Three Days In Chicago: A City on the Brink
Groups are finding new ways to stand up to ICE in Chicago. Here are their stories.
Chicago, Illinois
YOU NEVER KNOW WHERE ENFORCEMENT AGENTS will show up in Chicago, a fact that leaves everyone on edge.
Agents are moving quickly in and out of neighborhoods. They’re doing so, in part, to avoid angry community members who are moving swiftly to try to stop abductions.
On Tuesday, I was riding with a rapid-response team—young organizers with Increase the Peace, a community group that fields anti-ICE crews like this. We were on the South Side, in the Back of the Yards neighborhood, which has a large concentration of undocumented residents. The organizers were all women in their mid-twenties. (One told me her parents became citizens this year but say they don’t “feel” like citizens.) They take different shifts for ICE watch—Migra watch, as they call it. As the Trump deportation machine has begun consuming their city, they’ve developed a new set of twitchy habits. They text on the encrypted app Signal. They keep their heads on a swivel looking for suspicious cars. They have their phone cameras always ready-to-hand. And they have an encyclopedic knowledge of what is and is not the law when it comes to arrests and detentions.
These organizers emphasize to community members that they should expect more racial profiling by enforcement agents. They also warn that “probable cause” could include any attempt to evade ICE’s grasp. It’s why they’ve been telling people not to run if they see agents.
But some people still run. The same morning I was riding with those activists, immigrants on the North Side were fleeing agents after they descended on a Home Depot near Albany Park.
One pro-immigrant advocate I spoke with described the scene. He had been on site at the Lincolnwood Home Depot with eight day laborers when three cars and roughly ten Customs and Border Patrol agents ambushed the workers. It quickly turned to chaos as the workers ran in different directions. Four sprinted toward the Chicago River, followed by three CBP agents. The advocate, who asked that I not name him for fear of reprisal, ran after the agents and documented their attempt to capture the workers. He shared a video of the encounter with me, on the condition that I could describe it but not post it. Here’s what I saw: