President Donald Trump is turning to the Chicago Police Department as he rushes to add immigration enforcement officers to carry out his administration’s mass deportation policy.
The U.S. Immigration and Customs Department specifically pitched jobs to the city’s cops when it ran a local advertisement during a Monday night NFL broadcast.
“Attention Chicago law enforcement,” the commercial said, the city’s skyline in the background. “You took an oath to protect and serve, to keep your family, your city safe. But in sanctuary cities, you’re ordered to stand down.”
“Join ICE, and help us catch the worst of the worst,” it continued before touting a $50,000 sign-on bonus and student loan forgiveness.
Asked about the ad Tuesday, Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson called it “a horrible way to recruit,” but added, “I don’t sit around worrying about the president’s tactics.”
He praised police Supt. Larry Snelling for raising officer morale and instituting “constitutional policing,” then criticized Trump for spending more on ICE than anti-poverty programs.
“It’s also disingenuous,” Johnson said. “Because if he was serious about supporting local law enforcement, why is he withdrawing 30% of the funding that would go toward getting illegal guns off the street?”
The commercial is part of a broad effort to recruit law enforcement officers from cities across the country. Nearly identical ads ran in other cities during the game, including Denver.
Chicago has seen a spike in activity from ICE agents in recent days after Trump announced the “Operation Midway Blitz” anti-immigrant action. In one incident ICE agents fatally shot a man during a traffic stop in Illinois’ Franklin Park.
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People gather outside the Village of Franklin Park police station, Sept. 15, 2025, after marching from the site of a memorial for Silverio Villegas González, who was shot and killed Friday by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer during a traffic stop. (Armando L. Sanchez/Chicago Tribune)
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People gather outside the Village of Franklin Park police station, Sept. 15, 2025, after marching from the site of a memorial for Silverio Villegas González, who was shot and killed Friday by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer during a traffic stop. (Armando L. Sanchez/Chicago Tribune)
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Trump in July approved a $170 billion spend for the Department of Homeland Security, almost doubling its budget in an effort to dramatically ramp up border security and domestic deportations. The package included almost $30 billion earmarked for ICE officers.
ICE has received more than 150,000 applications and extended over 18,000 tentative job offers, Trump’s Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said in a statement Tuesday, without specifying a timeline.
The number of police in Chicago has for years lagged below what the department is authorized to hire.
There are currently 11,662 sworn CPD members, department leaders told aldermen during a focused City Council hearing Wednesday. Johnson and the City Council budgeted over $1.4 billion for 13,267 total CPD positions for this year, and Snelling said Wednesday the department is authorized to hire for 12,646 sworn jobs.
But after plummeting during the COVID-19 pandemic, police staffing levels have remained mostly steady since Johnson’s first month in office. CPD employed over 13,350 sworn members at a recent peak in January 2019, but has dropped by only around 60 positions since Johnson took office.
Still, recruiting — and keeping — police remains a key focus and critical challenge for Johnson and Snelling’s Police Department. Several aldermen criticized CPD’s staffing levels during the Wednesday hearing, while Snelling acknowledgment that the shrunken corps has forced police to use more overtime.
“We are cooking the bread with less bakers,” Ald. Michelle Harris told Snelling.
CPD has used job fairs, social media and offered information at City Colleges in a bid to attract native Chicagoans in particular — a third of whom identify as Latino.
The city received around 500 applications per week to join CPD’s ranks from 2023 to 2024, according to a Tribune analysis published in April.
The recruiting push appears to include other local advertisements as well. Kat Abughazaleh, a 9th Congressional District candidate, shared a photo on social media platform X last week showing a video board calling on passerby to “defend the homeland” and “join ICE today.”
“Trump has declared war on Chicago and now his secret police are running racist ads in Edgewater,” Abughazaleh wrote.
The recruiting push comes amid Trump’s weeks-long threats to flood Chicago with more immigration enforcement agents and possibly even National Guard troops. Protests across the city and in suburbs have pushed back on the recent influx of agents, which appeared to dampen Mexican Independence Day celebrations last weekend, and immigration arrests were reported across the region early this week.
Homeland Security officials have said the operation will target “criminal illegal aliens” who have taken advantage of the city and state’s sanctuary policies. A Tribune analysis found, however, that many immigrants who were previously arrested under Trump didn’t have criminal records. There have been few details released on how long this latest operation may last, or if Trump will deploy the National Guard to assist, as he’s previously suggested.
In the Franklin Park incident, DHS said the man had hit an officer with his car, then dragged the officer before the shooting. But state leaders, including Gov. JB Pritzker, have argued ICE has not been forthcoming in sharing details about the fatal shooting.
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