The media and the left-wing political class are running interference for lawlessness again, twisting a tough but necessary immigration-enforcement operation into a moral panic. Operation Midway Blitz was a targeted federal effort to arrest criminal illegal aliens in the Chicago area, yet instead of thanking law enforcement for protecting communities, some on the left celebrated the chaos.
This was not a vague “raid” conjured out of thin air — DHS launched a coordinated operation in September that led to hundreds of arrests, including people with serious criminal histories, because sanctuary policies had made Illinois a magnet for dangerous offenders. The Trump administration and ICE moved where local officials were refusing to act, and the results were predictable: arrests, media theater, and instant outrage from the same politicians who created the problem.
What followed at the Broadview processing center was worse: organized mobs, threats against federal officers, and violent clashes that put citizens and first responders at risk while local leaders looked the other way. DHS documented protesters blocking gates, throwing projectiles, and even chanting to “shoot ICE,” all while village officials and some local media framed the agents as the villains. Americans who value safety should be alarmed that elected officials and sympathetic anchors would normalize that kind of behavior.
Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker’s posture has been theatrical rather than constructive — from promising to “stand in the way” of federal enforcement to taunting the president on cable TV with a “come and get me” provocation. At the same time, influential MSNBC hosts have downplayed or even praised the disruptive protests, recasting the defenders of law and order as the aggressors. This is not reporting, it is propaganda dressed up as empathy.
Conservatives should call out the hypocrisy plainly: sanctuary politics invite crime, then the same politicians and the complicit press blame the people and the federal officers who try to clean it up. When federal agents do the hard work of removing violent offenders and the response is to threaten and assault them instead of securing neighborhoods, something has gone terribly wrong in our civic culture.
Hardworking Americans want safe streets, honest reporting, and leaders who put citizens first — not shameless grandstanding that sacrifices public safety for political optics. If the country is going to have immigration laws, they must be enforced, and anyone who cheers on mobs that attack federal officers should be called out for what they are: enabling crime and undermining the rule of law. The media’s role should be to inform, not to inflame, and right now too many outlets are choosing the latter.
