An Example for Working People and Their Allies in Defending Undocumented Immigrants

By Cathleen Gutekanst

CHICAGO, Illinois — “I felt as if I had to do something, anything. Otherwise, I was going to drive myself crazy, worrying about all of these people, my neighbors,” said Sonia Sarmiento. She was explaining why she stands outside Senn High School on Chicago’s North Side in the afternoon when school gets out. Sarmiento is a neighborhood volunteer and part of a team that looks out for high school students. They stand ready to document abuses and to protect students if Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) patrols come close to the school grounds.

Since the start of Operation Midway Blitz, heavily armed federal agents have descended on this city and the surrounding suburbs. They have shot at least two people, killing one, and have sprayed bystanders with pepper balls and tear gas, including a children’s Halloween parade in a neighborhood park. They have beaten protesters, bystanders, and journalists, and have abducted undocumented and legal residents, including children.

The stepped-up abductions, arrests, and deportations are part of the broad anti-immigrant campaign of the administration of U.S. president Donald Trump.

“What we’re seeing now is what the rest of the nation can expect,” said Fred Tsao, senior policy counsel for the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights (ICIRR). “What immigration enforcement looks like now is not just arrests. It’s public intimidation.”

Life in Chicago has changed as thousands respond to ICE attacks

These attacks, however, have not gone unanswered. Daily life in Chicago has changed in just the three months since Trump announced he was planning to send troops to Chicago; how much so is difficult to describe.

Thousands of Chicago-area residents have undergone training in how to respond quickly to ICE raids as part of Rapid Response teams. These people are out on the street, blowing whistles and honking horns when they see ICE and Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) agents, and warning those in danger to seek cover. Rapid Responders also take regular shifts walking children to school so that their parents do not have to risk an ICE abduction at the drop-off site. Responders stand at nearby school corners to reassure school children that someone is there to protect them, to document what ICE does, and to seek help, if necessary.

The now numerous Rapid Response group networks in both the city of Chicago and the surrounding suburbs operate mostly with the guidance of ICIRR. The immigrant rights coalition notifies groups and individuals in its “Eyes on ICE” text chain, and conducts Zoom training sessions for those seeking to become Rapid Responders in their neighborhoods. The ICIRR hotline offers help in 13 languages — including Spanish, Polish, and Urdu. 

ICIRR does not release figures on how many people it has trained. To provide a sense of the scale of participation, during a training in October attended by this reporter, 837 people registered for that day. Training classes are held three to four times a week. In encrypted Signal chats, often organized by a neighborhood or ward group, many explain that they are new to this kind of activity and political protest. They express outrage at the local police forces that do not appear inclined to enforce laws when federal agents violate them.

Numerous restaurant and other small business owners have placed signs on their front windows, indicating that ICE, CBP, and Department of Homeland Security (DHS) officers are not welcome, and will not be served or allowed on their premises. 

Regular demonstrations continue outside the Broadview Detention Center, where ICE is housing those arrested. Ironworkers Local 63 has an office directly across the street. Union officers and members have been friendly to protesters and generously allow them access to their facilities.

“If Donald Trump thinks that he could come in here and send his police force to hold us down, he’s wrong,” Paul Goodrich, a Local 63 executive board member, posted on Instagram. “I know where I stand, and I’m glad that my union is able to be there, too.”

In the “Windy City” — known for extremes of heat, cold, wind, and snow — the ICE raids and the resistance to them have supplanted the weather as the main topic of conversation for many Chicagoans. A few weeks ago, for example, after a lecture at the Puerto Rican Arts Alliance attended by this reporter, a friend and I chatted with a young couple at our table. “Where do you live?” they asked us. “Is there a lot of ICE activity in your neighborhood? Have you done the training yet? Are you a Rapid Responder?”

Students from Lawndale High School in Little Village — a traditionally Mexican American neighborhood also known as La Villita — recently walked out of school and marched two miles down 26th Street, the main thoroughfare, denouncing recent ICE actions and voicing their support for immigrant communities. 

In addition, residents around the city have called demonstrations to protest particularly egregious arrests of immigrants who were here legally, with work permits. More than 400 people rallied in Rogers Park on October 11, after ICE arrested four community members, including a popular tamale vendor. Protesters demanded that ICE agents leave the neighborhood and release those arrested. 

Protests against arrest of daycare teacher scores a win

On November 5, Diana Santillana Galeano, a teacher at the bilingual Rayito de Sol preschool, was arrested by ICE agents at her job, in front of her students, even though she yelled, “I have papers!” Santillana Galeano, who has taught there for more than two years, has legal authorization to work in the United States and is currently pursuing an asylum claim in court. Her attorneys argued that her arrest, without a warrant, violates a 2022 consent decree.

Following the teacher’s arrest, parents and community members rallied in the North Center neighborhood to show their support for her. A Go Fund Me appeal raised $150,000 for Santillana Galeano and her family within seven hours of her arrest.

On November 13, Santillana Galeano was released after a judge ruled that her detention without bond was illegal. The decision registered a small victory in the fight for immigrant rights here.

