Wednesday morning, President Donald Trump escalated his war of words with Democratic officials in Illinois with a Truth Social post stating: “Chicago Mayor should be in jail for failing to protect Ice Officers! Governor Pritzker also!”

There’s no evidence that either Mayor Brandon Johnson or Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker has done anything but follow the law and exercise their constitutional rights in opposing Trump’s immigration offensive in Chicago which now includes Texas National Guard troops.

But there is a growing body of evidence that Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers are abusing their power so boldly that in a just world, they’d go to jail.

This morning, there is video of an ICE security officer shooting a peaceful protesting priest in the head with some kind of crowd control munition, possibly a pepper ball. News reports haven’t yet confirmed the events yet, but I have confirmed the video is of an ICE location in Illinois. In any case, the abusive act is akin to a host of events fueling growing outrage in the city.

That priest isn’t even the first member of the clergy shot by federal agents in Illinois. Reporters covering the protests have been pepper sprayed and shot with rubber bullets as well.

On Tuesday, the Chicago Tribune reported that a masked federal agent pointed his assault rifle at a neighborhood activist for merely recording his actions, something any American is allowed to do under well-established First Amendment law.

Those guns are going off as well. Last week, Border Patrol agents claimed they shot an unarmed woman after she rammed their car with hers, but her defense attorney says he will release body camera footage that shows the Border Patrol car veered into her.

Last month, ICE agents shot and killed a man they said had “seriously injured” injured another ICE officer, but now there is body cam footage of the officer saying his injuries were “nothing major.”

And the ICE raids in Illinois seem as if they are provoking the very warlike atmosphere that Trump has used to justify his National Guard deployment over the objections of Gov. Pritzker. In one case, hundreds of federal agents swarmed an apartment building, including rappelling from Black Hawk helicopters onto the roof to arrest dozens of residents without regard to whether they were U.S. citizens or not, and holding them zip-tied for hours before releasing them.

I have written that Trump was elected to take a tough stand on undocumented immigration. Arresting and deporting millions of people here illegally is well within his rights. Indeed, it is his duty to protect the country, but that does not justify the wholesale abrogation of U.S. citizens’ rights.

Just as Trump has the right as president to order aggressive immigration enforcement, U.S. citizens have the right to sleep in their beds at night without fear of federal agents invading their apartment with no warrant and no justification just because they live near undocumented immigrants.

U.S. citizens have the right to protest and pray in opposition to Trump’s immigration crackdown, just as millions of U.S. citizens voted for Trump to undertake the effort.

Journalists and everyday Americans have a First Amendment right to document what is happening in their neighborhoods, without being threatened by deadly violence by masked men acting on the president’s orders.

What is happening in Illinois won’t stay in Illinois. Undocumented immigrants live all over the country, many in places that are not sanctuary cities that have invited Trump’s scrutiny.

If Trump is sincere about his plan to purge undocumented immigrants from the country and these are the tactics he intends to deploy to make that happen, then we can expect what is happening in the streets of Chicago and its suburbs to come to neighborhoods near our own.

Then Trump will have made all of America a war zone. He was not elected to do that.

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