Tens of Thousands March in DC and Chicago Against ICE and Trump Occupation

On Saturday, September 6th, tens of thousands of DC and Chicago residents took to the streets against ICE and ongoing threats by the Trump administration to use DHS and the National Guard to occupy US cities. In DC, thousands marched on the White House, carrying “Free DC” signs and banners, many emblazoned with the “Sandwich Guy” image, which has become popularized through street art, graffiti, and wheat-pasted posters, following one person being arrested by over 20 officers for allegedly throwing a sandwich at federal forces after calling them “fascists.” Despite attempts by the Trump administration to charge the person with a felony, a federal grand jury refused to indict the accused, following a growing trend.

Massive anti-ICE, anti-occupation march on the White House happening right now in #DC. #FreeDC

— It's Going Down (@igd.bsky.social) 2025-09-06T17:50:26.863Z

As DC Media Group reported:

Tens of thousands of DC citizens rallied and marched Saturday demanding the immediate end to occupation forces and an end to police harassment and illegal arrests in communities throughout the city. The We Are All DC action was in response to the regime’s deployment of 1000s of federal police and over 2000 Army National Guard Soldiers from Southern States, including Ohio, West Virginia, Tennessee, Georgia, Louisiana, and Mississippi. Citizens denounced roundups of immigrants, traffic stop traps, and the arrests some U.S. citizens.

The march began at Malcom X Park and ended about a mile away at Freedom Plaza, where organizers told of the adverse affects the occupation had on their communities, police stops to check drivers, usually without probable cause, and ICE roundups of immigrants and green card holders awaiting their final approval as citizens. Businesses were being hampered or closed because customers were not coming to the city and workers were afraid to go to work.

Trump’s claim that a crime emergency justified the occupation forces has been resoundingly rejected by DC citizens. Trump’s claim of rising criminal element also was not supported by crime data published by his own Department of Justice. Such crime data accumulated by government police agencies over the past three decades actuality reflects a marked reduction in crime rates, according to a Department of Justice Report on crime in DC.

Mayor Bowser signed an agreement granting cooperation with occupation forces in DC beyond the 30 day emergency expiration which was scheduled to expire on September 10. While Mayor Bowser denied she was agreeing to cooperate with extending the President’s crime emergency crackdown, grassroots groups expressed a sense of betrayal that she was cooperating with authorities in the first place. Speakers told how their communities had suffered greatly under the occupation and the Mayor’s agreement was a furtherance of that suffering.

Reporting from the demonstrations on Saturday in DC, journalist Chuck Modiano said of the demonstrations, “All of DC has come out and said, “Fuck this fascist takeover. Get these troops, out of DC. Get ICE, fascist gestapo goons, out of DC”….DC has had enough, this has been going on for three weeks, maybe not at this scale, but there has been Copwatches going on for three weeks now, in all forms and varieties, and DC has had enough.”

As Dave Zirin and Chuck Modiano both reported in The Nation, a growing network of mutual aid groups, Copwatch programs, and rapid response teams have mobilized to push back against federal law enforcement flooding DC streets with checkpoints and violent attack squads, aimed squarely at working-class residents:

When the night comes, it is not just the National Guard, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and a jumpy police department walking the streets. In an otherwise eerily quiet city, the people are present as well. Armed only with cell phones, medical kits, and the confidence to assert their dwindling rights, groups of local residents trail and record Trump’s occupation forces. They’re known as the night patrols.

There is no centralized night-patrol planning committee. People in different groups don’t necessarily know each other, but everyone with whom we spoke was either experienced in this kind of work through previous cop-watch trainings or are compelled by what is happening to play their part in making sure the foot soldiers of the surveillance state know they too are being surveilled.

Every night patrol is different. One volunteer told us that it “fluctuates depending on events and community needs. Different crews have their own rhythms.” Sometimes that means groups are small—maybe just three or four people—and other times it means flooding the streets with rallies that turn into patrols when the speeches are done.

Last Saturday, the DC Against Trump Coalition (DCAT) started a rally at 14th and U in one of DC’s curfew zones, where minors are barred from gathering after 8 pm, allowing police to target Black youths as soon as the sun goes down. The event ended with groups of protesters patrolling different areas of DC up until 4 am.

There’s a common and familiar refrain at protests, which in DC has become more than slogan—it’s an organizing principle. Ty Hopson Powell at the Defend the District go-go rally repeated it to us as he explained the importance of grassroots organizing: “It is us that will save us! It is the message that we have been saying on the streets for years as frontline organizers who are the most invested in this work. WE WILL SAVE US! They won’t save us.”

