Chicago stands up to ICE

By Gabe Miller and Richard Berg

Chicago, IL – The Coalition Against the Trump Agenda (CATA) and the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights (ICIRR) mobilized more than 500 people on Saturday, September 27, to protest and march against the Trump administration’s ramped up attacks from the Department of Immigration and Custom Enforcement (ICE).

The protest took place in Daley Plaza, directly across from the office of Cook County States Attorney Eileen Burke, who was a primary target of the protest, organizers said. Top of the protest’s list of demands for Burke is charging the ICE officers involved in the recent murder of Silverio Villegas-Gonzalez, who was killed in an altercation resulting from a traffic stop shortly after he had dropped his daughter off at school in the nearby suburb of Franklin Park.

Additionally, protesters demanded Burke close and launch an investigation into the Broadview ICE Staging Facility, where detainees are being held for days and sometimes weeks with no access to beds, showers, menstrual products or adequate meals. Recent protests attempting to stop ICE vehicles from leaving the Broadview facility with deportees have faced increasing violence from ICE, including the use of pepper balls and tear gas.

In contrast to Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson, who has stood up to Trump’s bully tactics by defending the Sanctuary City Ordinance and ordering Chicago Police Department not to work with ICE, Eileen Burke has said that she will cooperate with ICE in prosecuting immigrants.

While Johnson’s defense of Immigrants and large protests in Chicago have limited some ICE activity in the city, the surrounding suburbs have been hit hard. The United States Palestinian Community Network (USPCN) and the Arab American Action Network (AAAN) have been working with ICIRR to develop and expand multilingual rapid response networks in those suburbs that have large Arab and Latine populations.

Veronica Castro, deputy director of ICIRR, addressed the crowd and said their rapid response teams are working constantly to train families on their rights and monitor ICE activity.

“There are hundreds, if not thousands of folks that would be here with us right now if they weren’t out doing the critical work making sure our communities are safe,” she said.

Castro reminded the crowd that if anyone sees ICE in their neighborhood, they should contact ICIRR’s family support hotline at (855) 435-7693.

Nazek Sankari, a leading organizer with USPCN, described the importance of the door-to-door outreach in vulnerable neighborhoods. “The harassment of our communities by Trump is meant to fracture, intimidate and frighten us, but it has failed,” Sankari said.

“Instead it has mobilized our multilingual communities to organize and rise together stronger than ever to protect one another. We in Chicago will never abandon our people, and we will never back down in the face of racists and white supremacists.”

Sankari also connected the fight against ICE to the struggle of the Palestinian people against the Zionist, apartheid state of Israel, and said Trump’s attacks will not distract the movement from the U.S. support for the ongoing genocide in Gaza.

In her first week in office, Burke pardoned an officer the day before he was meant to go to court for assaulting a teen in Oak Lawn. “Burke failed to protect our communities from harm when, in her first week in office, she dropped charges against racist white Oak Lawn Police Officer Patrick O’Donnell,” Sankari said. In 2021, O’Donnell and two other cops beat then-17-year old Palestinian youth Hadi Abuatelah within an inch of his life.

Burke has also reversed efforts by the previous states attorney to free some survivors of torture. The rally embraced the demand of the Campaign to Free Incarcerated Survivors of Torture (CFIST) to free the wrongfully convicted.

“Eileen Burke has made it clear from day one where she stands,” said Jasmine Smith, co-chair of the Chicago Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression, and a leader of the CFIST campaign. “She does not stand on the side of justice.”

Burke has limited the ability of the wrongful convictions unit within the SAO to investigate and reverse the hundreds of cases of wrongful conviction that have earned Chicago the title of torture capital of the United States.

“If she’s not going to do her job, it’s up to us to get her out of her position,” Smith said, urging the crowd to keep up the fight against Trump and those like Burke who greenlight his attacks against our communities. “We will win!”

Smith also pushed back on the racist narratives that scapegoat immigrants. “They say that these illegal immigrants should not be here, but we say that no one is illegal on stolen land,” she said.

As protesters marched through downtown, they were repeatedly met with cheers and pumped fists of support from bystanders.

One protester, Chis Ziegler said, “I’m here to protest what ICE is doing. They have been taking people off the streets.” He continued, “I like that the protest encourages people to join organizations. We need a coordinated effort.”

#ChicagoIL #IL ImmigrantRights #ICIRR #CATA

Source: https://fightbacknews.org/chicago-stands-up-to-ice?pk_campaign=rss-feed