It’s been more than a fortnight since the Tamale Lady was lifted by Ice. Laura Murillo, a fixture in the Back of the Yards neighbourhood of Chicago for two decades, had acquired a localised fame for the quality of her sweet and savoury masa dough snacks.

She is 51, a single mother. Immigration agents arrived when she was setting up her stall at the usual spot shortly after 7.30am. A Reddit post later declared: Tamale Lady was taken on 47th and western. “Masked guys took her away, left her cart and van. I’m gonna miss her she was a very nice lady.”

That is the way it has been in Chicagoland since: rumours and sudden snatchings and protests and, from the White House, ominous threats from president Donald Trump and other administration members that the city – with a population of three million – is a “war zone”.

For weeks, the president had been hinting at sending the national guard to Chicago, a city for which he reserves a special animus. On Monday evening, Texas governor Gregg Abbott posted a photograph of several national guardsmen boarding an aircraft and flying north. “God Speed,” he wrote.

Then, on Thursday, US district judge April Perry temporarily blocked the Trump administration from deploying the national guard in Illinois, following more than two hours of arguments from lawyers for the federal government and the state of Illinois. The order took effect on Thursday and will remain in place for two weeks, with the judge reportedly saying she had “seen no credible evidence that there is a danger of a rebellion in the state of Illinois”.

For those of us in downtown Chicago, the apocalyptic reports from leading figures from the administration – Pam Bondi, Kash Patel – made for a delirious contrast with the late-afternoon scenario. The last of the season’s tourists ambled around Michigan and East Wacker, stopping for photographs in front of the imperious, gleaming tower that bears the surname, in huge silver capitals, of the president of the United States.