OPINION:
Every day, I drive DuSable Lake Shore Drive from one end of Chicago to the other.
Tents line the frozen lakefront, enduring Lake Michigan winds that would kill the unprepared. Inside them are mostly military-age men, organized enough to sustain encampments through a Chicago winter.
This is a daily scene for anyone making this drive. Ask any alderman or Illinois senator to explain it. Silence.
As a historian who has studied military bearing from Crispus Attucks to the Tuskegee Airmen, I know what trained men look like. Civilians fleeing hardship don’t survive Chicago winters in tents. Trained soldiers do.
There’s a word for organized, large-scale movement of military-age foreign nationals into American territory, enabled by foreign states and shielded by domestic institutions. The political class won’t use it, but I know what happens to nations that refuse to name existential threats.
This is a de facto invasion.
Venezuela’s reach extends to Illinois
Nicolas Maduro’s January fall exposed Venezuela’s reach into America. Federal and intelligence officials have documented how foreign actors, including Venezuelan and Russian networks, have targeted U.S. elections with disinformation campaigns, fake documents and proxy organizations operating on U.S. soil.
These are the same corridors now funneling thousands of foreign nationals into our cities.
Illinois adds vulnerability. Our automatic voter registration has produced hundreds of erroneous noncitizen registrations. Combine undocumented military-age men with systems struggling to block noncitizens from rolls, and the national security problem is obvious — no conspiracy required.
Then there’s fentanyl. Mexican cartels using Chinese precursor chemicals made it the leading cause of death for Americans ages 18 to 45.
This isn’t just a drug crisis. It’s also a weaponized supply chain moving through the same southern routes that bring military-age men to Chicago’s lakefront. Two instruments, one corridor.
How the census turns invasion into power
Every person in those lakefront encampments gets counted in the U.S. census. That count sets congressional seats, Electoral College weight and federal dollars.
Illinois loses population and seats, but Chicago’s count, swollen by a population that city policy deliberately attracts, preserves power belonging to legal residents who built and tax this city. The invasion doesn’t just occupy territory; it also converts into congressional representation at citizens’ expense.
That’s no accident. For beneficiaries, it’s the point.
The authority Washington refuses to use
Congress has tools. It can condition federal funding on immigration enforcement, let foreign terrorist organization designations override sanctuary ordinances and reform apportionment to count citizens only. These are existing authorities that senators from Illinois decline to use.
Every DuSable commuter sees what happens when naming problems scares politicians more than solving them. From Attucks to Buffalo Soldiers to Tuskegee Airmen, those who built America’s credibility with their lives didn’t make that bargain. Illinois deserves a senator who won’t either.
This is a de facto invasion. It ends when Washington admits it and Illinois sends someone to force the issue.
• Jimmy Lee Tillman II is a historian, South Side Chicago resident and author of “Tillman’s Handbook of Great Black American Patriots.” He is running for U.S. Senate in Illinois.
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