Lessons From Trump’s “War” on Chicago
Reveal
The Center for Investigative Reporting and PRX
4.7 • 8.7K Ratings
🗓️ 13 December 2025
⏱️ 57 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Chicago has been one of the latest stops on the Trump administration’s deportation tour. “Operation Midway Blitz” started in September and, for months, Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Border Patrol agents have been roaming the streets and detaining hundreds of people.
This week on Reveal, host Al Letson and producer Ashley Cleek visit Chicago to see “Operation Midway Blitz” in action, and find out what it’s been like for those targeted by it. Letson and Cleek found citizens detained, Chicago police officers pepper-sprayed, and communities terrified. Most Chicagoans arrested by federal agents in the operation had no criminal record, not even a traffic ticket.
Letson and Cleek also see how communities are mobilizing to protect each other, and how some of the tensions over immigration raids stretch back to decisions made by the city back in 2022. They also learn from 404 Media’s Joseph Cox about face-scanning apps used by federal agents in Chicago—and how the use of this kind of surveillance points to a broader shift in how the US government deploys its technologies against people inside the country.
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Transcript
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| 1:21.1 | Thank you. |
| 1:32.5 | From the Center for Investigative Reporting in PRX, this is Reveal. |
| 1:33.5 | I'm Al-Letzen. |
| 1:39.3 | I'm standing on a corner on the southwest side of Chicago. |
| 1:44.6 | It's around 3 p.m. on a Thursday, and it's like any other weekday right about this time. |
| 1:53.4 | School is out. Kids are pouring across the sidewalk, jumping on each other's backs, pointing to my producer Ashley Cleek's microphone. |
| 1:54.6 | It's just a microphone. |
| 1:57.4 | They're hamming it up because they think we have a camera. |
| 2:01.6 | Sorry, kid. Audio only. There's a small playground with a gate where parents are holding hands with their kids |
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