Fascism in theory and practice

Dan Jones was jolted awake around 1 a.m. Tuesday to the sound of federal agents trying to break through his apartment door. They couldn’t get past his double lock, so he went back to bed.

But when he woke up hours later for work, he walked out and found broken doors littering the hallway — and his neighbors missing.

Jones, 27, is among the residents left at 7500 S. South Shore Drive who are trying to piece together what remains after an early morning, high-powered federal immigration raid led to the arrests of dozens of their neighbors at their South Shore apartment building.

Armed federal agents in military fatigues busted down their doors overnight, pulling men, women and children from their apartments, some of them naked, residents and witnesses said. Agents approached or entered nearly every apartment in the five-story building, and U.S. citizens were among those detained for hours.

When he got home from work, Jones said he entered his unit to find all of his electronics and furniture missing, and all of his clothes and shoes thrown on the floor. Jones said he had no idea who took his belongings and hadn’t received answers from Chicago police.

“I’m pissed off,” Jones said. “I feel defeated because the authorities aren’t doing anything.”

On Wednesday, toys, shoes and food were still in piles in the building’s hallways. Property managers were seen throwing mattresses and broken doors into dumpsters. . . .

In the South Shore raid, neighbors said federal agents used flashbang grenades to burst through the building and several drones and helicopters were deployed.

Ebony Sweets Watson, who lives across the street, said it “looked like hundreds” of agents were outside her front door.

Watson said she saw agents dragging residents, including kids, out of the building without any clothes on and into U-Haul vans. Kids were separated from their mothers, she said.

“It was heartbreaking to watch,” said Watson. “Even if you’re not a mother, seeing kids coming out buck naked and taken from their mothers, it was horrible.”

Watson said she went into the building to help one of the residents and was shocked by what she saw.

“Stuff was everywhere,” said Watson. “You could see people’s birth certificates, and papers thrown all over. Water was leaking into the hallway. It was wicked crazy.”

The rationale here is that there were some Venezuelans living in the building, so naturally they must be members of the Tren de Aragua gang, even though a recent in-depth investigation by the Chicago Sun-Times found basically no evidence that the gang has any real presence in Chicago.

As Cohn points out, there is a dangerous gang roving the streets of our cities — and they’re the paid agents of Kristi Noem and Stephen Miller, who are the two people most directly responsible for these atrocities. (I’m sure they show the demented drooling King Leer who is their putative boss plenty of fascist porn produced by these raids).