Last night, when my neighbor and I were returning from a Christmas show in the Auditorium Theater, we passed a long row of cardboard boxes that homeless people used to protect themselves from brutal overnight temperature. Nobody was panhandling. They were just trying to survive till morning.
When we got on the L-train, the first thing I saw in the new was this WBEZ article. Full text below.
As cold weather hits Chicago, Trump’s new policies on homelessness criticized
Feds said they plan to shift $3.9 billion from long-term housing to housing that requires work and addiction treatment. More than 7,500 Illinoisans could lose their permanent housing.
For people experiencing homelessness like Ivan Patterson, Monday night’s snow was another reminder to get out of the cold and into a shelter.
“It beats staying under a bridge. It’s too cold to do that,” 52-year-old Patterson said outside the Shelter Placement and Resource Center at 2241 S. Halsted in Pilsen.
The Memphis native said he’s been staying at the shelter for a week even though he holds a job at a nearby Jewel-Osco supermarket.
“I’m trying to get my apartment again, but it’s been tough. It’s too expensive,” Patterson said.
Last month, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development announced plans to shift $3.9 billion in long-term housing funding to transitional housing requiring work and addiction treatment.
Just as temperatures drop and the city digs out from under record snowfall, housing advocates say that the new policies could put people at risk of losing long-term shelter.
“We believe that over 7,500 people in Illinois are at risk of losing their permanent housing,” Christine Haley, chief homeless officer for the Illinois Department of Human Services, said Tuesday.
“The Trump administration is moving away from housing first. We’ve seen that this was on the horizon … in a few different ways,” she said. “Through the president’s executive order to fight crime, it talked about moving away from housing first. It talked about utilizing grants as a way to implement this new piece of really criminalizing homelessness.”
In a statement, HUD said its new policies restore “accountability to homelessness programs and promote self-sufficiency among vulnerable Americans.”
But Haley said the lack of affordable housing is what is driving homelessness.
“That is the true cause of homelessness, our lack of affordable housing, lack of income to be able to afford market-rate rent,” she said.
Mark Ishaug, head of Chicago-based Thresholds, said the change in federal housing policies could force many to the streets, even during cold weather. He said that includes people of color, older adults and people with disabilities, including those with mental illness and substance abuse issues.
“We are already in a housing and homeless crisis in Chicago. If this policy were to go into effect, it would take us from crisis to catastrophe,” Ishaug said. “There are thousands of people living on the streets today. … So if we have a problem now, which we do, and a crisis now, we are moving to catastrophe.”
La Casa Norte clients go over paperwork at the agency’s North Avenue drop-in center in Humboldt Park.
Jonah Storr, associate director of programs for La Casa Norte in Humboldt Park, said it’s been an especially difficult time finding shelter for young people who are homeless.
“We see teenagers or young people who have been kicked out of their homes, or maybe have gone through the foster system and have aged out at 18. People end up here through all sorts of reasons, including young people who are trying to make it on their own,” said Storr, whose agency assists people ages 16 to 24.
Julian Martinez was standing outside the shelter placement center Tuesday afternoon smoking a cigarette. He’s been homeless for three years.
“It’s definitely hard if you ain’t got nobody out here and helping with your family,” Martinez, 23, said.
The father of a 4-year-old daughter, Martinez said he holds down a job as a landscaper, but the $200 a week he makes isn’t enough to pay rent. He’d been staying at the center for nine days.
“I usually sleep outside,” he said.
Kenyatta Mays, 56, who uses a wheelchair, said many people think he’s panhandling when he’s sitting outside the shelter on a smoking break.
Kenyatta Mays, 56, smokes a cigarette outside the Shelter Placement and Resource Center in Pilsen.
“I’m just here to get off the street. It’s too cold,” Mays said.
This is a part of a newsletter from my wealth management company. I was hesitant about sharing this article because the way it is written implies it concerns only very well off people, so I felt like it will be perceived as “rich people problem.” Still, I believe that the issue is rather universal, and that any time someone experience a substantial increase in income, there is a possibility of the “lifestyle creep.” I think, that stories about people who won a lottery and soon found themselves broke, can be attributed to the same effect.
