It’s a Wednesday morning in Chicago and we’re waiting to find out if hungry people will have help getting fed this month.

The government shut down on Oct. 1, placing the federally funded Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program — which supports about 42 million Americans — in peril. Of the households that rely on SNAP, around 80% include a child, an elderly person or someone with a disability. During every previous government shutdown, SNAP continued to be funded.

This time, the USDA sent a letter to state agencies on Oct. 10 telling them not to pay SNAP benefits for November. That set off a series of legal battles, with President Donald Trump's administration saying at one point that it would send partial payments, then being ordered by two federal judges to send full payments, then appealing to the Supreme Court to avoid making full payments.

As I write this, the government is beginning to reopen. That should restart SNAP funding, but it’s not clear how quickly full payments will resume.

As I write this, Thanksgiving is two weeks away.

It’s a Wednesday morning in Chicago and we’re waiting to find out if Federal Border Patrol chief Gregory Bovino and his armed, masked agents will be departing our city.

Three sources told the Chicago Tribune that the agents, here as part of a widespread, violent anti-immigration crackdown, will be leaving shortly. CBS and CNN reported that they’re headed to North Carolina next.

But Tricia McLaughlin, Department of Homeland Security assistant secretary, suggested otherwise. “We’re not leaving Chicago,” she posted on X.

Since arriving in September, agents have arrested thousands of Chicagoans, shot and killed a Franklin Park man, detained U.S. citizens and destroyed their homes, deployed tear gas against demonstrators and children in violation of a judge’s order, handcuffed Ald. Jessie Fuentes at a hospital for asking if they had a warrant, fired chemical agents at clergy members and torn apart countless families — in service of, purportedly, ridding Chicago of “the worst of the worst.”

The torn-apart families include Gary, Indiana, siblings whose mother was arrested while hiding in a basement closet, whose father was arrested while hiding on his roof and whose 14-year-old U.S. citizen brother — never so much as suspended from school, let alone run afoul of the law — was being held in a Lake County Juvenile Detention Center.

They include a Portage Park father who was illegally detained at a suburban Home Depot while his 16-year-old daughter was on a temporary break from cancer treatment at Lurie Children’s Hospital.

They include a husband who sat sobbing in the parking lot of the Broadview detention center after his wife showed up for an immigration court appointment and was suddenly taken into a different room and never heard from again. He tracked her phone to Broadview and then the signal disappeared.

The majority of immigrants arrested by ICE have no criminal record, according to government data. Research consistently shows immigrants commit fewer crimes than U.S.-born individuals. Even if someone is proven to be undocumented, that is not a crime in the United States. It’s a civil offense. Even if someone is convicted of a crime in the United States, they don’t lose their right to be treated with human dignity.

It’s a Wednesday morning in Chicago and we’re waiting to find out the fate of child care worker Diana Santillana Galeano, violently arrested from her Spanish-immersion preschool on the city’s North Side in front of traumatized children, parents and staff. Child care centers used to be protected from immigration raids under a “sensitive locations” directive, but the Trump administration removed that protection on the president’s first day in office.

Galeano is a Colombian national who fled to the United States because of “threats to her safety,” according to a habeas corpus petition filed after her arrest, and entered the U.S. in 2023, the Chicago Tribune reported. The petition said she filed an asylum application and was granted employment authorization through November 2029, has no criminal history and was arrested without a warrant. An online petition demanding her release has gathered more than 30,000 signatures.

Several people have emailed me, in response to comments I’ve made about this case on social media, asking why Galeano didn't just pull over when agents were chasing her car, preventing them from coming into her workplace, I suppose.

Would you? If armed agents with a documented history of arresting U.S. citizens, violating the rights of people in their custody, disappearing people from immigration court, lying to officials, tear-gassing children and shooting pepper balls at clergy members were chasing you? I wouldn't.

The more relevant question is why anyone finds it easier to trust the instincts and motives of an administration run by a 34-time felon who proudly declared war on his own people over the instincts and motives of a child care provider with no clout, no power and everything to lose.

It’s a Wednesday morning in Chicago, and we are, so many of us, furious. And heartbroken. And determined not to let cruelty win.

The food drives give me hope. The ICE whistles give me hope. The peaceful resisters — suburban moms and fed-up high school students and millions of No Kings demonstrators and faith leaders of every stripe and neighbors from North Side, South Side, West Side blocks — give me hope.

It’s a Wednesday morning in Chicago. But it’s also a Wednesday morning in America.

And we’re waiting to see what we stand for. Stand for meaning what defines us, and stand for meaning what we’ll allow. What we cherish, and what we’re willing to concede.

Who we’ll protect from the abuse of power, and whose abuse of power we’ll protect.

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