Despite President Donald Trump announcing he was sending National Guard troops to Memphis, and not Chicago, emotions in the region remained at a near-fever pitch Friday as protesters — including two candidates for Congress — confronted federal agents outside an immigration processing center in a near-west suburb.

In the city, meanwhile, Democratic Gov. JB Pritzker’s Gold Coast home became the focal point of a recent video from a right-wing internet provocateur as he used the fatal shooting of conservative activist Charlie Kirk to call for his social media followers to “take action,” sparking safety concerns among the governor’s supporters.

Protests outside the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in Broadview have been occurring nearly daily, but Friday’s actions became more tense as roughly a dozen agents in full riot gear with rifles appeared several times as about three dozen protesters gathered around the two-story brick building on Beach Street.

At one point, the agents approached about 30 protesters in a line and pushing and shoving soon followed, with a few of the protesters being forcibly moved away. Eventually, the federal agents retreated to a nearby parking garage as the protesters shouted, “Shame! Shame! Shame!”

Activists opposed to ICE’s escalating efforts to crack down on illegal immigration in the Chicago area had planned a 12-hour protest outside the facility. Throughout much of the morning, local police officers stood guard and, at times, separated the federal agents from the crowd. Occasionally, the agents would appear at the door of the building as a dispersal order was played over speakers.

During one of the standoffs on Friday morning, agents wearing gas masks used pepper spray against a group of protesters who were blocking a vehicle gate.

Among those protesting were two Democratic candidates seeking to represent the 9th Congressional District, which includes parts of the North Side as well as many northern and northwest suburbs. Broadview is in the 7th Congressional District, many miles away.

Kat Abughazaleh, a progressive content creator, and Evanston Mayor Daniel Biss participated in the protests, with Abughazaleh live-streaming some of the protests to her 116,000 followers on Instagram, and posting footage of her being shoved to the ground. Biss, who also accused federal personnel of “physically shoving” him, said he was there in part because federal immigration agents made an arrest in his North Shore community on Thursday.

Abughazaleh joined the protests in Broadview earlier this week and has repeatedly called on her social media followers to join her there.

“We’re peacefully protesting for our neighbors. What does ICE do? Pick us up and throw us on the ground. No arrest, no identification, no process,” she wrote in a video caption, later adding in a campaign email that she was “okay (except for bloody knees).”

The 26-year-old candidate, who is among the top fundraisers in the race, also sent an email earlier this week asking for funds with the subject line, “I physically blocked an ICE detention center.”

During part of the morning protests, a robotic voice repeated to protesters: “It is hereby declared that you are obstructing and impeding federal law enforcement officers in performance of their official duties, in violation of federal law. You are commanded to immediately disperse. If you do not do so, you may be arrested or subject to other police actions,” before later going on to warn that “other police action” could include “chemical or less lethal” weapons that posed the risk of “serious injury.”

Abughazaleh and Biss posted on social media in support of each other’s presence at the detention center protests.

“I feel that I have a responsibility to my constituents to stand up,” Biss said. “But it’s more than that. Look at this moment. Look at what’s happening in this country.

“I think that we will only get through this with a real mass protest movement across the country. I’ve always been a believer in protest. I’ve been someone who shows up to protest. I’ve in the past risked arrest, and I’m willing to do it today because I think this is how we’re going to overcome these attacks.”

After Biss left, protesters sat in the street in front of the driveway leading to the facility’s gate as a van prepared to leave. Speaking from behind the closed gate, the driver told the crowd he was trying to leave to get food for those being held inside.

“Free them instead,” one protester shouted.

While protests outside the Broadview facility have been occurring consistently since Trump began his second term in January, they have increased along with the Trump administration’s recent calls for increased federal immigration enforcement actions in Chicago.

On Monday, Trump’s Department of Homeland Security announced the launch of “Operation Midway Blitz.” The increased immigration raids were the first official action following weeks of the president vacillating between vows of “going in” to Chicago with National Guard troops to fight overall crime and threats for a more beefed-up immigration enforcement role by ICE.

On Friday, Trump appeared to take a full step back, for now at least, on the National Guard threats for Chicago, acknowledging the opposition of Democratic leaders in Chicago and Illinois led him instead to send them to Memphis.

Trump cited support from the Tennessee governor and the local mayor. But in making the announcement on Fox News’ “Fox and Friends,” the president maintained crime in Chicago was “out of control” and “worse than in Afghanistan,” though crime is down in the city from recent years.