Here is how this article starts:
Lifestyle creep happens when your expenses increase alongside your income. As you earn more, it’s easy to spend more freely, perhaps without much thought. As income increases, it’s only natural to want to improve your lifestyle, and there’s nothing inherently wrong with that, either, up to a point. Without keeping tabs on the cumulative effect of daily financial decisions like business class upgrades or pricey dinners, it’s easy to lose track of how much you’re saving versus spending. After all, as the name suggests, lifestyle creep happens slowly.
For high earners, there’s enough cash coming in that makes it easy to cover just about any upgrade, so the cost can seem small when considering the big picture. But unless you’re tracking your saving and spending, you risk getting used to a lifestyle that you can’t support once you stop working. So the key to enjoying your success now — and maintaining that standard later — is ensuring your savings rate increases at least as much as your additional spending.
I do not want to cite practical calculation examples from this article, because most people do not have that kind of money, but the general idea is that when a person ‘s income increases substantially, they should use not more than half of this increase for “quality of life improvement” (actually, they recommend 30-40%), and the rest should go to increasing the retirement savings. Again, the principle behind it is that people expect to maintain the same lifestyle after retirement as they had before, so they should budget for that.
The final paragraph of the article reads:
You can only spend a dollar once. But there’s also no prize for being the richest person in the graveyard. Being intentional about how you spend and save your money can help you maximize both. So before upgrading to business class, run the numbers to see how all your incremental lifestyle improvements add up relative to your savings.
I think that balancing between these two (“enjoy the day” and “richest person in the graveyard”) is indeed difficult, and I do not think I always make right decisions. But I know since the time I was very poor (and it happened to me more than once during my lifetime) that budgeting is critical, and good budgeting can improve one’s life more than moderate pay increase. Of course, I am not talking about people leaving below the poverty level, and of course, I am not implying that everyone should be happy with what they have. It’s the season of giving, after all.
Well, I really hope I didn’t offend anybody, and I hope that I was able to express my thoughts.
Brothers Sam, 16, left, and Ben Luhmann, 17, patrol the streets of West Chicago and St. Charles for federal agents looking to detain people on Nov. 7, 2025. The two homeschooled high schoolers started patrolling Sept. 15 after federal agents targeted their heavily Latino community. Since then, they have had numerous encounters with federal agents and have been threatened. (Stacey Wescott/Chicago Tribune)
PUBLISHED: November 14, 2025 at 5:00 AM CST | UPDATED: November 14, 2025 at 8:03 AM CST
With a goodbye to their mom, Sam and Ben Luhmann walked out the screen door of their West Chicago home on a recent weekday morning.
A few minutes shy of 7:30 a.m., Ben pulled their midsize sedan out of the garage as Sam stood in the driveway, adjusting the straps around his shoulders and checking his phone.
But the brothers weren’t gunning to beat the first bell at school. They were racing to find ICE.
At 16 and 17 years old, Sam and Ben for the past two months have made it their mission to follow, investigate and capture federal immigration activity across the Chicago area. It’s an undertaking the brothers say happened naturally after growing up in a household where social justice and civic duty were as much a part of their homeschool curriculum as math and science.
“If I get the opportunity to fight like this for the rest of my life, I would be totally OK with that,” Ben said.
Their efforts in the vast resistance movement against the Trump administration’s mass deportation operation in Chicago, represent the wave of youth activists who have been galvanized into action by Midway Operation Blitz, following a long tradition paved around the world by young activists, experts say. From Students of a Democratic Society protesting the Vietnam War to today’s Malala Yousafzai and Greta Thunberg, the sense of injustice draws young people to act.
“We know in these moments … where there is deep distrust toward political institutions — where individuals and particularly young people are feeling quite dissatisfied with both political parties — that young people actually do engage in politics quite passionately,” said Matthew Nelsen, an assistant professor of political science at the University of Miami who also works as a research consultant for the University of Chicago’s GenForward Survey.
