A beautiful early fall weekend in downtown Chicago. Sun-splashed lakefront. Families enjoying the museums and city sights. Packs of men in military fatigues carrying high-powered long guns and seemingly stopping people on the street based on the color of their skin.

Which of those images doesn’t belong?

On Sunday, Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents made a performative show of transforming an otherwise peaceful downtown into something out of a bad movie. Masked and menacing by design, they tromped around Millennium Park, patrolled the Magnificent Mile and manned boats traversing the placid waters of the Chicago River.

And for what? Why?

Gregory Bovino, the chief patrol agent for the weekslong Chicago operation that ICE is calling Operation Midway Blitz, didn’t substantively answer questions posed to him Sunday by journalists reporting on the scene. But we think we understand what was at work.

We believe this was essentially a provocation, a response to sharp criticism from Gov. JB Pritzker and Mayor Brandon Johnson and a blunt demonstration of the truth that our state and local politicians essentially have no say over where these federal agents choose to go in search of people in the country illegally. If so, mission accomplished.

We’ve said consistently that the feds are tasked with enforcing the country’s immigration laws, plain and simple. In Donald Trump, Americans elected a president who was as clear as could be about his immigration agenda and promised mass deportations. No one should be surprised. And the failures over many years of Democrats and Republicans to address both the overwhelmed southern border and our broken immigration system have led to this unsettling moment.

That stipulated, ICE representatives and Trump administration officials repeatedly have emphasized how they’re targeting people here illegally who have criminal records. In a recent letter to the editor, published by the Tribune, Bovino and acting ICE Director Todd Lyons stated the following in relation to an Elgin home raid earlier this month that the Tribune Editorial Board had criticized in some respects: “Officers and agents arrested five illegal immigrants, including individuals convicted or arrested for crimes such as a DUI with a child passenger, violent assault, domestic violence and felony stalking.”

The Tribune reported after the raid that when one of the detained men in question appeared in court, U.S. Magistrate Judge Keri Holleb Hoatling refuted the federal assertions of a criminal background, at least in the case of that individual. “This is the shortest report I’ve ever seen on anybody,” she said. “He has a criminal history of nothing. … There is no danger that I see to the community whatsoever.”

So which is it?

We’ve seen multiple instances of ICE asserting that detainees had criminal records, and when reporters search records, they find no corroboration.

That doesn’t mean on its face that ICE’s claims are false. But it does call for more transparency from immigration enforcement. If ICE is going to justify its aggressive tactics by saying over and over again that it’s focusing on illegal immigrants with criminal records, then the agency should provide documentation of such contentions. That’s the standard that applies to local law enforcement — indeed, it applies to other federal law-enforcement agencies — and it’s not too much to ask of ICE.

There’s a reason ICE representatives keep saying their primary aim is to remove illegal immigrants with criminal records. Polls show that’s what a majority of Americans want from ICE rather than actions targeting those in the country illegally regardless of whether in every other respect they’ve been law-abiding, productive taxpayers, potentially for decades, given the long-standing lax enforcement of immigration laws.

Blue cities such as Chicago aren’t the only places where this point of view is common. We’ve seen reports of more than one instance of rural communities in Republican states banding together to protest detainment of longtime residents who had been mainstays of those towns and villages.

It’s in the agency’s own interest — at least in terms of its public standing — to show its receipts regarding assertions of criminal backgrounds.

Meanwhile, a jarring show of force on the Mag Mile and the Gold Coast was hardly in furtherance of these stated goals of removing criminals who are here illegally. We agree with Pritzker when he posted on X, “It’s a show of intimidation, instilling fear in our communities and hurting our businesses.”

More conservative voices within the Democratic Party tent echoed the governor. “It looks un-American,” Ald. Brendan Reilly, whose 42nd Ward includes parts of downtown, said on Monday. “This is not helping anybody.” Fellow downtown Ald. Brian Hopkins, 2nd, said his constituents “recognize this as a farce and a publicity stunt.”

This is usually one of the best times of the year in Chicago. The weather typically is beautiful; football season is well underway; and the city shines. Even if dozens of heavily armed immigration enforcers have the legal right to patrol Chicago’s most heavily visited areas hunting for quarry, that doesn’t mean they should.

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