Mayor Johnson calls for Civil Rights Movement response to ICE, says 'moment calls for boldness'

Mayor Brandon Johnson called Tuesday for a coordinated and sustained nationwide protest akin to the Civil Rights Movement in response to the Trump administration's immigration enforcement actions.

Johnson said he is contemplating "measures we hadn't previously considered" to hold U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents accountable for the civil rights abuses he believes they have committed on the streets of Chicago, Minneapolis and other U.S. cities. Accountability should include prosecution, he said.

“This moment calls for boldness — not some sort of pragmatic pragmatism to a tyrant. In fact, that’s how we got in this mess in the first place. It’s because we were too tepid. We nibbled around the edges as Democrats, and instead of fighting and standing up for the interests of working people, we capitulated to corporations and the ultra-rich,” Johnson told reporters.

“We’ve got to challenge these corporations and the rich to pay their fair share in taxes," Johnson continued. "The next step and level ... has to be real, organized resistance, as what we saw organized and prepared in the Civil Rights Movement. We cannot just simply leave it to protests that just react to the egregious and harmful and deadly actions coming from the Trump administration.”

The shooting deaths of Renee Macklin Good and Alex Pretti by ICE agents in Minneapolis have touched off a political avalanche that prompted President Donald Trump to pull Border Patrol Cmdr. Gregory Bovino out of Minneapolis and dispatch border czar Tom Homan in his place. Trump has also promised to scale down the Minneapolis operation.

But Johnson said this is no time for mayors of targeted “working-class cities with a very diverse population” to let their guards down.

“We’ve seen this before with the Trump administration. Bovino being sent and now has to pack — there’s another Bovino in the waiting,” the mayor said, noting that a similar retreat happened here.

On Wednesday, Johnson will be in Washington to attend a U.S. Conference of Mayors meeting, and he'll speak to the National Press Club about Chicago’s political and legal resistance to ICE's Operation Midway Blitz.

On the eve of that speech, Johnson disclosed that his administration is “looking at additional measures that will be released in the coming days to continue to lead the nationwide response for cities.”

“This moment challenges us to look at measures that we hadn’t previously considered ... to build in mechanisms for accountability and justice,” he said.

Pressed to elaborate, Johnson said he’s looking for ways to “not just to bring charges and investigation against the federal overreach, but how we can create a process that allows for prosecution of these individuals.”

To help ensure accountability in Chicago, the mayor said he backs an ordinance approved by a joint committee on Tuesday that would empower the Civilian Office of Police Accountability to formally investigate Chicago police officers accused of violating Chicago’s Welcoming City Ordinance, which restricts police cooperation with federal immigration agents.

“It is not enough to be a welcoming city on paper. We must enforce our local laws so that we can maintain the trust we have built between law enforcement and immigrant communities,” Johnson said.

The vote came after months of disagreement over whether that responsibility fell to COPA or the city’s Office of the Inspector General.

“Because I cannot do much as a local elected to change federal policy in this moment, I'm going to do what we can locally — and that is to fix this administrative gap,” 26th Ward Ald. Jessie Fuentes, the ordinance’s sponsor, said Tuesday.

The ordinance stems from an incident last summer in which police responded to a 911 call to assist with “crowd control,” during a civil immigration raid outside an ICE office in the South Loop.

Federal agents arrested at least 10 people arriving for routine immigration check-ins at the office on June 4, 2025. Witnesses reported Chicago police officers appearing to stand guard for ICE vehicles and accompanying agents in and out of the building.

Chicago police officials told City Council members they were not aware a raid was taking place when they arrived at the scene and entered the federal immigration office. Once officers determined federal immigration enforcement was underway, they “moved outside of the facility and provided public safety traffic control,” Glen Brooks, director of the police department's community policing office, told Council members in July.

But body-worn camera footage reviewed by the Committee on Immigrant and Refugee Rights, appears to indicate some level of coordination between ICE and officers at the scene, committee chair Ald. Andre Vasquez (40th) said Tuesday.

Video played before the committee Tuesday showed a Chicago police deputy chief telling federal law enforcement where to bring their transport vans. Because there hasn’t been further investigation of the incident, Vasquez said it’s difficult to determine if sanctuary policies were violated.

LaKenya White, COPA’s interim chief administrator, said the agency is prepared to begin investigations into allegations of officers violating the Welcoming City Ordinance. As of Monday, the agency had received about 40 complaints related to interactions with ICE, 28 of which were possible Welcoming City Ordinance violations, according to White. Those cases were passed on to the Bureau of Internal Affairs, but moving forward would fall to COPA.

Also on Tuesday, Minneapolis area City Council members warned their Chicago counterparts to be on the lookout for increased violence, even more brazen civil rights violations and deceptive tactics when and if Operation Midway Blitz resumes here.

During a virtual appearance before a City Council committee, Minneapolis City Council President Elliott Payne and HwaJeong Kim, vice president of the St. Paul City Council, described the many ways in which some of the 3,000 federal agents who have descended on Minneapolis have disguised their identities and altered their “suppression tactics” in an effort to “outmaneuver” the local resistance.

“Instead of wearing military garb, they’re wearing baseball caps, beanies, sunglasses, hoodies, puffy jackets, blue jeans … to minimize their tactical gear. ... Some are no longer wearing face masks. They are disguising themselves to blend in also, as a way for us to distrust one another,” Kim said Tuesday.

Payne said Bovino “may be leaving,” but that “doesn’t mean the abuses end.”

He described ICE agents in groups of two or three “roaming our city in unmarked vehicles” in search of human prey. They will “literally just jump out of a truck and start harassing somebody,” just as he saw them do to a “U.S. citizen who happened to be Brown” at a bus stop two weeks ago.

“We were surrounding them. People were blowing their whistles. I had my phone out and I was recording. I introduced myself as the council president, which I thought would help de-escalate. But all they did was start waving a Taser around, putting it in my staff’s chest, and as I was paying attention to that person, another agent came and shoved me from behind,” Payne said.

When Pretti was shot and killed “right after one of the largest general strikes” in the nation’s history, Payne said, “The thing that really stood out to me was he was in the exact same position that I was when I got shoved.”