"For the last six weeks, Chicago and the surrounding suburbs have seen over 1,000 people taken by ICE in unmarked vans or disappeared in the middle of the night. In defiance, Chicago's vibrant immigrant community and organizers expanded legal services and training, pushed to cancel harmful surveillance companies like Flock's license plate reader technology, and formed coalitions to rapidly respond to ICE."
"This isn't particularly surprising. Like many in Chicago, I am Mexican American. Our people are intimately familiar with forced disappearances, often committed and sanctioned by government security forces. For centuries, our region has seen kidnapping and forced displacements driven by slave trading, extractive industries, anti-union attacks, drug wars demanded by the economics of the American palette, and more. Still, knowing this history left me mentally unprepared for the reality of seeing ICE agents detain and disappear my"
Since September Chicago has been a focal point of the Trump administration's nativist anti-immigration campaign and of robust resistance. Over six weeks more than 1,000 people in Chicago and surrounding suburbs were taken by ICE in unmarked vans or disappeared at night. Community responses included neighborhood patrols, de-arrests, expanded legal services and training, campaigns to revoke Flock's license-plate-reader contracts, and rapid-response coalitions. Residents and organizers reported DHS presence in parking lots, courts, and highways. Many community members, including Mexican American residents, connected the recent disappearances to a long history of forced displacement and state-sanctioned violence, yet found the present reality deeply jarring.
Read at Truthout
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