Yvette Moyo knows what it's like to live where you don't want her. Her family moved to Chicago's South Shore neighborhood in 1964, when an influx of black families was meeting resistance from the white residents who had long dominated the community. She recalls stern warnings to avoid whites-only areas, such as the nearby Lake Michigan beach. She remembers how her brother's nose was broken in a city park.
And so last month, when hundreds of armed, masked federal agents stormed an apartment building near where she lives, Ms. Moyo felt the weight of history. As a Black Hawk helicopter flew overhead, agents pulled out residents who included dozens of Venezuelan migrants as well as black U.S. citizens on a late September night.
“There is a sense of identity with people who live in our area and are experiencing some trauma because people don't want them there,” she says. “That’s something I definitely understand.”
Why did we write this
Chicagoans are fighting Operation Midway Blitz, an aggressive federal campaign to enforce immigration controls. A major search of apartments in the South Shore, a historically black neighborhood, revealed sympathy and lingering resentment over the city's support for migrants.
The raid on Chicago's South Shore, in which federal agents detained 37 migrants, was the largest and most widely publicized action in what the Trump administration has dubbed “Operation Midway Blitz.” In early September, the US Department of Homeland Security began a campaign to arrest “criminal illegal aliens” in Chicago and its surrounding areas. But the department's tactics, including the use of tear gas against protesters, the detention of US citizens and fatal shooting illegal immigrant, sparked angry protests, lawsuits and bitter opposition from local political leaders. A federal judge on Tuesday ordered Gregory Bovino, the top Border Patrol official leading the immigration crackdown in Chicago, to wear a body camera and provide daily incident reports. The order was stayed Wednesday by a federal appeals court.
In the South Shore, a predominantly black community bordering Lake Michigan, apartment searches brought into stark relief the mixed and often complex views on the migrants who have poured into Chicago since 2022. in accordance with city, including the 30,000 people Texas Gov. Greg Abbott's office says is by bus there. The influx overwhelmed Chicago, which struggled to accommodate them. It also angered many black residents who felt the city was wasting precious resources on newcomers while ignoring the unmet needs of their communities, many of which struggle with poverty, crime and high incarceration rates. These and other concerns still resonate across the South Shore.
Ten months after President Donald Trump's immigration crackdown began, polls show majority voters supported strict border controls and service deportation of people in the United States illegally. At the same time, majority Americans want to see a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants who are law-abiding and have lived in the country for a long time. And there is approval fightg for the aggressive tactics used to detain migrants in the South Bank and beyond.
“I really feel for them,” said Stephanie Stinson, a South Shore resident who lives in a block of brick bungalows and trees still decorated with faded banners from last spring's Juneteenth holiday. “They have children. They escaped from a repressive situation, and now they are being stepped on.” She adds: “I'm all for justice and for our safety. But I'm not for scare tactics.”
But not everyone thinks so. “They caused a lot of noise – music late at night,” said a man who lives across the street from where the raid took place and gives only his first name, Mark. Federal agents, he said, “did what they had to do.”
Changes in South Bank
The raid, which took place in the early morning of September 30, stood out not only for its scale, involving a helicopter and numerous federal agents, but also for its location. This did not happen in one of Chicago's long-standing Latino neighborhoods, as happened in many of the raids, but in a predominantly black neighborhood. The South Shore has historically been middle class (former first lady Michelle Obama grew up here), but in recent years it has faced poverty, gangs, closed businesses and boarded-up apartment buildings.
Tensions over the influx of migrants into the South Bank began long before last month's raid. More than two years ago, Chicago officials tried to turn the closed South Shore High School into a migrant shelter. Residents objected, saying they had not been consulted. Many did not want a large group of migrants to be accommodated among them.
“You don't want it to become a hangout spot,” said Larry Petway, a forklift driver who lives across the street from the school.
The shelter never opened. But in the months that followed, migrants began moving into apartment buildings throughout the South Shore, helped by housing vouchers and other city assistance. They enrolled their children in local schools. They looked for work, bought and repaired old cars, and interacted with black residents in local stores and workplaces. Every Tuesday and Saturday, they stood in line with other low-income residents to get food at the Windsor Park Evangelical Lutheran Church, which stands just a few blocks from the building that was raided.
