ICE gestapo is on a rampage in Chicago, hunting prey: sweeping into neighborhoods across the city… going into a childcare center and arresting a teacher… going after landscapers and home repair people with jump-out squads, not only in centers of Latino life like Little Village, but cruising residential streets in the suburbs, picking people up. They are going after anybody with brown skin and speaking Spanish—and anyone who stands in the way of their rampage of terror—as the “enemy within.”

In response, a mass movement of resistance among broad sections of people in Chicago and surrounding areas has sprung up. Whistles announcing the arrival of ICE reverberate through the streets. Yard signs give the phone number to call for any ICE incidents and ask people to film them. ICE agents get surrounded immediately and are often forced to leave. Religious forces hold prayer meetings outside of detention center. Business leaders hold meetings and refer to Pastor Martin Neimöller’s historic poem about the lessons of Nazi Germany, “First they came…” The Illinois governor, the Chicago mayor, and others from ruling institutions continue to speak out against Trump and the ICE raids.

But ICE continues to ever more viciously attack. On 60 Minutes, which aired November 2, in response to footage of ICE violence (including tear gassing of protesters in Chicago), Trump declared: “I think they haven’t gone far enough because we’ve been held back by the judges, by the liberal judges that were put in by Biden and by Obama.” He said he’s OK with the tactics ICE is using “because you have to get the people out.”

Yet, with each atrocity, people are persisting in determined protest, and the struggle mounts. More and more people from all walks of life and all nationalities are being compelled to resist.

Broadview… a Focus of Resistance

Broadview ICE processing center, located in a Chicago suburb, is where people captured by ICE gestapo get taken. People are supposed to be quickly sent from there to an ICE detention center. But people are detained there under conditions that a judge at a November 4 hearing said sounded like a concentration camp. The exterior windows of the building are boarded up and lawyers, journalists, public officials, family members, and clergy are all turned away. One man described being held for two days in a cell with at least 150 people with no beds, no blankets, no showers or hygiene products, no way to call a lawyer. When a government lawyer said during a court case about conditions at Broadview in 2019 that there are showers at Broadview, but they do not work, the judge responded “One is reminded of Auschwitz. There were showers there that didn’t work, too.”

On November 7, 14 moms from Chicago’s western suburbs climbed over concrete barricades around the Broadview center and carried out civil disobedience by sitting down in a circle on the street, holding hands, and chanting. They continued chanting as cops hauled the women up and handcuffed them.

At the same time, there was a 20-car caravan decked out with signs saying “Hands off Chicago” and opposing Operation Midway Blitz (the Trump regime’s name for its assault on Chicago), along with American flags. The Chicago Tribune reported: “But despite the arrests, the mood of the protest remained upbeat….”

The arrested moms demanded an end to “the campaign of chaos.” One of them told ABC 7 News, “It is worse than you can imagine out on the streets right now, and it is because of the federal immigration enforcement we’re seeing every day. Our communities are living in abject fear, and it’s time for [white] people ... to take a stand and put our own physical bodies in front of those bodies, because it is unacceptable. I hope that people can hear us inside. I mean, if you see absolutely horrific reporting of the conditions, we are here to stand with our friends and neighbors who have been abducted and terrified. We are all upset seeing this. We need to get off our phones and onto the streets, because that is what is required at this moment.”

A joke now circulating in the wake of this protest: How do you radicalize suburban moms? Throw tear gas at them!

Religious Community Joins the Struggle

Together with and in the midst of all this, clergy and the religious community have been a key force. A group of faith leaders (Native American, Jewish, Christian, Muslim, Unitarian) have initiated Faith Over Fear events outside the barricades at Broadview, with songs, prayers, and speeches. When they petitioned to be allowed to go inside Broadview to offer faith and spiritual support to detainees, they were denied entry and banned from conducting services on federal property. An anonymous federal official told them, “There is no more prayer in front of building or inside the building because this is the state and it’s not [of a] religious background.”

Pope Leo made a statement after Chicago’s Cardinal Cupich went to Rome. AP reported that Pope Leo XIV said “‘the spiritual rights of people who have been detained should also be considered,’ and he called on authorities to allow pastoral workers access to the detained migrants. ‘Many times they’ve been separated from their families. No one knows what’s happening, but their own spiritual needs should be attended to.’”