“I am so grateful to everyone who has advocated on my behalf, and on behalf of the countless others who have experienced similar trauma over recent months in the Chicago area”, Santillana Galeano said in a statement released by her attorneys. “I love our community and the children I teach, and I can’t wait to see them again.” She said she intended to return to work the next day.

On October 31, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Illinois filed an emergency class action lawsuit on behalf of individuals held at the Broadview detention center who are being denied their right to access counsel and who are subject to inhuman and unlawful conditions. The lawsuit cited numerous verified reports of inmates packed into cells meant to hold fewer people, denied food, water, medical care, and medications, and forced to sign away their legal rights. Even Pope Leo XIV has weighed in, calling on the Trump administration to allow detainees to receive communion and religious sacraments.

Judge orders release of 615 detainees

On November 12, U.S. District Judge Jeffrey Cummings ruled that 615 detainees, whose imprisonment is being challenged under a consent decree that limits warrantless arrests, will be freed. The detainees must post bond of $1,500 and agree to electronic ankle monitoring. He also ordered the full release of 13 others who the government agreed were unlawfully arrested.

Unfortunately, as attorney Mark Fleming of the National Immigration Justice Center noted, those already deported, estimated to be in the hundreds, cannot seek justice under the current class action suit. 

In his decision, Cummings explained that after analyzing the arrest records, he concluded that Operation Midway Blitz was not targeting hardened criminals, but merely those unlucky enough to encounter ICE and CBP agents. The judge referenced an ICE and CBP raid in South Shore on September 30, where 300 immigration officers, supported by Black Hawk helicopters, raided an apartment building in the middle of the night and detained — zip-tied, for hours — U.S. citizens, including young children, as well as undocumented immigrants.

In addition to the Cummings decision, the courts have delivered other blows to the ICE operation. Most recently, on November 6, Federal District Court Judge Sara L. Ellis extended temporary restrictions on federal agents. The restrictions mandate body cameras be worn and ban the use of riot control weapons unless at least two audible warnings had been given. In the hearing before her decision Chicago residents, including clergy and protesters, described federal agents firing tear gas in neighborhoods without warning, using excessive force during arrests, and shooting pepper balls at a minister’s head while he prayed.

A taped deposition was played before the court in which border patrol commandant Gregory Bovino, in charge of the Chicago operations, said all uses of force had been “more than exemplary.” In delivering her ruling, Ellis singled out Bovino for criticism. The CBP officer had tried to justify the use of tear gas in La Villita during an incident in which he stated he was hit by a rock, but later backtracked when videos of the incident surfaced. “Defendant Bovino admitted that he lied,” Ellis said. “He admitted that he lied about whether a rock hit him before he deployed tear gas in Little Village.”

In an article posted on November 10, the Chicago Tribune reported, “Bovino … was expected to depart Chicago for another assignment within days, and most of the agents under this command would soon be redeployed elsewhere, three sources told the Tribune Monday morning [November 10]. An on-call task force composed of FBI and assistant U.S. attorneys is also expected to close up shop in the coming days, two of the sources said.” 

But DHS insists it is not retreating. “We aren’t leaving Chicago,” DHS spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin posted on the social media platform X.  

Veterans’ Day rally: “No ICE, No Cuts, No Occupation”

On November 11, the group About Face: Veterans Against the War organized a march and rally here to mark Veterans’ Day and oppose the immigration raids. The rally, held at the Vietnam War Memorial on Chicago’s Riverwalk, featured several speakers.

Stacy Davis Gates, president of the Chicago Teacher’s Union and the newly elected president of the Illinois Federation of Teachers, spoke about civil rights leader Medgar Evers’ military service during World War II. Evers returned home determined to win the same rights for Black people in the United States that he fought for in Europe, she noted. Today, she added, people in Chicago are fighting for the constitutional rights of those illegally detained by federal agents: the rights of habeas corpus and due process. She saluted the veterans present for their commitment to justice. 

At the same rally, Mohamed Yasin of Arab American Family Services and the ICIRR lauded the Chicagoans who have come out in support of their neighbors and defended immigrants. He noted that there is a new sense of community here as residents collaborate to defend the most vulnerable. He closed his comments by beginning to recite “8-5-5.”  The crowd of several hundred people responded with “435-7693,” completing the ICIRR hotline number that many have etched in their memory. 

The anti-immigrant dragnet in Chicago is an example of what other cities that may be next on the White House hit list will likely face — as ICIRR attorney Tsao warned.

The most important example Chicago offers, however, is what working people and our allies can do to resist this frontal assault on the working class.

Chicagoans have shown in action the importance of solidarity with the city’s most vulnerable residents. They have forged unity between a myriad of organizations, including organized labor, which is part of the fight. Hundreds, if not thousands, of residents are involved in almost daily patrol operations. Students have walked out of class in protest. Mass mobilizations at the Broadview ICE detention center and in the streets — from downtown to the suburbs — continue, highlighting this issue for the broader public. And the breadth of this resistance is having an impact — as the release of Diana Santillana Galeano and other detainees has illustrated.

Working people and youth in Chicago have put meat on the bones of “An Injury to One Is an Injury to All!”

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