‘Fear has not paralyzed us’: Anxiety and action in Chicago in the middle of immigration attacks | American immigration

Some corners of Chicago have been nervous quiet this week.

Residents who have lived in the city for decades without immigration documents have been concerned about leaving their homes. Undocumented parents have signed proxies to facilitate custody if they are detained and separated from their children. Business owners are deputing employees to take care of their affairs if something happens.

But in other ways, the city has buzzed with action. Know your rights workshops that take place at community centers, local parks and trade union meetings throughout the city, are filled with participants. A network of local advocates has been coordinated to track operations by immigration and customs enforcement agents (ICE) and connect the families to those detained with legal aid.

“The administration wants to instill all of us fearing. They will paralyze us. They will make us immobilized by this moment, ”said American representative Delia Ramirez at a press conference at Chicago’s Malcolm X College on Wednesday. “But what do society and the state do Illinois when we are under attack? We get up and we fight back, the people. “

Chicago had aligned after attacks for months ever since Donald Trump won the election and signaled that he would adopt his campaign promise on “mass portions” as soon as he took office. At the forefront of the inauguration, reports already circulated that the city would be an early target.

Since then, ICE announced the largest branch of the Department of Homeland Security that it would perform “improved targeted operations” in Chicago along with several other federal agencies, including FBI, Drug Enforcement Agency and US Marshals Service. The Illinois Governor, JB Pritzker, said the attacks could target up to 2,000 people in the city.

The extent of the attacks targeting people all over the region has cooled, said Tovia Siegel, the director of organization and leadership of the resurrection project, a lawyer group providing legal aid and social education for immigrants.

“It really causes significant fear, and it causes people not to leave the house, not to want to go to work or bring their children to school,” she said.

Agents have primarily understood people in their homes, Siegel said. Officers in unmarked vehicles and those who carry the insignia from various federal agencies have confused people, she said. “We see children who are afraid that their parents will not be there when they come home from school.”

Trump and his appointed have emphasized that the attacks are aimed at criminals, but people with and without criminal stories have been arrested so far.

“It is formulated that there is a priority of criminals, but the impact is wider,” said Kwame Raoul, Illinois’s Attorney General, who has been a free -speaking critic of Trump’s immigration orders and is one of several democratic lawyer generals who sue the administration over its Efforts to end birthright with citizenship for children of undocumented people.

American citizens and legal residents are swept up in the attacks, Raoul said, “Whether intentional or as unintended consequences of racial profiling.”

Adding to the turmoil is the administration’s decision to lift a long -standing ban on immigration attacks in schools, churches and hospitals. Late last week, Chicago Public Schools announced that they had seen immigration agents at Hamline Elementary School in the city’s southwest side. It later became clear that the officers were from Secret Service and did not perform immigration enforcement. But the incident has nevertheless continued to remove parents and teachers

In Chicago’s Department 25, which includes Pilsen and consists of many immigrants, Alderman Byron Sigcho-Lopez said that just after the secret service event, participation in colleges had fallen by at least a third, and participation was even lower in primary schools. In Chicagos Brighton Park and Little Village, home to many Mexican American and other immigrant families, neighborhood associations, who run after -school programs, said they noticed significant drops present.

In Lincoln United Methodist Church in Chicagos Pilsen neighborhood, where about three-quarters of residents are Mexican American, the Spanish-language Sunday service can now be held over Zoom so that congregations for all immigration status can safely participate. “We haven’t done this since the beginning of the pandemic,” said the church priest Emma Lozano, a long -time immigration lawyer. “Back then, we felt it would be temporary. We waited for the vaccine for medicine. “

This time, she said, she’s not sure how long her congregants will have to worship practically. “We’re just trying to find out how long this will last – and what’s the medicine for this?” Lozano’s church has long been a refuge for migrants. In 2006, the national attention attracted when activist Elvira Arellano sought refuge and opposed arrest there for months with his young son, and churches around the United States joined a sanctuary movement in solidarity.

But now the city has entered the Trump administration’s cross chairs – and Lozano is shaken. The church has increased its security protocols and made sure that the door is locked behind the children coming in for the evening Capoeira classes. Lozano said she herself felt rattled and worried about her safety and threats from Trump supporters.

Videos on social media and TV broadcasts of immigration agents who beat people’s front doors or attacks, such as TV psychologist dr. Phil, has pained her, she said. “It’s almost like Lynchings,” she said. “There is a perversion and a kind of joy they get by terrorizing this population of immigrants.”

For many activists, the administration’s activities in Chicago did not come as a surprise. The city, which has been a sanctuary for immigrants since 1985, has long drawn Ire from immigration barnliners and conservative politicians. Its shrine status was first ordered by Mayor Harold Washington, who banned the city’s officials from cooperating with federal immigration agents and demanded that city services be delivered to all residents regardless of their immigration status. The order was eventually passed in the law and was then weakened by mayors over the years. Chicago’s current mayor, Brandon Johnson, has promised to fiercely defend his city’s immigrants. On Wednesday, the Congress Republicans urged him to testify during a hearing on Sanctuary Cities.

For the past two years, the state of Texas has buses thousands of people – mostly from Venezuela – to the city and its suburbs, including during the winter’s dead. Now, both the recent arrivals and people who have lived in the city for years without documentation have been on high alarm, and advocates are strained to make sense of why and how people are targeted.

For Yess Gómez, who has lived in Chicago for two decades, the attacks have brought back a well -known anxiety – but also a sad. “We are scared, but fear has not paralyzed us,” said Gómez, who has been involved in Chicago’s immigrant rights movement for many years. “My kids don’t deserve to see their mother hide. And I don’t want to do it. “Instead, she has prepared herself.

The Guardian does not publish Gómez’s full last name to protect her from retaliation. She has a work permit as part of a program that delays deportations for workers who have witnessed or experienced the abuse of the workplace and works as a bartender. She, her husband and five children – three young children and two in her 20s – have implemented a security system to check in every few hours. “If someone doesn’t check in, the plan kicks in and we start to find out where they are. Some of us even have location tracking on our phones as a caution, ”she said.

It is not being deported to Mexico that scares her so much, she said – it is torn away from the life she has built in the United States. “What really scares me is having to start over. That’s what most of us fear: Start again. “

During the first Trump administration, Gómez had asked her bishop to take custody of her children if she and her husband were arrested and deported, she said. This time, her adult children were assigned the task of nurturing their siblings and contacting the family’s lawyers should happen to their parents.

They have also leaned on local networks of advocates who have patroled and tracked ice activity, and investigating which rumors are credible and which are wrong information.

Like many activists in the city, she was delighted by the recent complaints of Trump’s “Border Czar”, Tom Homan, that Chicagoans are too “well -educated” about how to resist immigration agents.

“Sanctuary towns make it very difficult to arrest the criminals. For example, Chicago, very well educated, has been trained, how to defy ice cream, how to hide from ice cream, ”Homan told CNN on Monday night.

It turns out, she said people in this city know how to take care of each other. “Even if they wanted to create a view here, they couldn’t do it,” she said.