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What To Know This Week: In Los Angeles, Trump sent in the National Guard to back up ICE raids. In Chicago, immigrants were ambushed at court check-ins while police looked the other way—and still, they call this a “sanctuary city.”

Meanwhile, the Chicago Tribune is busy handing credit for falling violence rates to State’s Attorney Eileen O’Neill Burke, and Springfield lawmakers delayed long-overdue property tax foreclosure reform—again—leaving Illinois the last state in the country where Black homeowners can lose both their houses and all their equity over a missed payment.

The right is escalating. The center is stalling. The state is still looting. This moment demands focus.

3 Headlines: National Guard in L.A., Raids in Chicago, Delayed Justice for Black Homeowners

1. ICE Raids and the Fight to Hold the Line in Chicago

NBC News: over the weekend, President Donald Trump escalated his war on immigrants by deploying 2,000 National Guard troops and 700 Marines to Los Angeles to support ICE raids. They arrested over 100 people, including a union president. Marines were reportedly used to transport ICE agents in military vehicles. And in a move not seen since the Civil Rights Era, the Guard was deployed without the consent of California’s governor—an authoritarian overreach Gov. Gavin Newsom called “illegal and immoral.” In response, protests have erupted in cities nationwide—from San Francisco to New York to Dallas—and Chicago.

In Chicago last week, at least 20 immigrants were arrested in a surprise ICE raid during “check-ins” at a South Loop federal office. Eyewitnesses and organizers report that Chicago police were on site and may have helped ICE form a perimeter—potentially violating the city’s Welcoming City Ordinance and the Illinois Trust Act. Three alderpeople—Vasquez, Quezada, and Hadden—have introduced a City Council order demanding an investigation into CPD’s role. CPD denies wrongdoing. The city has yet to disclose any communications with DHS.

So, on Sunday, dozens marched through the Lower West Side, rallying at Plaza Tenochtitlán before marching to Benito Juarez Community Academy. On Monday, organizers and elected officials gathered at CPD headquarters to condemn the Chicago Police Department’s role in last week’s ICE ambush at 2245 S. Michigan Ave. Protesters are returning again Tuesday to Federal Plaza to denounce Trump’s militarized immigration crackdown and Chicago’s own entanglement with federal enforcement. 

ICE’s own data shows that nearly a quarter of detained immigrants now have no criminal record. The largest increase in detention population under Trump’s second term has come from people attending court and getting abducted anyway.

“The Fear is the Tactic”: All of this is the strategy to terrorize immigrants, normalize federal overreach, and test just how far cities like Chicago will bend.

“We’re encouraging people to come out and show that Chicago is a place where ICE is not welcome,” said Diego Morales of the 25th Ward IPO. “We’re uniting on a message of love and solidarity for our neighbors.”

But solidarity isn’t just symbolic. It means real protection Which means real consequences for departments that cooperate with federal violence.

2. Chicago’s Streets Got Safer—Thanks to Outreach Workers, Not O’Neill Burke

From WBEZ: In West Garfield Park, homicides are down 80% since 2021. Nonfatal shootings are down more than 50%. That’s not thanks to some new CPD strategy. That’s thanks to street-level violence interrupters—former gang members, returning citizens, and community elders who show up to prevent the next shot from being fired.

WBEZ’s Chip Mitchell rode along with one of them: Frederick Seaton, a 66-year-old West Side native and director at the Institute for Nonviolence Chicago.

“We don’t work for [the police],” Seaton says. “We can get into some crannies and some holes that they can’t.”

This is community safety: credible messengers, trauma-informed responses, and trust that’s earned—not surveilled or coerced. CVI (community violence intervention) works precisely because it refuses the carceral playbook. It slows people down when grief is raw and a trigger is close. It buys time. It changes outcomes.

Cities across the country are watching CVI results closely—and some are trying to defund or discredit the very groups making these gains possible. But in West Garfield Park, results speak for themselves. In 2021, that neighborhood recorded 15 murders by this time of year. In 2025, it’s three. The city’s murder rate is at its lowest level since 2014. And the racial “safety gap” is finally narrowing: Black Chicagoans are still 19 times more likely than white residents to be murdered—but that’s down significantly from three years ago.

CVI is one of the few tools actually closing that gap. And yet, funding remains piecemeal. Support from law enforcement is conditional. And in many neighborhoods, these teams still operate with shoestring staff and vehicles on their last legs.

And yet—no joke—the Chicago Tribune editorial board is out here wondering if the reason shootings are down is Eileen O’Neill Burke. In a deeply, weirdly reverent writeup, they float the idea that her pretrial detention policies and new file access for domestic violence prosecutors might be what’s driving down gun violence in neighborhoods like West Garfield — after less than 6 months in office (the data they spoke about was from last year).

