CHICAGO () With expanded immigration enforcement operations expected to focus largely on Democratic-led cities like Chicago, Los Angeles and New York, a standoff between city leadership and the Trump administration could reach new levels, creating concerns of collateral damage for some migrants calling those cities home.

After President Donald Trump deployed National Guard troops and Marines to Los Angeles to contend with anti-ICE protests, Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker is expecting Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents will be sent “in force” to Chicago. When more federal agents arrive, and what enforcement operations will look like, remain unknown for now.

However, the city remains in the sights of Trump administration officials and allies, such as U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., who toured the Chicago ICE field office on Wednesday and blamed Democrats like Pritzker and Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson for “being on the wrong side of the law.”

“Any politician it doesn’t matter what party you’re in you should be in favor of the people who are upholding the law and trying to keep our communities safe,” Johnson said Wednesday. “The idea that the mayor here would say the crazy things that he has said about ICE, he’s got it completely upside down.

“He is applauding and supporting dangerous criminals instead of the people who are trying to keep our citizens safe.”

Johnson has criticized Pritzker, who told reporters this week that Trump is “going after the wrong people” in his mission to pull off the largest mass deportation mission in history.

While Pritzker agrees migrants who entered the country illegally and have committed crimes should be deported, he insists that other migrants are being unfairly targeted by ICE as more enforcement operations ramp up around Chicago.

“We don’t know exactly how big that force will be, but I do know that (Trump) has used other law enforcement along with ICE to carry out his ill-conceived mission,” Pritzker said.

What ICE is planning for in Chicago

Sam Olson, the field director of the Chicago ICE field office, told local affiliate WGN this week that federal agents will be in the streets seven days a week to enforce immigration law.

The ramp-up comes as the White House has called for ICE to make 3,000 arrests per day. Administration officials say ICE has made 100,000 migrant arrests since Trump took office. But Johnson told Fox News on Wednesday that the Chicago field office is understaffed and overwhelmed at a time when Department of Homeland Security officials claim that assaults on federal agents were up 413%.

His comments came a day after New York City Comptroller and Democratic mayoral candidate Brad Lander was arrested by ICE while attempting to accompany a migrant out of immigration court and was taken into custody, sparking outrage among Democrats who credit Trump for being behind ICE’s tactics.

Yet with tensions high, Olson said agents in Chicago have a job they are committed to doing.

“While we’re focusing on a lot of the criminals, there are a subset of those who are here illegally that have final orders of removal that were maybe on some type of reporting procedure, but at some point, they’ve already been already ordered removed by a judge, so again, we’re just enforcing that order,” Olson told WGN this week.

Could Chicago be the National Guard’s next destination?

Pritzker claimed this week that Trump sending Marines and the National Guard to Los Angeles hasn’t worked out too well for him politically. Due to pushback, the governor doesn’t expect military troops to be deployed to other locations, such as Chicago. However, that will keep the focus on ICE and other agencies that Trump has vowed to use in immigration enforcement.

The push for more arrests comes as Speaker Johnson and other Republicans are attempting to pass Trump’s “big, beautiful bill,” which has $150 billion earmarked to provide more funding to ICE and other agencies for immigration enforcement.

With more money in ICE coffers, Chicago Democrats fear that it signals more trouble for migrants who are already on edge over the increased presence of more agents who are already seeking to meet arrest number expectations coming from the top.

“If money is allocated like that …. not only are (ICE enforcement operations) going to be normalized, but they’re also going to be expanded to the dire consequences of destroying entire cities,” Chicago Alderman Byron Sigcho-Lopez told . “It’s going to happen because of an individual who is acting as a dictator and not as a president.”

Not all Chicago leaders on same page

As Chicago’s mayor continues to call for more resistance to Trump’s immigration policies directed at left-leaning cities, other city leaders are hoping for compromise.

Alderman Raymond Lopez, a Democrat who has pushed for the city to tweak its existing sanctuary city policy, predicted Trump’s focus on Chicago was looming. Lopez previously accused the mayor of engaging in a “political game of chicken” with Trump and is calling on the city to extend an olive branch. Realistically, though, he fears nothing will happen.

“I think it’s only going to get worse,” Lopez told on Wednesday. “(City leaders) want to have a continual state of distraction with this administration because it deflects from their own failures to actually solve any problems in our city and in our country.”

Lopez, who has met privately with White House border czar Tom Homan, believes focusing on migrant criminals who have entered the country illegally over the past four years is “more than enough to keep this administration busy and more than enough to allow the president to meet his goals.”

But he says with the mayor and others unwilling to budge, the spotlight pointed at Chicago will not dim, and that “collateral captures” of migrants attempting to find asylum in Chicago to achieve a better life will continue as ICE ramps up its activity.

“We are choosing to keep the target on the backs of our city and the backs of our undocumented community by thumbing our noses at Trump 2.0,” Lopez said. “He’s been very true to his word about what he wants to do. And no one should be surprised he’s acting on what he said.”

“The federal government is bigger than the city of Chicago,” Lopez added. “And now, we’re going to feel it.”