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Feds launch second immigration enforcement operation in Illinois, led by border official who oversaw L.A. raids

The Trump administration has launched a second immigration enforcement operation in the Chicago area, with a new U.S. Customs and Border Protection sweep that began on Tuesday.

The dual operations are similar, but each with their own mission and their own personnel, neither of which includes local police agencies or federal troops.

Both efforts involve federal agents arresting criminal and non-criminal immigrants in deportation sweeps.

The immigration sweeps are both statewide efforts, not merely focused on Chicago and the suburbs.

The first, a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement initiative dubbed "Operation Midway Blitz," began earlier this month.

The new initiative, dubbed "Operation At Large" was announced Tuesday on social media by Gregory Bovino, the U.S. Customs and Border Protection official who led controversial immigration enforcement raids in southern California this summer.

U.S. Rep. Lauren Underwood (D-IL) – whose 14th Congressional District includes several western and southwestern suburbs, including Aurora, Joliet, Naperville, and DeKalb – was briefed about "Operation Midway Blitz" on Monday by ICE leaders who shared precisely who they are looking for.

"Anyone who has been arrested and booked, charged, or convicted, and then released by local law enforcement and is not a lawfully present U.S. person is eligible for their enforcement operation," she said. "So far they have told me that 250 people have been arrested."

Anyone found in the U.S. illegally – even non-criminals – can be taken in.

Newly deputized agents on loan from other federal agencies are being used for Midway Blitz.

"Officials from the Department of Justice; to include U.S. Marshals, DEA agents – Drug Enforcement Agency agents – and ATF," Underwood said.

Midway Blitz will not include raids of Home Depots and car washes. When will it end?

"They would not give me a termination date, and said that the director of ICE would be notified by the Trump administration," Underwood said.

The second immigration sweep, "Operation At Large," started on Tuesday, according to CBS News sources, and is being led by Bovino, who headed the border patrol's effort to target immigration in Los Angeles this summer.

The new operation differs from Midway Blitz in that it will look more like the LA effort, with more indiscriminate raids, sources said. Bovino's team has a history of targeting Home Depots and car washes.

Notably, neither effort is using the National Guard, as they have not been mobilized in Illinois.

Nonetheless, it leaves Underwood's constituents unsettled.

"They're scared that this is going to come to their block, their cul-de-sac, then a knock on their door," Underwood said.

Underwood says those being arrested are being taken to Wisconsin and Indiana for holding as their cases get sorted out. 

ICE officials insisted to Underwood that they don't pursue people – meaning, if the target does not make themselves immediately available to detainment, ICE won't engage in a high-speed chase.

She said that flies in the face of what's actually happened on the ground, pointing to the fatal shooting in Franklin Park last week, when an ICE agent shot a man during an arrest, after he allegedly drove at agents, and dragged one of them with his car.

While neither immigration enforcement operation in Illinois is relying on National Guard troops, President Trump on Tuesday renewed his threat to send troops to Chicago to fight crime.

"If they lose less than six or seven people a week with murder, they're doing a great job in their opinion. Chicago is a death trap, and I'm going to make it just like I did with D.C., just like I'll do with Memphis," he said.

Gov. Pritzker responded to the president on Tuesday morning, saying, "you can't take anything that he says seriously," noting Mr. Trump has repeatedly reversed course on possible plans to deploy the National Guard in Chicago.

 "When he said that he wasn't coming to Chicago, I didn't trust that. When he says he is coming to Chicago, it's hard to believe anything he says," Pritzker said.

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