Earlier this month, students at New Trier High School in Winnetka who regularly volunteer with refugees and migrants in Chicago spoke out that the school is curtailing their volunteer efforts because of the blitz. In October, hundreds of Little Village students staged a walkout in protest of the crackdown. And on Mexican Independence Day in September, students from all across Chicago Public Schools organized a rally in front of Trump Tower to denounce the raids, their cheers of “Viva la Raza” and “Viva Mexico” echoing through skyscrapers down East Wacker Drive.
“(The youth) hold a lot of power to shift the direction of the country and how it’s working,” said Kate Rice, 52, a Rogers Park-based rapid responder, who has witnessed a number of younger people spring into action. “It’s time for them to take control, especially Generation Alpha. They’re young, they’re motivated, they’re angry … and I think this is the perfect time for them to start getting politically active.”
“Just the horror of it, I wanted to be able to fight it so bad,” he told the Tribune on a recent morning patrol. Sam sat in the passenger seat with a body camera strapped to his chest, his eyes glued to his phone for any reports of activity nearby.
His parents, both Wheaton College grads, have raised him and his seven younger siblings to see the humanity in everyone, Ben said. But from more than 2,000 miles away, he wasn’t sure what he could do. Then the blitz came to his hometown.
Sam Luhmann videotapes the vehicle of federal agents outside of the Kane County Judicial Center on Nov. 7, 2025, in St. Charles. (Stacey Wescott/Chicago Tribune)
On Sept. 15, Ben and Sam’s mom, Audrey Luhmann, got a text from a friend calling for someone to check reports of federal activity in West Chicago. Though she’d never received nor heeded that kind of request before, Luhmann’s gut reaction was that this is what she’s supposed to do, she recalled in an interview earlier this month. So she and her eight kids, even her 3-year-old, piled into their white passenger van.
By the time they arrived, activity had long passed. But that day introduced the family to other rapid responders. Within 48 hours, Ben and Sam encountered their first attempted federal immigration arrest in real time.
“I could finally do something,” Ben said.
Since the raids hit home, Ben and Sam, who have been homeschooled their whole lives, have balanced college applications and schoolwork with patrols. They’ve documented immigration enforcement from Carpentersville to Little Village. They’ve gone toe-to-toe with federal agents, asking officers questions and checking to make sure they’re abiding by court orders. And they’ve started to compile a list of plates on federal vehicles that appeared altered.
Every day is different. Last week, the pair spent a weekday morning primarily just monitoring usual hotspots and letting fellow rapid responders know areas were clear. But by the next day, they were going door-to-door speaking with neighbors about landscapers who had been detained in St. Charles and videotaping federal agents detain a man just outside the Kane County Judicial Center.
Nelsen, the University of Miami professor, said he thinks the uptick in youth political activism in Chicago is indicative of how younger residents are feeling about the current administration’s policies. Young people are also often drawn to extra-systemic forms of political action when they’re feeling cynical about their political institutions, Nelsen said.
“If they’re not feeling trusting of the government, they may be moved to take political action in realms that they feel are beyond the state,” he said.
Citlalli Santiago, 23, is a graduate student at the University of Illinois Chicago who became part of her local rapid response group after the presidential election. She said the raids have taken a toll on her own family but that moments like this illuminate the importance of a community banding together, to stepping in where government falls short. And she’s encouraged, she added, that younger voices are among those rising to the occasion because it’s a sign that progress is possible.
“I’m really proud of my peers (and the) people even younger than me because we’ve stepped up,” said Santiago, who recently moved to Pilsen but was born and raised in West Chicago. “I do think that things need to change, and if it’s younger people driving it, then I see more of a hope for the future.”
This week, the Tribune reported that after two months, the surge of federal immigration agents that descended on the city and its suburbs as part of President Donald Trump’s Operation Midway Blitz may soon leave as the controversial mission winds down, per multiple law enforcement sources. That doesn’t mean the enhanced immigration enforcement will end anytime soon, with sources saying the feds planned to leave in place a still-to-be-determined force of immigration agents.
And as long as that effort persists, even if and when their days of daily patrolling subside, the brothers will too, they say.
