"To all the Dreamers that are here in this room and the city of Chicago: you are welcome in the city of Chicago. This is your home and you have nothing to worry about."

When President Trump announced that the unconstitutional DACA program, put in place by President Obama after Congress refused to pass it into law, would be allowed to expire unless Congress took action on border security, former White House chief of staff and current Chicago mayor Rahm Emanuel (aka “Rahmbo”) announced that Chicago would become a “ Trump-free zone ,” a sanctuary city welcoming and protecting any and all illegal aliens.

He added: “Chicago, our schools, our neighborhoods, our city, as it relates to what President Trump said, will be a Trump-free zone. You have nothing to worry about. And I want you to know this, and I want your families to know this. And rest assured, I want you to come to school… and pursue your dreams.”

The problem is that he forgot the beleaguered African-Americans in his city burdened by debt and high taxes as its citizens fight poverty, joblessness, and high crime rates. They have dreams too, such as getting to school alive or being able to do their homework with a bullet piercing their bedroom window. On Thursday, this key and long-taken-for-granted part of the Democrat constituency, took to Chicago’s streets, and one expressway, to ask where they must flee to find the sanctuary Rahm Emanuel promises for illegal aliens:

An anti-violence march in Chicago briefly closed Lake Shore Drive on Thursday afternoon, as protesters demonstrated against the city's spiraling crime crisis and called for Mayor Rahm Emanuel to step down. A spokesman for Chicago police said Lake Shore Drive was closed for about 35 minutes on Thursday afternoon, as demonstrators marched toward Wrigley Field, where the Cubs were scheduled to play later in the evening… The demonstrators waved signs demanding Emanuel's resignation and chanted "one city, one Chicago" and "Rahm has to go," as fans watched from inside the park… Ahead of the march, protesters made clear they didn't want the Democratic mayor's support or blessing -- they were urging him to resign over what they called his inability to get gun crime under control.

Demonstrators said they took that route because if they had protested in their neighborhoods the city’s cultural and political elites and the national liberal media would have paid little heed to what was really a protest of Rahm Emanuel’s indifference to his citizen constituents as he embraces illegal aliens. Certainly the media would have ignored the calls for Trump’s help and demands for Emanuel to resign:

"Rahm Emanuel is a con man. His whole job is to keep black folks divided," one man told Fox News' Gianno Caldwell, who covered the march. More than 1,600 people have been shot in Chicago this year, including three children who were recently wounded while playing basketball. Residents said after the shooting that the situation is so bad, children are being kept indoors for their safety. One woman said Thursday that Emanuel "doesn't care about anybody" except his own neighborhood and his own family, while another woman said Emanuel seems to care more about illegal immigrants in the city. “African-Americans, we're citizens, and our ancestors built this country," she told Caldwell, whose younger brother survived a shooting last year that killed his best friend. State Rep. La Shawn Ford, a Democrat who represents the West Side of Chicago, called on President Trump to help the city. "Not everyone believes Chicago is a Trump-free zone. If he's serious about helping the people... I accept his help. We can't turn any help away," said Ford, adding that seniors and children need to have safe streets and federal authorities need to help the local police.

As noted, Caldwell has personal knowledge of Chicago’s murder and crime spree from which its citizens can find no sanctuary. As he wrote at the end of July on Fox News Opinion:

During Memorial Day weekend last year, my younger brother and two of his friends were sitting in a car on the south side of Chicago when two men walked up to the window and fired 25 times. With his bloodied best friend dead in his arms, it was only through God's grace and mercy that my younger brother made it out alive… Right now, Chicago is going through another bloody summer of gun violence. In fact, at the beginning of this month more than 23 people were shot in one weekend -- including three who were killed. The wounded included girls ages 5, 14 and 15. The next weekend things were even worse, as the local CBS affiliate headlined on its website: “4 Killed, 24 Wounded in Weekend Shootings Across Chicago.” And just last Monday, reporting on the shootings of the weekend, the local ABC affiliate headlined: “Chicago weekend violence: 7 killed, 38 shot.”

Much of Chicago’s violence stems from gang bangers, particularly those imported from south of the border, and from the steady supply of illegal drugs that are a consequence of the open borders and sanctuary city policies Rahm Emanuel supports. It is called “gun violence” when it is in fact gang violence fueled by drug trafficking. As Katie Pavlich writes at TownHall:

As the violence in Chicago's gang plagued neighborhoods rages on, the underlying cause of the Windy City's murder rampages can be found thousands of miles away along a porous border. According to a report from Breitbart's Jeremy Segal, Mexican drug cartels are "allowed" to run Chicago's streets and young African-American men are killing each other as a result. Harold “Noonie” Ward, a former high-ranking member of the Gangster Disciples, one of America’s largest street gangs, claims the deadly violence that is plaguing Rahm Emanuel’s “world class city” of Chicago is because Mexican drug cartels are being allowed by “the powers that be” to operate freely and “run” Chicago’s streets. In an interview with Breitbart News outside of his childhood home, a now-condemned apartment in Altgeld Gardens, one of Chicago’s most well known housing projects, Ward explained that there are a number of issues leading to the bloodshed in the city. The greatest reason, Ward says, is drugs and how they are being brought into the city. “Where the drugs are coming from is Mexican cartels,” Ward said. “From Mexico to Chicago, they make $3.5 billion dollars a year. And the majority of violence in Chicago, comes from the Mexican cartels.”

Rahm Emanuel faces another tough reelection bid in 2019. He and other mayors not only believe we should have open borders but that those who cross them to enter sanctuary cities such as his should be allowed to vote. Coincidence? I think not. He and his ilk are willing to trade American lives for votes. If you can’t find enough voters, you import them in the form of undocumented Democrats.

Meanwhile, blacks in Chicago are getting wise. It may be time for regime change in Chicago. As President Trump said in the campaign as he actively called for black votes, what do you have to lose?

Daniel John Sobieski is a free lance writer whose pieces have appeared in Investor’s Business Daily, Human Events, Reason Magazine and the Chicago Sun-Times among other publications.