Among many expressions of outrage, 250 Christian clergy signed "Jesus Is Being Tear Gassed at Broadview: An Open Letter," which included the following: "Unfortunately, peaceful actions—such as prayer and communion—have meant little to ICE agents. They lob tear gas, use pepper spray and bully sticks, body slam and drag protestors. One of our colleagues was hit in the face multiple times with pepper balls and rubber bullets. This is the brutality we are now accustomed to. We come offering bread and prayer, hope for justice and healing—we leave washing pepper spray out of each other’s eyes.

"We willingly submit to these risks. What Kristi Noem and her ICE agents are doing is immoral. They aren’t arresting criminals; they are arresting our neighbors. They are tearing families apart. They wait at bus stops to detain children and use them as bait to lure parents from their homes. People of all ages are in hiding, businesses shuttered, and our friends and congregants—the people we have been ordained to serve—are being taken to Broadview in unmarked vans." 

Father Michael Pfleger, activist and pastor of St. Sabina’s Church, which is located in a Black parish, said, “We’re here today not simply out of protest or demonstration, but because our faith does not allow us to remain silent while war has been declared on the men, women and the children of our city.”

Day Care Arrest

At 7 a.m., Wednesday, November 5, as parents were dropping off their children, armed ICE agents raided the Rayito de Sol Spanish immersion day care center in Chicago’s North Center neighborhood. They arrested beloved teacher Ms. Diana in the center’s lobby. This was in front of parents, in front of other teachers, and in front of little kids. The feds held her arms behind her as they dragged her outside while she yelled, “Tengo papeles!” (“I have papers”).

Kids were crying, parents were crying, teachers were crying.

That night, hundreds of parents and others rallied at the North Center Town Square against the raid and arrest, demanding that Ms. Diana be released. As of this writing, she is still in detention—shifted to a “facility” in Indiana, away from her support.

Halloween ICE Horror

In Evanston, an upper middle class town north of Chicago that is home to Northwestern University, the ICE offensive has gone into high gear. People have videotaped beatings of residents while pinned to the ground, and federal agents pointing guns at residents who questioned what they are doing, using pepper spray on protesters, detaining or disappearing landscapers and other workers.

Daniel Biss, the mayor of Evanston, said: “Our message for ICE is simple, get the hell out of Evanston. Enough is enough, and so I would say to every Evanston resident: sign up, get trained, join a rapid response team, be a part of the effort to keep our neighbors safe.” He has said that he feels his community is “under invasion from our own federal government.”

He described the scene on Halloween to Democracy Now! (November 6):

“…they [ICE and Border Patrol], were doing what they usually do these days, which is drive around town looking for someone working on a lawn whose skin is not white, and grab that person and abduct them. And so, the rapid responders were out in force, and there was a lot of activity, and I was driving around trying to do what I could.”

Looking Ahead and Joining with Refuse Fascism and the Protesters in Washington, DC 

Baltazar Enriquez, who came to this country from Mexico when he was a child, is a leader in the Little Village Community Council. Little Village, or La Villita, is a Latino immigrant neighborhood on the Southwest Side of Chicago. From the beginning of the regime’s assault on Chicago, he has fought to unite and lead the people to stand up against and resist the racist, violent thugs from ICE and Border Patrol who are terrorizing the streets of La Villita. Baltazar often works with THE REVCOM CORPS For The Emancipation Of Humanity, and as he has done so, he has joined with Refuse Fascism to raise the demand TRUMP MUST GO NOW.

In the thick of this hard-fought struggle, Baltazar jumped on a Greyhound bus with five other Little Village residents and rode hundreds of miles all night to be part of the November 5 launch of the Trump Must Go Now! movement in Washington, DC. Baltazar and others from Little Village brought their indomitable spirit and determination, and experience in resisting the ICE gestapo, to DC—and this was crucial.

In his speech to the November 5 DC rally, Baltazar said: “We are not scared. And if they bring a hundred of them, we’re gonna bring out a thousand of us. If they bring out a thousand of them, we’re gonna bring ten thousand of us. We will fight back in every minute, in every moment, in Little Village. They had come to terrorize us, and they put fear in my community. And we said, fuck you, fuck you. You will not terrorize my community because we are an organized community. We will fight, fight, and fight every day, every moment of our lives.”