Sam Luhmann, 16, left, and his brother Ben,17, second from left, videotape federal agents detaining a man outside of the Kane County Judicial Center on Nov. 7, 2025, in St. Charles. While on patrol, they encountered the vehicles of four landscapers who had been detained earlier that morning as well as documented a man being detained outside of the Kane County Judicial Center after appearing for a routine court hearing. (Stacey Wescott/Chicago Tribune)
When the brothers first began, they thought they’d be patrolling for a week and a half, maybe two. But as operations stretched on, they’ve grown accustomed to being prepared for anything, to watching and waiting.
“It’s been weird getting home, from filming federal agents and being threatened to be arrested by them, and then having to work on college applications,” Ben said.
Ben, a senior this year, wants to go to the Berklee College of Music in Boston. Ben likes to write and produce songs, and he’d like to make a career out of it someday. Sam, a sophomore, prefers to spend his free time outside, whether that’s fishing or going for a bike ride.
But because of the patrols, the brothers have started to learn more about politics, law and policy, so that while they monitor, they know not just what they’re looking for, but why.
Lately, Ben has been delving into Jose Antonio Vargas’ “Dear America: Notes of An Undocumented Citizen.” He was assigned the book by his mom, as part of his homeschool studies.
Homeschooling all but one of her eight children, Audrey Luhmann has always tried to imbue a social justice lens in her lessons.
“Let’s study the forgotten voices, you know,” Luhmann, 40, told the Tribune on a recent afternoon after her sons returned home from another patrol. Around her, the remnants of previous lessons painted her house’s walls, from completed coloring pages of moments in history to a map of ancient Mesopotamia.
Schooling aside, Luhmann herself is no stranger to advocacy. For the past four years, she’s been an activist in the church space. She’s also been resisting in her own right alongside Ben and Sam, helping deliver Halloween candy last month to two west suburban apartment complexes hit by immigration enforcement.
At night, she and her husband, a geology professor at Wheaton College, have been sitting down with their oldest kids to digest the day’s events.
And while her own aptitude for activism doesn’t keep her from worrying about Ben and Sam as they patrol (“I’m still a mom,” Luhmann noted), she knows the pull that has kept her sons on the front lines.
Last month, Ben and Sam were out monitoring a convoy of federal vehicles in Elgin when agents circled their car and pulled the brothers over. Pounding on their windows, the agents demanded the brothers get out.
“I’ve never seen a window shake like that,” Sam recalled. Sam had been recording the confrontation but when he opened his window, an agent took his phone and then pushed him against the car with his arms behind his back, he said. The agents threatened to arrest them for obstructing their investigations and endangering other drivers on the road.
But Ben, going on more than a year and half since he passed his driver’s test on the first try, maintained they always abide by the law and try to track federal activity from a distance.
Eventually, the agents let the brothers go with a warning.
For a while afterward, Ben and Sam just sat in their car, processing. They meant to head straight home, but then more reported activity started to come through. They decided to carry on.
That’s a through line for the brothers. Should the blitz subside, Ben and Sam say they plan to redirect their efforts to supporting those affected by operations full time.
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“(I think) this really changes my perspective,” Ben said, “for the rest of my life.”
I didn’t know that Judge Sara Ellis recited Carl Sandburg’s “Chicago” poem at the court last week! That is so… beautiful!
Copying the article from the WBEZ website:
Carl Sandburg’s ‘Chicago’ poem finds fresh relevance in a city occupied by ICE
Known for praising the city with “big shoulders,” the beloved 1914 composition recently was recited in a ruling addressing federal immigration agents’ use of force. Literary scholars say they were “astounded” and “amazed.”
A judge’s decision to read a 111-year-old poem in court before curbing federal agents’ use of force in Chicago has brought fresh relevance to an iconic piece of local literature.
In a ruling addressing actions by federal immigration agents, U.S. District Judge Sara Ellis last week recited Carl Sandburg’s 1914 composition “Chicago,” known for praising the town’s working-class roots and coining the “City of the Big Shoulders” moniker.
Literary scholars marveled at Ellis’ decision to read the piece in its entirety.