Protests in the Chicago area, which saw cancelled celebrations for Mexican Independence Day out of fear of targeted raids, also continued against ICE, taking place in the downtown, outside of the Great Lakes Naval Base and the Broadview, IL Detention Center, where protesters erected tents and blocked ICE vans from coming inside the facility.

Thank you to everyone in Illinois who stood up to ICE mercenaries today. This is what it will take—to put our own bodies and freedom on the line in order to make every action they take as difficult as possible.crimethinc.com/zines/seven-…It is, in fact, our own freedom on the line.

— CrimethInc. Ex-Workers' Collective (@crimethinc.com) 2025-09-05T17:46:26.231Z

The mass protests and demonstrations come as Trump is escalating violent rhetoric about the invasion of large cities, recently posting that “Chicago [is] about to find out why it’s called the Department of WAR.” Meanwhile, the Supreme Court issued a green-light for ICE to engage in racial profiling in Los Angeles as the “Department of Justice’s Board of Immigration Appeals ruled that people who enter the country without authorization must be detained throughout their removal proceedings, a process that can take years.” Reports show that the number of people in detention by the DHS is at a record high, while as Fortune reported, “[T]he majority of people currently detained by ICE have no criminal convictions. Of those who do, relatively few have been convicted of high-level crimes — a stark contrast to the chilling nightmare Trump describes to support his border security agenda.”

This morning, at the Broadview, Illinois (suburban #Chicago) ICE detention facility, protesters singing “We shall not be moved!” blocked #ICE from entering the facility. As the vehicle turned around the crowd celebrated another #resistance victory! #Trump #EpsteinFiles #Resist #immigrants

— The Weekly Opine (@theweeklyopine.bsky.social) 2025-09-05T16:19:32.088Z

Regardless of if Trump does mobilize National Guard troops to send to more US cities, DHS is already carrying out multiple operations, with current surges recently announced in Chicago and Boston. DHS also recently carried out a massive operation at a Hyundai plant in Georgia, detaining hundreds of workers, and Tom Homan has continued to paint Portland, OR as a hotbed of “protest violence” against ICE. The raids carried out by the DHS under Trump have been designed to instill terror and fear across entire communities and have already led to several deaths, as multiple people have died while attempting to escape during ICE raids, while at least 14 people have died in ICE detention camps since Trump took office. Prisoners in detention report widespread human rights abuses and horrific conditions, while ICE agents have been documented carrying out brutal attacks on individuals, violently targeting those filming their actions; even shooting up a families’ car in Southern California and arresting US citizens.

An amazing sign at the 🧊 protest in Chicago today! We do not want nazis and 🧊 in our communities!! I love Chicago so much! Fuck 🧊

— Jin X. Goh | 吴晋勋 (@jinxungoh.bsky.social) 2025-09-07T00:55:41.294Z

While the Trump administration has attempted to paint its immigration policies as a return to “law and order” or through the reactionary faux-populist framing that less immigrants will mean lower housing costs and better jobs, in reality the Trump administration’s push for mass deportations is driven by white nationalist ideology that seeks to purge the US of non-whites through organized state repression and brutality. Recent branding by the DHS on social media only solidifies this reality: amplifying established neo-Nazi and white supremacist memes and conspiracy theories. This project, made possibly by decades of help from the Democratic party, which has demonized immigrants, militarized the border, and pushed millions to migrate in search of work, seems to have at least partially backfired, with many recoiling at the authoritarian and racist nature of ICE and its devastating impacts on wholesale communities.

Can’t express in words how big this rally in Chicago is. The president’s fascist goon squad is not welcome here.

— Tim Onion (@bencollins.bsky.social) 2025-09-06T23:51:52.628Z

Attacks on immigrants are also taking place against a backdrop of increasing inflation, costs, wealth inequality and a declining standard of living for the entire working-class inside the US, as the financial and tech elite rally around Trump, celebrating record profits and tax-cuts as the Trump family rakes in billions. With increasing signs that the economy is stagnating due to everything from tariffs, an AI-bubble, and the deportation of low-wage workers crucial to capitalism, multiple crises threaten to erupt into potential social conflict and instability, as farmers face bankruptcy, home ownership remains unaffordable for the vast majority of workers, and the incoming impacts of cuts to Medicaid threatens to shutter hospitals and throw millions off of healthcare.

Normal fucking country

— unraveled (@unraveledpress.com) 2025-09-07T04:46:13.409Z

While Trump and his top advisors continue to lie, claiming that things will get better for the rest of us “soon,” the contradictions of a government run by billionaires and CEOs is becoming ever more crystalized, as conditions for those at the bottom only continue to worsen.

cover photos via screenshots from DC Media Group