After Minneapolis: Resistance to ICE in Chicago
When shots rang out in Minneapolis on Saturday, January 24, killing beloved Veterans Administration nurse Alex Pretti, within minutes the horrible news reverberated through Chicago. Such are the expansive networks of solidarity that have developed throughout the U.S. in response to the vicious assault on our immigrant communities. This was just days after another community member and legal observer Renee Good was gunned down through her car window as she attempted to drive away from a Minneapolis street where ICE was present.
When Operation Midway Blitz first hit Chicago last September, it also aimed to spread fear and intimidation among immigrants and all people of color, without regard to immigration status nor bogus claim of criminal records. Heavily armed agents showed little or no restraint in using chemical agents such as pepper spray, even among those standing by to observe and record. They also used violence against regular weekly protestors at the much-hated processing center in suburban Broadview. Not authorized as a detention center, it has held kidnapped community members for days at a time in fifthly conditions with inadequate food, water, no beds, and without access to lawyers, medical, or spiritual care, before transporting them out of state, or deporting them. Several court suits are pending on the Broadview location, and only rare advance notice visits of elected officials have been allowed to elected officials.
Chicago became a training ground after the Los Angeles surge for the illegal, criminal, and mostly unchecked havoc that has taken place since.
According to The Marshall Project around 1,600 people were arrested in the September 2025 blitz, with Block Club Chicago citing over 3,300 arrests in Illinois from Jan-Oct 2025. Estimates are that around 3,500 people have been abducted from the Chicago area since the ICE and border control assaults began. According to CBS News, only 16 of the 600+ detainees in one concentrated period had reported criminal histories. One immigrant father of two, Silverio Villegas Gonzalez was shot and killed during a traffic stop. Witnesses and video accounts dispute the agents’ account, a regular occurrence as the rule of law is just about absent.
Later in the fall, day care worker Diana Santillana Galeano was kidnapped from a daycare center right in front of the children she cares for and some of their parents. This sparked community outrage, bringing over a thousand people into the streets the same day. After a court ruling that the arrest was unlawful, she was released.
Even after federal judges have ordered the release of hundreds of those detained, many separated from families, and sent far out of state, or deported, most have not been released.
Rights, whistles, resistance
As the court battles continue to play out, the people of Chicago have volunteered in the thousands for rapid response training, creating networks of patrols equipped with “Know Your Rights” kits, whistles to warn people when ICE is sited, and training to record and document the snatching of people from streets, when it happens. The Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights (ICIRR,) provides an Emergency Family Help Line that can assist callers rapidly in over a dozen languages. ICIRR has sponsored weekly online trainings, and community organizations throughout the city are holding in person trainings that pack school auditoriums and local public libraries.
I attended one such training near where I live. I also participate in a school patrol watch, on a regular schedule, and have helped with “walking school buses” - neighborhood members accompanying children from vulnerable families to and from schools, so parents don't have to. Others help deliver food, run pantries, and provide many other forms of “mutual aid.”
While some neighborhoods have borne the brunt of frequent, targeted and random kidnappings, especially with major concentrations of Latino immigrants, no neighborhood has been untouched. Although the intensity of activity here has decreased while Minnesotans have been in the crosshairs, the current “lull” of activity is being utilized to double down on preparations for the anticipated return of ICE in greater numbers.
Community Organizing
One of my most exciting recent experiences has been talking to neighbors who live on my street and nearby. The terror tactics of the administration, designed to isolate and divide us, have had the opposite effect. People are getting to know their neighbors, more than ever before, not only for fair weather block parties, but to organize ourselves to bundle up in the bitter cold Chicago winter to look out for our immigrant neighbors. I have met teachers, health care and transit workers, lawyers, and other retired people like myself. There are people of all ages, occupations, and backgrounds, with and without children, all recognizing that these are “not normal times,” and that we have power, collectively, in our numbers, to watch out for our community's safety.
Besides our immediate neighborhoods, people have shown interest in attending larger citywide gatherings and protests, drawing connections between how the government is treating people at home and its policies globally. These developments of community connection and solidarity bode well for the future in fighting for our rights and democratic freedoms.
This past Sunday several thousand people poured into Chicago’s snowy downtown in the bitter cold, to express outrage over the murder of Alex Pretti, not forgetting local victims of murder at the hands of ICE and border control. We marched in solidarity with the people of Minnesota, and all over the country.
Recently, one of many local vigils and rallies was held in front of Chicago's Veterans Administration Jesse Brown Medical Center, also honoring VA nurse Pretti, with union members including Pretti's American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE,) National Nurses United (NNU,) Chicago Teachers Union (CTU,) Service Employees International Union (SEIU,) along with clergy, veterans from About Face Veterans Against the War, and many others.
Mass Mobilisations
The country has not seen mobilizations of people on this scale any time since Black Lives Matter brought out thousands of people in major cities and small hamlets in outrage following the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis.
The Chicago Teachers Union is playing a leading role in the national "May Day Strong" effort which is expected to bring people out in every state, and hundreds, if not thousands, of cities and towns across the nation.
Inevitably, the right wing/MAGA right is going all out, trying to undo any gains made in the wake of Black Lives Matter, and also roll us back to before the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts, and legal abortion in the U.S.
Ordinary people, many first time protestors, and rapid response volunteers, are not accepting these rollbacks, from ICE kidnappings to book banning, from trans bashing to ending Diversity Equity and Inclusion provisions. All of our hope and inspiration lies in this growing consciousness and spreading resistance!