“I was both astounded and mesmerized,” said Ivy Wilson, a Board of Visitors professor of English and American studies at Northwestern University.
Paris Review Poetry Editor Srikanth “Chicu” Reddy said he was “amazed.”
“To read a poem as part of a justification or a rationale for a judgment of this importance shows how art can express the complexities of what we’re living through in ways that maybe other forms of speech can’t,” said Reddy, also a professor of English and creative writing at the University of Chicago.
Ellis’ order placed further restrictions on the agents’ use of “riot control weapons” and certain restraint techniques against protesters and observers amid the Trump administration’s deportation campaign in Chicago.
Her inclusion of the poem struck a chord with locals, who have long regarded the work as an unofficial city anthem. The piece has been taught in classrooms, performed at poetry slams and recited by politicians, including former Mayor Rahm Emanuel. It has inspired a “Big Shoulders” comic series, and it is even painted on the facade of Damen Tavern in West Town.
But the poem is finding new resonance during the sustained U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement campaign in Chicago.
Ellis appeared to take inspiration from the piece’s interrogation of outsiders’ perceptions of Chicago. For example, Sandburg considers descriptions of the city as “wicked” and “crooked” alongside his view of the town as a place “with lifted head singing so proud to be alive and coarse and strong and cunning.”
“This is a vibrant place, brimming with vitality and hope, striving to move forward from its complicated history,” Ellis said, juxtaposing her vision with the Trump administration’s portrayal, which she described as a city “in a vice hold of violence, ransacked by rioters and attacked by agitators.”
Reddy said Ellis’ comments were a fitting addendum to the piece.
“The poem reflects the complex messiness and energy and contradictions of Chicago,” he said. “And I think what the judge was saying was, this is a city, like any great American city, that has problems and a dynamic population that is debating and thinking and struggling to work through those problems. And at the same time, there are things we will resist in order to remain true to our values and our diversity.”
Born in Galesburg, Sandburg went on to become an influential poet, journalist and biographer. When the Pulitzer Prize winner moved to Chicago, he observed an economy driven by industrial workers. He then venerated the “hog butcher,” “tool maker” and “player with railroads” in the opening lines of “Chicago.”
While that first stanza is widely popular, Wilson said he is more drawn to Sandburg’s line about the city “building, breaking, rebuilding.” He interprets it as the ethos of working-class Americans, including those who came to the country both willingly and through forced labor.
“That notion is really the heart of not just how Sandburg is thinking about Chicago, but really the best of what we would call an American sensibility,” Wilson said. “And that American sensibility is not nativist, but it’s really built from the backs of immigrants, all of us as immigrants.”
Donald G. Evans, executive director of the Chicago Literary Hall of Fame, also described the poem as relevant to the current moment. He said Sandburg was known for his “compassion and humanity.”
“What we aspire to in the cultural community is to be like Carl Sandburg was: a person who believed in the people, and believed that everybody — from the bottom up — should have the same kind of respect and the same kind of support,” said Evans, who inducted Sandburg into the hall of fame in 2011.
“And that we should help all of our neighbors.”
The poem
Hog Butcher for the World,
Tool Maker, Stacker of Wheat,
Player with Railroads and the Nation’s Freight Handler;
Stormy, husky, brawling,
City of the Big Shoulders:
They tell me you are wicked and I believe them, for I have seen your painted women under the gas lamps luring the farm boys.
And they tell me you are crooked and I answer: Yes, it is true I have seen the gunman kill and go free to kill again.
And they tell me you are brutal and my reply is: On the faces of women and children I have seen the marks of wanton hunger.
And having answered so I turn once more to those who sneer at this my city, and I give them back the sneer and say to them:
Come and show me another city with lifted head singing so proud to be alive and coarse and strong and cunning.
Flinging magnetic curses amid the toil of piling job on job, here is a tall bold slugger set vivid against the little soft cities;
Fierce as a dog with tongue lapping for action, cunning as a savage pitted against the wilderness,
Bareheaded,
Shoveling,
Wrecking,
Planning,
Building, breaking, rebuilding,
Under the smoke, dust all over his mouth, laughing with white teeth,
Under the terrible burden of destiny laughing as a young man laughs,
Laughing even as an ignorant fighter laughs who has never lost a battle,
Bragging and laughing that under his wrist is the pulse, and under his ribs the heart of the people,
Laughing!
