicago police officers before the event began. Although the group had been moved, they could be heard chanting from the other side of the park.
Activist Andy Thayer said Noem “crashed” the ceremony as a publicity stunt. “I think it’s insulting that she came to our city after doing so much destruction, to not just our city’s residents, but also the city itself,” Thayer said. “It’s been a real huge economic hit. We’ve had families separated, we’ve had people losing their jobs because of what she’s done, and she’s got some nerve to show up.”
Beatrix Hoffman, of the Gold Coast neighborhood, went to the protest after seeing a post about Noem coming to Chicago for the Christmas tree ceremony.
“We don’t want her here,” Hoffman said. “I’m sick of this government coming into our city and abducting our neighbors.”
Noem’s Christmastime visit comes after a fall in which thousands of Chicagoans and suburbanites protested, resisted and whistled at federal immigration agents who descended into their neighborhoods.
Without immediate regard for citizenship or legal status, agents under Operation Midway Blitz repeatedly detained people first — sometimes in unmarked vehicles or after chasing them through neighborhoods — and sought information about them later.
In one incident in September, an agent shot and killed a father of two who was from Mexico and had been living in the U.S. for nearly 20 years.
Thousands of arrests resulted from immigration enforcement raids under the administration of President Donald Trump, as he called Chicago a “hellhole” and a legal fight ensued over Trump’s efforts to use the National Guard in enforcement efforts.
In October, Noem criticized the media and politicians, including Gov. JB Pritzker, for “trying to demonize” federal immigration agents and the Trump administration’s enforcement operations.
Earlier that month, she appeared at the Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in west suburban Broadview amid fierce protests there and met with ICE and Border Patrol agents.
“It may seem like right here, when you’re in the middle of this chaos, that you’re not necessarily sure of it, but, boy, the American people are just thrilled to have you and to have you on the job and on the task of restoring and making America safe again,” she said, based on social media posts from a right-wing influencer who was embedded with ICE operations at the time. “We’re not just here, we’re here to stay, and we’re expanding and we’re going to make this city safe again.”
The ICE and Border Patrol arrests and detainments set off a wave of legal activity, some related to the federal agents’ activity itself and some related to ensuing protests, primarily at the Broadview facility.
With some detainees booked multiple times, ICE recorded a total of 1,912 bookings at the two Chicago-area ICE facilities from Sept. 8 to Oct. 15, according to the most recent data available. By mid-October, the arrest rate was roughly double that of early June, the most intense immigration enforcement period prior to Operation Midway Blitz, the Tribune has found.
The administration has said it was targeting the “worst of the worst,” who both lacked legal status to reside in the U.S. and had committed a violent crime; DHS has also previously said it welcomed the arrest of anyone in the U.S. without legal status, whether or not they were law-abiding.
According to recently released federal data, two-thirds of the nearly 1,900 immigrants detained in the first half of the surge had no known criminal convictions or pending charges.
Around noon, a separate rally of about 75 people took place where organizations and Chicagoans spoke out against the war in Venezuela, in front of the Wrigley building on North Michigan Avenue.
This rally was one of many other demonstrations across the country, according to the ANSWER Coalition’s website, one of several organizations that organized the event. ANSWER stands for Act Now To Stop War and End Racism.
The rally comes after multiple U.S. military airstrikes against alleged drug-running boats — the first in September in the Caribbean — reportedly killing over 80 people.
Alithia Zamantakis, an organizer for the coalition, said the same types of injustice regarding immigration in Chicago were happening overseas.
“We are just demanding that the billions of dollars that they are prepared to spend on killing people in Latin America, we use for poor people here in this country,” she said.