Democratic Mayor Daniel Biss of Evanston, Illinois, told CNN host Erin Burnett on Monday that his city turned off certain public safety tools in an effort to thwart United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
President Donald Trump hinted at stepped-up federal enforcement efforts in Chicago in an Aug. 25 post on Truth Social, following it up with a meme based on a famous character from the “Apocalypse Now” posted Saturday, which included a reference to the quote “I love the smell of napalm in the morning” from the Francis Ford Coppola-directed film. Biss, a Democratic candidate for Congress, told Burnett that he’d ordered license-plate cameras to be turned off.
“The reason that we communicated with our residents this morning is that I got information from a senior state official last night indicating that they had good intel, that they thought it was likely that ICE would be coming to Evanston today and in the coming days, and we just felt that we had a responsibility to let our residents know so they could work to protect themselves,” Biss claimed.
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“We’ve been doing everything we can to protect our residents from before Donald Trump took office, passing strong sanctuary laws to make sure our police are not cooperating with federal civil immigration enforcement,” Biss continued. “Protecting our data, switching off our license plate cameras when we learned that that data was being shared. But we also need to make sure our residents know as much as possible so they can take the steps they need to protect themselves.”
License-plate cameras help police with parking enforcement, monitoring traffic flow and to combat auto theft, according to SecurityCameraKing.com. Biss also announced his intention to emulate a stunt pulled by Democratic Mayor Karen Bass of Los Angeles.
“I got trained in rapid response,” Biss told Burnett later in the interview. “So now when ICE comes to town, I get a text. I’m able to go immediately to the location, share rights that individuals have with them, and inform them of their rights. Videotape, bear witness, hold ICE officials accountable.”
Resistance to ICE operations to arrest illegal immigrants also included a Milwaukee judge who allegedly helped an illegal briefly evade ICE agents in April and Democratic Mayor Freddie O’Connell of Nashville, who released the names of ICE agents involved in a crackdown on illegal immigrants in the city in May.
In New York City, ICE agents arrested Democratic mayoral candidate Brad Lander on June 18 after he allegedly interfered with an ICE operation in a Manhattan court. Democratic Rep. LaMonica McIver of New Jersey was charged with assaulting an ICE agent after a May incident at an ICE facility in Newark.
In Texas, there were two incidents where shots were fired at ICE or Border Patrol facilities since July 4, with ten people being charged with attempted murder in connection with the former incident. In another incident, one person fired at the ICE agents with a pistol when ICE raided two California marijuana farms in July after obtaining a warrant, with the FBI offering a $50,000 reward for information leading to the suspect’s identification, arrest and conviction.
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