Laughing the stormy, husky, brawling laughter of Youth, half-naked, sweating, proud to be Hog Butcher, Tool Maker, Stacker of Wheat, Player with Railroads and Freight Handler to the Nation.
Time Magazine is publishing multiple articles on aging, which, as you can imagine, interest me greately. Although most of them repeat all the same (and often questionable) things, I liked this one, because it was not about “how to live longer”, but how to live happier when you age. And some examples form this article are really inspiring!
Here is the article, and I agree with every word here!
U.S. President Donald Trump greets Russian President Vladimir Putin as he arrives at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson on Aug. 15, 2025 in Anchorage, Alaska. Andrew Harnik—Getty Images
Seven days ago, Ukraine’s supporters were watching on optimistically, as all signs pointed toward Donald Trump allowing Ukraine to acquire long-range Tomahawk missiles at a meeting with Volodymyr Zelensky on Friday.
Giving the green light for Ukraine to buy and use such powerful weapons would have dramatically increased the country’s firepower and ability to strike military infrastructure inside Russia.
But Trump, whose tone towards Russia had hardened since his Alaska Summit with Putin in August failed to produce any meaningful results, made a U-turn that few saw coming.
Zelensky’s most recent trip to Washington had a lot more in common with the notorious shouting match that took place in the Oval Office in February. On top of Trump’s withholding of weapons Ukraine needs, he returned to some of his old talking points. Most alarmingly, he insisted that any halt to fighting would mean Ukraine give up the Donbas region to Putin—an area Russia has failed to take total control of, despite 11 years of fighting.
According to a report in the FT, Trump told the Ukrainian leader that if he did not bow to Putin’s will, Ukraine would be “destroyed.” The meeting reportedly descended into a bad-tempered shouting match, with Trump throwing away maps of the frontline, repeatedly swearing, and echoing a Kremlin talking point that the invasion is a “special operation, not even a war.”
Trump held a surprise two-and-a-half-hour phone call with the Russian President Vladimir Putin while Zelensky was on his way to America.
During that call, Trump reportedly agreed to a second face-to-face summit with Putin, this time in Budapest. Hungary is one of Putin’s few allies in the West, and its Prime Minister, Viktor Orbán, has repeatedly dug his heels in on Western efforts to punish Russia for its invasion of Ukraine. To say it will be an embarrassment not just for Ukraine but many of its European allies is an understatement.
The meeting will allow Putin onto E.U. and NATO soil, where in theory he should be arrested given an ICC arrest warrant. The sight of Putin standing alongside the most powerful man in the world in a NATO country will instead likely be used as Kremlin propaganda—and another sign that Trump has once again been played for a fool by Putin.
For all the positive noises that have come each time Trump has made commitments to Ukraine, or encouraged NATO allies to spend more on defense, or apparently started to see Putin for who he really is, the facts speak for themselves. A BBC Verify report in August found that the number of Russian attacks on Ukraine has doubled since Trump’s inauguration. In recent weeks, mounting drone incursions have even brazenly entered NATO skies.
Trump’s desire for the war to end seems sincere. He has also made no secret of his wish to win a Nobel Peace Prize. But if the war in Ukraine ends with the nation’s future largely in the hands of its invader, the very idea that Trump is deserving of the prize would be a dishonor.
The Russian President is a man who lives by the axiom: give an inch, take a mile. When the Obama Administration let down Syria, Putin was more than happy to intervene there to prop up his ally Bashar al-Assad. The West’s decision to turn the other cheek after Putin annexed Crimea in 2014 may have also emboldened him to launch his full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
Putin scoring another summit with Trump is a diplomatic coup. So is Trump’s decision to renege on Tomahawks for Ukraine and swing back to Putin’s way of thinking.
A version of Occam’s razor—that the simplest explanation for a phenomenon is probably correct—applies here. If Trump continues to reward Putin and punish Kyiv, Putin will most likely further escalate in Ukraine and test the West.
