{"id":314062,"date":"2025-10-18T18:37:10","date_gmt":"2025-10-18T18:37:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/314062\/"},"modified":"2025-10-18T18:37:10","modified_gmt":"2025-10-18T18:37:10","slug":"more-rideshare-arrests-at-ohare","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/314062\/","title":{"rendered":"More rideshare arrests at O’Hare"},"content":{"rendered":"

For the second time this month, federal immigration agents targeted rideshare drivers<\/a> at O\u2019Hare International Airport, according to a union official, despite recent efforts from Mayor Brandon Johnson to stop them.<\/p>\n

About 9:15 a.m. Saturday, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and other federal agents were seen detaining four rideshare drivers parked in a designated staging area off Balmoral Avenue as they waited for pickup requests, Service Employees International Union Local 1 spokesperson Bailey Koch said.<\/p>\n

Koch \u2014 whose union is part of a labor coalition seeking to organize Illinois rideshare workers \u2014 said she did not immediately have information on the identities or whereabouts of the four drivers. A Department of Homeland Security spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment, nor did Johnson\u2019s press office.<\/p>\n

Koch said the Johnson administration agreed to provide 24\/7 security for the lot to ensure \u201conly people with the correct credentials\u201d could enter, but the mayor\u2019s spokesperson did not immediately confirm that.<\/p>\n

Saturday\u2019s apparent ICE spotting was the latest flashpoint in a roiling turf war between Johnson and Trump administration, which has been waging a mass deportation campaign in the city \u2014 including its airport grounds.<\/p>\n

On Oct. 10, Border Patrol officers arrested<\/a> 18 people at O\u2019Hare, DHS confirmed. Immigration agents also targeted the same staging area for rideshare drivers, known as the Transportation Network Providers \u201cAlpha Lot,\u201d Koch said.<\/p>\n

The progressive mayor, for his part, has sought to resist the president\u2019s crackdown via a flurry of executive orders and invocations of Chicago\u2019s sanctuary city policy that bans local police from assisting with immigration enforcement. But with federal agents still running rampant on the streets of Chicago amid \u201cOperation Midway Blitz<\/a>,\u201d city leaders are seeing the limits of some of their stances.<\/p>\n

Ald. Michael Rodriguez, the mayor\u2019s handpicked Workforce Development Committee chair, said he will be calling Johnson\u2019s team to see what further measures can be taken to prevent another raid.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Gestapo efforts by this president have no boundaries,\u201d Rodriguez said. \u201cQuite frankly, they\u2019re doing unlawful things every minute of the day, and here\u2019s another opportunity for them to do that.\u201d<\/p>\n

While air traffic and security are controlled by the federal government, airport grounds at O\u2019Hare and Midway International Airport are city property \u2014 a fact Johnson pointed out when he condemned the Oct. 10 arrests.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy administration is working closely with the Illinois Drivers Alliance to ensure drivers are protected, their rights are respected, and that our City property is never used to facilitate unlawful civil immigration enforcement,\u201d Johnson had said in a Tuesday statement.<\/p>\n

Earlier this month, the mayor signed<\/a> an executive order banning federal immigration authorities from staging and carrying out enforcement operations on city-owned land. Johnson also called for criminal charges against agents who violate the order, though it\u2019s unclear how that would play out.<\/p>\n

After the Oct. 10 arrests at O\u2019Hare, Johnson spokesperson Cassio Mendoza said the administration believed that because signs laying out the immigration enforcement ban had not yet been installed at the airport parking lot, the administration lacked a legal avenue to pursue against the federal agents for carrying out a raid in the lot. Such signs should be posted in the lot soon, Mendoza said on Tuesday.<\/p>\n

It was not immediately clear if the signs were installed yet as of Saturday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"For the second time this month, federal immigration agents targeted rideshare drivers at O\u2019Hare International Airport, according to…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":314063,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5124],"tags":[11307,960,69,5410,5386,1818,36081,121074,7675],"class_list":{"0":"post-314062","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-chicago","8":"tag-arrests","9":"tag-chicago","10":"tag-donald-trump","11":"tag-ice","12":"tag-il","13":"tag-illinois","14":"tag-ohare","15":"tag-operation-midway-blitz","16":"tag-rideshare"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115396624061951326","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/314062","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=314062"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/314062\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/314063"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=314062"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=314062"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=314062"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}