The sun went down and the volume went up.
In the shadow of Chicago’s high-rise skyline, downtown streets reverberated with protest.
“Ain’t no power like the power of the people, and the power of the people don’t stop,” they chanted.
The president’s plan to deploy troops in the city brought hundreds to the streets in opposition.
They marched the full length of Michigan Avenue, flanked by a line of Chicago police officers.
This is a city on edge, the federal government taking on the state, both braced for a showdown.
Among the people I spoke to, there was no surprise about Donald Trump’s threat to invoke the Insurrection Act, just outrage.
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Asked why he’d joined the protest, a Vietnam veteran pointed to the word ‘Trump’ blazing in bright lights from a nearby hotel.
“That idiot right there, that’s why,” he said.
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His message to the president: “Get the hell out of the White House, or we will put you out of it.”
“I’m on this march because I’m concerned the US is slipping away from democracy to authoritarianism,” another man told me.
One older woman said she was marching for her daughters and granddaughters, “because there isn’t going to be an America for them”.
“I don’t think he [Donald Trump] listens to anybody,” she added, “but doing nothing is not going to do anything so we got to do something.”
A young African American woman told me she felt compelled to march because immigration agents “taking people from their families just isn’t right”.
Shades of orange and pink reflected off the glass skyscrapers, casting long shadows on the streets where the threat of troop deployment looms.
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Hundreds of National Guard troops from Texas have set up camp at Elwood, an army training centre on the outskirts of Chicago.
Their presence drew a diverse crowd of protesters to the city centre – their faces lit by phone screens, voices raised and fists raised in defiance.
“No ICE, no fear,” they chanted, telling Immigration Customs Enforcement agents to leave Chicago.
“Immigrants are welcome here,” they repeated on cue from those wielding megaphones.
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It was much more than the noise of protest. This was the pulse of a city fighting back.
A restless city, charged with tension, refusing to be silent.