There is still hope that Trump may swing back to Ukraine, and heeding Zelensky’s call for an additional 25 U.S. Patriot anti-missile batteries is a good start.
Those closest to the U.S. President should urge Trump to do more for Ukraine, and stress that his current strategy is making Putin look smarter and stronger than Trump’s America.
For a man who cares about optics, that may be Ukraine’s best hope.
This article seems a little bit “off track”: with so many pressing issues, everyday challenges, and people’s rights under attack, talking about school boards might seem obsolete. Still, I think, it’s just the right time for this topic. Since I arrived in the US, I have been fascinated with how the American school system works. I think it is deeply under-appreciated by those who were born and raised here and think that any other country in the world provides better education. I maintain that the best thing about American schools is the civic values they teach, and how they help the children of newcomers become American citizens, regardless of their actual legal status.
I have several blog posts in drafts, which are just copies of articles from different Chicago newspapers. Usually, there are not that many of them in my blog, but these are unusual times, and I want to keep them for history.
The one below is from lst weeks’ Sun Times:
Members of the military are required to follow constitutional orders and disobey unconstitutional orders. But two members from Illinois see gray areas in the deployment of forces in the Chicago area to assist immigration agents.
National Guard members Dylan Blaha, left, and Demi Palecek attend a protest outside the ICE detention facility in Broadview on Friday. Blaha is running for Congress, and Palecek is running for state representative; both are Democrats.
Hundreds of National Guard members sent to Illinois by the Trump administration remain in a holding pattern following a federal judge’s order last week barring them from being deployed onto the streets of Chicago.
As some 500 military troops wait in limbo for the courts to decide where and how they can be sent into duty among civilians, two active Illinois National Guard members and one who is retired spoke to the Chicago Sun-Times about what they would do in the event they were activated.
Active-duty members are normally prohibited from speaking to the news media, but Dylan Blaha and Demi Palecek, who are both running for political office, said their views on the subject are already publicly known.
The third person who spoke out, Joe Prehm, left the National Guard in 2018 after serving 10 years. He is not restricted from expressing his views.
Palecek, 34, who is running for state representative as a Democrat in the 13th District, is a staff sergeant in the Illinois National Guard and has been a guard member for 12 years.
She said if she were called up to protect agents with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement she would not comply.
“Absolutely, I’d refuse. There’s no way,” Palecek said, adding she is also encouraging others in the National Guard to follow suit.
“I want all members to say no,” Palecek said. “This is against what we signed up for. We’re here for humanitarian things, we’re here to help and protect the people, not to be used and weaponized against our own communities to terrorize them.”
The issue is personal because her mother is from Mexico, she said.
U.S. service members take an oath to uphold the U.S. Constitution. In addition, under Article 92 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice and the U.S. Manual for Courts-Martial, service members must obey lawful orders and disobey unlawful orders, according to a U.S. military website. Unlawful orders are those that clearly violate the U.S. Constitution, international human rights standards or the Geneva Conventions.
Blaha, a 32-year-old from the Champaign area who is a Democratic candidate in the 13th congressional District, has served in the Illinois National Guard for 11 years. He said refusing orders isn’t easy and may not be the ideal path to take.
“Just being told to go and stand in front of a federal building, I would recommend it’s better for these soldiers to stay there and follow what they can,” Blaha said. “If they do ever receive an order that seems like it crosses the line, then you stand up to it. But if you step aside, you might allow someone to take charge that will comply with everything.”
However, Blaha said the legality of an order is not always clear-cut.
“A soldier is obligated to disobey unlawful or illegal orders, but there’s a big gray area,” Blaha said. “You never find out what’s illegal or unlawful until after the fact, so a lot of it is a judgment call.”
Prehm, a 10-year veteran of the Illinois National Guard who ended his service seven years ago, agrees with Blaha.
“Maybe that’s why [President Donald Trump] sent Texas National Guard rather than Illinois, because with the Illinois Guard there may be a lot from Chicago,” Prehm said. “They may be less inclined to do something or help, while Texas has nothing to do with Chicago.”