“We’d love to save Chicago … But you know, they have professional agitators,” he said. “Because this is more than like protests. This is real agitation. This is riots on the street.”

Asked why not just go into Chicago, Trump said, “The Democrats don’t want it. Look, almost every city that’s in trouble is run by Democrats,” though he acknowledged that “there are a couple of bad Republican places, and we will fix them up.”

Trump did not address a federal court ruling in San Francisco that found his June deployment of the Guard and Marines in Los Angeles following immigration enforcement protests violated a 19th-century law restricting the military’s activities in domestic law enforcement.

“So we’re going to Memphis. I’m just announcing that now and we’ll straighten that out — National Guard and anybody else we need. And, by the way, we’ll bring the military too if we need it,” Trump said. “The mayor is happy and the governor of Tennessee, the governor is happy. Deeply troubled. We’re going to fix that.”

Last week, the Memphis Police Department reported what it called a “historic” 25-year low of overall crime in the first eight months of the year. Murders were at a six-year low, aggravated assaults at a five-year low and sexual assaults at a 20-year low, the Memphis police said.

Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson said Trump’s decision to deploy the Guard elsewhere was because of “the unified opposition from community leaders and elected officials,” and called on the administration to send additional resources to the city “to help us continue to drive down violent crime.”

Pritzker, who is one of Trump’s biggest political foes, criticized the president for sending the Guard into another city to tackle crime, a job that military forces aren’t trained for.

“It’s disturbing that the President is hellbent on sending troops onto America’s streets,” Pritzker said in a social media post. “Using those who serve in uniform as political props is insulting. None of this is normal.”

The already tense political environment amid Trump’s National Guard threats and his administration’s increased immigration enforcement activity ratcheted up even further after Kirk’s shooting death this week.

While Pritzker condemned the killing, his initial attempt to place Kirk’s death in the broader context of rising political violence, which he blamed in part on Trump’s rhetoric, drew a swift rebuke from the Illinois Republican Party. The state party later posted a selectively edited video of a speech Pritzker gave to New Hampshire Democrats this spring in which he said, “These Republicans cannot know a moment of peace.”

“It is this kind of dangerous rhetoric from the Democrats in leadership that keeps motivating these incidents!” the Illinois GOP said in a social media post Thursday.

The video snippet omitted the subsequent sentences in which Pritzker detailed how to fight Republicans — with voices and votes — as he called for Democrats to “fight their cruelty with every megaphone and microphone that we have” and “castigate them on the soapbox and then punish them at the ballot box.”

As Republicans ripped Pritzker, a right-wing commentator for the Real America’s Voice network posted a video to social media from outside Pritzker’s home in Chicago’s Gold Coast neighborhood in which he called the governor a “scumbag” and a “worthless politician,” blaming political violence on “leftist Democrat policies, who took God out of society, replaced God with government.”

After decrying legal protections for transgender people, abortion rights and immigrants who are in the country without legal permission, Ben Bergquam, who hosts the show “Law & Border” and has been accompanying ICE agents around Chicago, said, “Godless leftist policies are the problem, evil is the problem and it’s politicians like Gov. Pritzker.”

“It’s people like that that need to be defeated, ideas like that that need to be defeated,” Bergquam said, pointing to Pritzker’s home. “God bless Charlie Kirk’s family. If you’re not inspired now, I don’t know what it’s going to take. Better get up. Better get active. We got a country to save.”

Pritzker’s office did not respond to a request for comment, but the two Democratic leaders of the state legislature made statements on social media Friday accusing Bergquam of inciting violence, though Bergquam made no explicit call to violence in the roughly 2-minute video.

“We all spoke in unison this week to condemn political violence,” House Speaker Emanuel “Chris” Welch of Hillside said. “Today, we all need to speak in unison once again. A right-wing influencer’s threatening video in front of our governor’s home brought the rhetoric that escalates tension, spreads fear and foments violence to our community. Whether you consider this behavior intimidation, doxing, or an outright call for further violence, it is unacceptable.”

After posting a statement in which he described Bergquam’s language as “hate speech,” Senate President Don Harmon of Oak Park issued a joint statement later Friday with Senate GOP Leader John Curran of Downers Grove “condemning violence and calling for peaceful debate.”

“We are committed to working together to ensure that people throughout our state know that Illinois is a safe place to take part in our democratic systems without fear,” the statement said.

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