Chicagoans continue calls to abolish ICE as uncertainty remains over feds' potential return to city

David Tapia-Rodriguez didn’t pay much attention to politics or news until last year.

He couldn’t avoid videos of federal immigration agents aggressively targeting Chicago.

He’s seen them roaming his Gage Park streets, too.

And the thought of the Trump administration again ramping up its deportation effort in Chicago this spring flat out “scares” him.

The number of federal agents deployed to the Chicago area under “Operation Midway Blitz” has dwindled since the fall, though immigration arrests have still been made.

A source with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security indicated last fall to the Sun-Times that up to 1,000 agents — or four times as many that were in Chicago last fall — could return in March. But sources haven’t recently said how many agents could return or when.

“It’s just scary,” said Tapia-Rodriguez, 25, at a protest Friday at Daley Plaza of the Trump administration.

“I’m a Mexican dude and I look like a Mexican, so it’s just messed up that they’re going to come back here and continue to harass my community — and honestly, like, every community that’s out there because even if you’re not brown, you’re still at risk because two white people just died in Minnesota,” Tapia-Rodriguez said.

The fatal shootings of Renee Good, a 37-year-old mother, and Alex Pretti, a 37-year-old nurse, by federal immigration agents this month have sparked heightened outrage against the Trump administration’s deportation campaign.

Videos of the shootings served as a boiling point for many elected leaders who are staunch opponents to Trump, like Gov. JB Pritzker and Mayor Brandon Johnson.
Last week, they publicly called on abolishing ICE, which has become a blanket term for the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the U.S. Customs and Border Protection agencies that operate under DHS.

Chicago communities remain under a “great amount” of mental and emotional distress, even as immigration enforcement has scaled back in the area, Matt Davison, CEO of NAMI Chicago, said Friday during a public hearing of the Illinois Accountability Commission.

“The consequences to our city's mental health right now are hard to overstate,” Davison said. “We tend to slip into talking about these events in the past tense. I would just remind the commission that's just simply not the case right now for our mental health in its present state.”

Eva Dickey, 43, has been paying attention to news and politics for years.

As a few hundred protesters screamed chants like, “ICE out,” Dickey admitted she may not have been as shocked as others over the deadly shootings by immigration agents.

“I’m still angry and I think it’s unacceptable that we have people out in the streets shooting moms and nurses, and we just have to stand up and say no to this,” said Dickey, from the South Loop. “And it’s time for people who didn’t pay attention before to realize that this continues to happen, and it’s been happening for a long time and the list of names is incredibly long.”

Protesters criticize corporations supporting ICE, CBP

Friday’s demonstration at Daley Plaza was organized as part of a “national shutdown” strike calling for “no work, no school, no shopping.”

It followed a Thursday evening protest, when roughly 80 people gathered at a West Loop Target to demand the Minneapolis-based retailer to stop providing support to federal immigration agencies.

Will Tanzman, executive director of the People’s Lobby, which organized the West Loop demonstration, said in a statement the Trump administration “depends on support from corporations like Target, and those corporations depend on workers and consumers to do their business.”

“People across the country are not OK with the devastation and murder coming from the Trump regime and are not going to allow business as usual from the corporations that are enabling Trump and ICE,” Tanzman said.

Three men and four women were arrested and charged with criminal trespass to property during the protest, Chicago police said.

Holding immigration agents accountable

The Illinois Accountability Commission, established last fall in response to the feds’ increased use of militarized tactics during arrests and against protesters, heard testimony from experts and former federal officials who revealed systemic issues in immigration enforcement, including the erosion of internal guardrails and the impact on public safety and community trust.

The commission is expected to release a final report with its findings and recommendations by April 30.

Elected leaders, like Johnson, have vowed to find other ways to hold immigration agents accountable for criminal conduct.

Ald. Byron Sigcho-Lopez (25th), who was at the West Loop Target protest, has been adamant about holding federal agents accountable for civil rights violations.

“We're building a large coalition of veterans, public servants, unions, faith leaders and electeds so that we make sure that the level of criminality that we see in Minneapolis will not be acceptable, will not be tolerated,” Sigcho-Lopez said. “We’re not afraid of these mercenaries.”

Deborah Fleischaker served 14 years at DHS. She said during Friday’s commission meeting that federal immigration agencies are now operating without “internal guardrails” used during former administrations. She said current immigration enforcement is driven by arrest quotas rather than performance.

“Current DHS immigration enforcement operations are meant to scare noncitizens and U.S. citizens,” Fleischaker said.

Pritzker is calling on the Illinois Accountability Commission to probe the conduct of senior Trump administration aides.

“For too long, [CBP Cmdr.] Gregory Bovino and his rogue federal agents have terrorized communities in Illinois and across the country, violated our people’s Constitutional rights, and unleashed violence at every turn,” Pritzker said in a statement Thursday.

“Bovino packing his bags cannot detract from our mission accountability. Greg Bovino, [DHS Secretary] Kristi Noem, and Donald Trump’s other lackeys should find lawyers because they must still be held responsible for the killings and the damage they’ve done to our country,” he said.