Illinois National Guard Members Plan to Refuse "Midway Blitz" Orders

By Chuck Fager

BREAKING: This report was almost done when news came that two members of the Illinois National Guard had goes public with their intention to refuse orders to deploy to Chicago in support of the ongoing “Midway Blitz” raids by ICE and Border Patrol agents.

Captain Dylan Blaha, and Staff Sergeant Demi Palacek have protested the anti-immigrant sweeps, and both are candidates in upcoming Democratic primary elections: Blaha for a Congressional seat, and Palacek for the Illinois legislature. Such orders have not come to them yet: National Guard troops have been called up, but have been prevented from deploying in Chicago by court orders, which are now being appealed to the U. S. Supreme Court.

Interviewed on CBC radio in Canada on October 29, the pair said their stand was a matter of conscience. “I never, never expected that I would be deployed against my neighbors, against my community,” said Blaha, in an interview with the Canadian Broadcasting Company’s news program As It Happens.

Palacek, who is Mexican, said Trump’s anti-immigrant crackdown is terrorizing her community. Immigrants who are doing everything by the book are being swept up in Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents raids, she says. And once detained, often go missing in the system. “We just don't know where they are,” she said. “Their families don't know where they are.” . . .

Palecek says people in Illinois are scared to go to work or bring their kids to school, fearing they’ll be detained. She’s in the process of working with volunteers to hand out bags of candy for children who are too afraid to go trick-or-treating this Halloween.

When Palecek knocks on doors in her district, she says people freeze when they learn she’s a member of the National Guard. “I just tell them my story,” she said. “And that’s what they think of the National Guard — a humanitarian or someone that fights for the community, not just someone that just follows a dictator's orders.”

Read more via the full report on Quaker House's Substack.