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Opinion|Trump Is Pitting Us Against One Another in Chicago
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/12/opinion/mensa-ice-raids-chicago-black-citizens.html
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Guest Essay
Oct. 12, 2025
By Vic Mensa
Mr. Mensa is a musician and actor. He reported from Chicago.
The fragrant steam rose from the plates of pasta like mist from a hot spring as the famished Venezuelan newcomers lined up to eat on a frozen Chicago November afternoon in 2023. Many arrived in shorts and flip-flops.
I had partnered with local restaurateur Eldridge Williams to help feed and clothe the group, who had been bused up to my hometown along with other “sanctuary cities” run by Democrats by Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas as part of an inhumane political stunt. Chicagoans stepped up to aid these people in need.
It was a strain, as Mr. Abbott knew it would be. The newly elected mayor of Chicago, Brandon Johnson, had to reallocate already tight resources to help. Much of the responsibility of providing for the Venezuelans ended up being shouldered by Chicago’s Black community: Shelters were placed in our neighborhoods, and services were diverted away from our most vulnerable.
Having to take care of the needs of the new arrivals would quickly stir up resentment in a population that was already hurting. Just as Mr. Abbott had hoped, many Chicagoans wondered why the migrants’ plight had to be our problem to solve.
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The apparent chaos of these arrivals, hyped by the right-wing media, helped re-elect Donald Trump. And it led directly to what happened this past week, when the federal government began treating my city like enemy territory. Rappelling out of helicopters like in a scene from “Black Hawk Down,” federal agents raided an apartment building in the predominantly Black community of South Shore, knocking down doors, separating children from their zip-tied parents and detaining people barely clothed.