This is the disconnect: the people putting in 18-hour days to stop retaliation before it starts are invisible, while prosecutors who’ve been in office six months get floated as miracle workers by legacy media.

3. Black Families Just Lost $108 Million in Home Equity.

Injustice Watch: Since 2019, over 1,000 owner-occupied homes in Cook County—mostly in Black neighborhoods—have been seized and sold this way. Total tax debt? $2.3 million. Total value of the homes? $108 million. That’s a 47-to-1 transfer of wealth, from working-class Black families to private speculators. The General Assembly had a chance to fix it this spring. They didn’t.

Despite a clear Supreme Court ruling two years ago saying homeowners are entitled to their leftover equity after a tax sale, Illinois lawmakers still failed to pass reforms that would stop private investors—aka "tax buyers"—from legally looting homes over minor tax debts. The proposals, backed by Sen. Celina Villanueva and Rep. Will Guzzardi, would’ve ensured that if a house is auctioned off, anything above the debt goes back to the homeowner.

The 2025 tax sale has been postponed, and interest on delinquent taxes will pause starting in September, thanks to a temporary measure signed by Gov. Pritzker. But hundreds of families, many of them elderly, are still at risk of losing generational wealth over a missed payment. Over 12,000 homes were slated for this year’s sale—including nearly 3,000 owned by people over 65.

Lawmakers call this a pause for “consensus.” Advocates call it what it is: stalling in the face of a crisis. Meanwhile, tax buyers stay quiet—and profitable. The same legislators who panic about property tax “relief” for rich suburbanites seem perfectly fine watching Black homeowners get stripped of equity by legal loophole.

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1 Question: The Block the Bombs Act

As Gaza faces unrelenting bombardment and the West Bank reels from settler violence, U.S. military aid continues to bankroll weapons used in atrocities—paid for by taxpayers, including us. In response, Chicago’s own Rep. Delia Ramirez has introduced the Block the Bombs Act, a landmark bill that would finally bar U.S. weapons from being used in documented human rights abuses against Palestinians. It’s a rare moment of moral leadership from Illinois—and it deserves full-throated support. Read more here.

2 Red Flags: Fake Protest Videos and Rep. Raychel Proudie Fights Back Against the Rich

1. AI Is Already Lying About the LA Protests

Social media was already swamped with AI-generated videos and memes. But this one, created as a “joke” by a particularly influential right wing account, freaked me the HELL out. Claiming to show “Newsom protestors after the L.A. raids, this example of a AI deepfakes—using neural nets that replace a face, voice, or even overlay fabricated scenes to create vivid and accurate looking video quickly and cheaply—has already fooled millions.

Since platforms like X have gutted moderation, swapping professional fact-checking for community posts that can be gamed or manipulated, we know that bot networks and algorithmic hyper-amplification will elevate these fringe deepfakes easily.

Here's what real people—not algorithms—have to do:

• Approach any shocking video with skepticism: reverse-image search, check credible outlets, track timestamps and locations.

• Insist on source transparency: Was this filmed by a legitimate journalist? Is there context?

• Demand platform accountability: AI detection tools are not optional. If platforms won’t act, governments must mandate them.

The next time someone drops a viral clip of protest destruction or official violence—ask: where did that come from— for real?

2. “No one in the 73rd is sitting at a marble table on their boat talking about the capital gains tax right now.”

I feel like one of the strangest parts of new social media’s hijacking is that these days ‘for you’ or arbitrary relevance gets prioritized over ‘timeliness.” This is troubling for lots of reasons, but none of them have to do with my point, which is that this speech from Missouri State Rep Raychel Proudie is the realest thing I’ve heard n a long time. You should watch it.

For Context: The Republican-controlled legislature repealed Missouri’s capital gains tax—a move that overwhelmingly benefits the ultra-rich. It’s such an unfair and unpopular policy that they had to make it seem palatable, adding riders that exempted diapers and period products from sales tax and a tax credit for seniors and disabled Missourians to hope no one noticed. Well, Rep. Raychel Proudie noticed.

That’s It This Week.
💬 Coming Soon: Robert Peters Q+A As part of the loose Q+A series where I bother people running for elected office in Illinois who are doing things I’m interested in, I spoke with organizer and Bernie endorsed State Senator Robert Peters, who’s playing a major role in the unscrewing Illinois’ transit system and is also running for Congress in District 2. Look out for that next week.

🌟 Help keep Chicago 312 going. Chicago 312 is powered by the people who read this, forward it, complain about it, and tell me when the Instagram posts are just too half assed to make a difference. If you like it, dislike it, want something else - hit reply.

PS — Did you know Chicago is sinking?

PPS — Here’s real life Gavin Newsom in a non-AI video, btw. How did he figure out video messaging against the Right before most progressive national candidates? I hate it here.

_{All typos are intentional 4D chess.}