Prehm, who was deployed to Kuwait and Iraq, said he would refuse to guard ICE agents if he were still in the National Guard.
“The National Guard should not be used to protect federal agents. That should be the job of other law enforcement,” Prehm said.
On Friday, Blaha and Palecek attended a protest near the ICE detention facility in Broadview.
Wearing sweatshirts in honor of journalists who have been killed in Gaza, they both said they were happy with the judge’s ruling.
“I’m glad that the judge found that they violated the 10th and 14th Amendment and the Posse Comitatus Act,” Blaha said.
“I think the biggest thing right now is that President Trump has threatened to invoke the Insurrection Act. I really hope he doesn’t and that we keep winning in the courts.”
The Insurrection Act gives the president power to send the military to states to put down public unrest and to support law enforcement.
Palecek said she had questions related to the fact that National Guard members are not being paid but would receive back pay once the government shutdown ends.
“They’re not getting paid, so are they going to chill here? Then we’ll have to pay for them to just chill here. It’s weird.”
The Sun Times article – see below. Proud for the State of Illinois 🙂
Yesterday, Gov. JB Pritzker signed the “Safe Schools for All Act” into law, which advocates say will help protect families. The law prohibits public schools from denying access to a free education based on immigration status. It also requires schools to have procedures for law enforcement requests to enter a building.
Immigrants, advocates and elected officials gather in the Belmont Cragin neighborhood on the Northwest Side to celebrate the signing of the Safe Schools for All law protecting the right of undocumented children to attend public schools.
When immigration enforcement operations in Chicago ramped up in January, a woman named Maria saw the chilling effect it had on the Belmont Cragin community firsthand.
As a parent-mentor at Lloyd Elementary in the Northwest Side neighborhood, she said some students expressed fears that they or their family members would be detained and deported by federal agents, perhaps on their way to school. Families considered leaving, she said.
The thought crossed her mind, too. Maria, whose last name isn’t being published to protect her identity, is undocumented, though her three children, including a third grader at Lloyd, are American citizens.
“I had a lot of fear,” she said.
That’s why she joined immigrant rights groups and elected officials Tuesday to celebrate Gov. JB Pritzker signing the “Safe Schools for All Act” into law, which advocates say will help protect families. The law prohibits public schools from denying any student access to a free education based on their immigration status or that of their parents.
“Now many families across the state can feel safer in their children’s public school,” Maria said. “Thanks to this new law we have more peace of mind that ICE is not welcome in our schools.”
The law also prohibits schools from disclosing or threatening to disclose information related to the immigration status of the student or an “associated person.” And it requires schools to develop procedures for reviewing and authorizing requests from law enforcement trying to enter a school.
In January, the Trump administration rescinded a Biden-era policy that protected certain places, such as schools and churches, from immigration enforcement actions.
The new law comes as students in Chicago Public Schools and suburban districts return to classes for a new school year.
State Rep. Lilian Jimenez, D-Chicago, and State Sen. Karina Villa, D-West Chicago, were lead sponsors of the bill. It strengthens at the state level protections that already existed at the federal level but feel tenuous under the current administration, they said. In 1982, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Plyler v. Doe that states cannot deny students a free public education on account of their immigration status.
But that hasn’t stopped some states. Earlier this year, Tennessee tried to pass a bill allowing public schools to refuse enrollment to children without legal immigration status. The effort failed after pushback from advocates and community members.
“All of these students, all of these teachers, all of our parents across the state of Illinois know that they have a safe school today, yesterday, tomorrow and we will stand up to this administration every single time,” Villa said.
Jimenez said her family of immigrants and many others see education as a path to success, which is why it’s important to make school buildings “sanctuaries” for them.
“Children need to be in school — and parents shouldn’t be afraid of going to school — because that’s a place where we can help children succeed so our community can succeed,” Jimenez said, noting Monday was the first day back for Chicago Public Schools.
CPS policy does not allow Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents into school facilities unless they have a criminal judicial warrant signed by a federal judge. The district also does not share student records with ICE or any other federal representative without a court order or parental consent.
Hettie's Reflections 