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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)

By Tess Kenny | tkenny@chicagotribune.com | 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.”

When immigration agents started swarming Southern California in June, Ben found himself antsy to do something.

“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.

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.

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.”

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West Chicago brothers are on the front lines against ‘Operation Midway Blitz.’ And they’re only teenagers.

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:

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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.