The numbers have some people alarmed. And the level of support for migrants from Chicago officials has angered even many sympathetic South Shore residents. Chicago held $639 million on its “New Arrivals Resettlement Mission” to resettle asylum seekers between 2022 and 2025.
“People were unhappy,” said Joyce Gittens, who runs the food pantry at Windsor Park Church and is herself an immigrant from Liberia. She sympathizes with migrants. “The United States is still a country of immigrants,” she says. But she adds: “We felt our needs had to be met. We have homeless people living under bridges, in vacant lots.”
Ms. Moyo, Founder of Real Men Charities, Inc. and a prominent figure in the South Shore, says, “Unfortunately, people tend to pit resources against each other. It is true that black people need more resources, and that people who are seeking a better life and brought to our doorstep need to be sympathized with.” She states, “We can do both at the same time.”
Dmitry Lewis is a young carpenter from the South Shore. He began working with migrants early, communicating using hand gestures and translation apps on his cell phone.
“They never did anything wrong,” he says. “There was never a time when they tried to intimidate us.” He feels a sense of community with the migrants. “Their fight is deportation,” he says. “Our fight is injustice.”
Some residents see it as an echo of their families' travels to Chicago in search of a better life. “Having my family migrate from the south to the north after World War II, I understand the whole concept,” said Arlivia Williamson, a volunteer at Windsor Park Church. “Everyone came from somewhere else.”
At the same time, the scale of last month's raid, a military-style show of force and an increase in aggressive tactics throughout the Chicago region have reminded some of the darkest moments in the lives of black Americans.
“We are descendants of people who had to deal with the KKK, cross burnings and lynchings,” says state Sen. Robert Peters, whose district includes South Shore. “We will never accept masked government agents kidnapping people.”
Indeed, it's not just echoes of their own history that trouble some black South Shore residents. The raids forced many to think about their future.
“I think a lot of people feel like it's going to get worse, that this is just a prelude to what they're going to do to African Americans,” Ms. Williamson says. “When they're done with the migrants, they'll start going after African Americans. It's part of the whole Make America White Again agenda.”
Tensions about work, community
When migrants first began moving into the large building at 7500 South Shore Drive earlier this year, many neighbors were unhappy, said James Warren, manager of an apartment complex on the same street. “They felt the Venezuelans were going to take over the jobs and take over the society,” he says.
But everything turned out wrong. “It's not as bad as we thought,” he says. “I even gave some of them jobs, cleaning things up. They weren't bothering anyone. They just wanted to work.”
And yet there were a lot of troubles. The nearby beach became a flashpoint over the weekend, with loud music and sometimes violence as local gang members confronted new arrivals. “It was chaos,” said Mr. Warren, whose apartment complex is next to the beach. Meanwhile, he said, drug dealing in the building, which had been a problem long before the migrants arrived, continued and included some migrants. In June, a Venezuelan was shot and killed in the building.
“They haven't completely blended into the community,” said Charles Szymanski, a South Shore resident who lives a block from the building. “They were the loudest band around.”
Still, he says the raid bothered him. “You can sit and read about things and look at photographs and you get used to it because it's there. When you see it happening in person, suddenly it hits you. These are real people. This is a real situation. Migrants [aggravated] me for the last couple of years. But I don't think anyone wanted that to happen.”
The raid was “more like an insurrection than an arrest,” Mr. Warren says. He was especially offended by the sight of children being dragged out of the building. “They were crying,” he says. “They were traumatized. They were screaming for their parents.”
View of the apartment raid from the inside
Tenille Lewis lives on the third floor of the building at 7500 South Shore Drive. She remembers how empty and abandoned the building seemed before the migrants arrived, with mice, trash and strangers wandering around. New tenants have revitalized the building. She didn't make friends with any of them, but she greeted them in the hallways and in the elevator. She tried to help, answering their questions as best she could. She was reassured by the fact that there were so many residents in the building. There weren't many strangers around.
Although the situation was far from ideal, most migrants were “good people,” she says.
“I'm a pretty good judge of people. I didn't feel any bad vibes with most of them. … Some of the young guys were like other young guys in the area. I didn't feel any more threatened by them than by the other guys here.”
On September 30, she was awakened by the explosion of a stun grenade in the corridor. Agents broke down her door and demanded to know who lived there. Ms Lewis uses a wheelchair and was not forced out into the streets as many others were. But she thought the raid was wrong. The neighbors took her.
“They're already here,” she says. “They are people.”
