ICE Gestapo are rampaging through cities across the country snatching up immigrants. This masked, heavily armed force is seen broadly as fascist and utterly illegitimate. And as the terror and violence carried out by ICE and other federal forces escalate, people are responding—often confronting the gestapo thugs on the spot. 

What follows are reader reports from three areas: New York City, Chicago, and the San Francisco Bay Area. 

This protest has been righteous—in repudiating the leading edge of Trump's fascist program. And these reports are inspiring. At the same time, this is essential: If we try to fight this fascist program city by city or issue by issue, our resistance will be rolled over. This anger and courage and determination need to be built on and brought to the fight to drive out the whole fascist regime, which needs to be centered in Washington, DC, beginning November 5. As our lead editorial this week says: “another leap in the struggle against fascism is now urgently required. This means going on the political offensive to take on the whole fascist program, at the seat of power in Washington, DC, in relentless nonviolent struggle until it’s gone.”

New York City: ICE Raids Terrorize Canal Street, Face Immediate Protest

Canal Street is a bustling hub of street vendors, small shops, restaurants and apartments in lower Manhattan’s Chinatown district. On Tuesday, October 21, it became a scene of harassment and terror when some 50 armed and masked ICE and other federal agents, along with military-style trucks descended on a stretch of Canal Street where vendors sell goods and began arresting people. They were immediately confronted, as one news report put it, “by droves of New Yorkers who formed a spontaneous protest.” Protesters surrounded the agents and their vehicles, shouting “Shame, shame, shame!” 

The federal agents arrested nine vendors, alleging they were in the U.S. “illegally” and selling “counterfeit goods.” Four people who protested the raid right on  the spot were also taken and detained—they were later released. 

The raid spread shock and outrage across New York City and the next night over a thousand marched in protest, filling the street for five solid blocks.

The acting head of ICE, Todd Lyons, told Fox News that New York City will see an “increase in ICE arrests” like the raid on Canal Street because there are “so many criminal illegal” immigrants. He warned, “You will see us making those criminal arrests to make New York safe again.”

A street vendor, who is a U.S. citizen originally from Mauritania, said that he used to feel “safe” in the U.S., but “America is losing that… And people have to say something. They have to not be scared. They have to stand up…. the time is now.”

Everyone Is Blowing Whistles These Days in Chicago

“Everyone is welcome here except ICE” signs are in the windows of cafes and shops across the city—from a confectioner in Irving Park on the North Side to a Black bookstore in Hyde Park on the South Side, and many other places between and beyond. There are Whistlemania events, where hundreds of neighbors put together kits with orange whistles to warn of ICE raids and Know Your Rights printouts in English and Spanish. The owner and students of a mixed martial arts gym in Pilsen watch when kids are dropped off and picked up at school, get food to neighbors afraid to go outside and more. Dog rescue groups, churches, cycling clubs, parent-teacher groups, and others have rapid response teams that blow whistles when ICE is active, take videos and post them, use chat groups to trade descriptions of ICE vehicles, and organize safe walks to school. The University of Chicago Maroon, the student newspaper, published a map to ICE sightings in the surrounding neighborhoods.

On October 22 and 23, federal agents hit Little Village, the heart of Chicago’s Mexican community on the Southwest Side. Wednesday, the feds detained at least seven people, two of them U.S. citizens, and pepper sprayed a man. Thursday, “The agents, donning military-style camouflage gear and gas masks, tear-gassed and pepper-sprayed protesters during the confrontation.” Gregory Bovino. the Border Patrol commander who led the infamous September 30 raid on the South Shore apartment building, threw the first tear gas canister, after detaining the mall security guard who had refused to allow the federal agents into the parking lot in accordance with mayoral executive orders and Chicago sanctuary laws. ICE took away two high school boys, a woman who is a U.S. citizen, and a man. 

On Friday, people in the neighborhoods of Lincoln Park and Lakeview—middle class neighborhoods that had not experienced the clampdown as many other areas in Chicago had—were gassed as they poured out of their homes to find ICE on the rampage. In Lakeview, ICE climbed over locked fences to grab men doing construction work on million-dollar properties. In this video a woman tells the story of her husband who recently started running and took a whistle and a camera out on his run, where he came upon the scene, along with many of his outraged neighbors who were demanding that the agents unmask and identify themselves. On Saturday, the Department of Homeland Security released a statement claiming that its use of tear gas was necessary because they were “swarmed by agitators.”

Saturday morning, October 25, was the fourth day in a row that immigration agents tear-gassed people in Chicago. Albany Park and Avondale are on the North Side, about half Latino and a third white. “Federal immigration agents deploy tear gas on Northwest Side streets as Chicagoans bellow, ‘Get out of our city!’” was the headline of an article about this in the Chicago Tribune. Among the many videos the Tribune reports is one that shows “a group of neighbors marching down the street, filming and blowing whistles as they cussed out federal agents, who were wearing Border Patrol insignia and all masked…” A white man in the neighborhood, a former states attorney for Cook County, ran out of his house barefoot yelling “Nazis!” and “Gestapo!” when he saw two Border Patrol agents tackling a man to the ground. The federal agents detained at least four people—two of whom are a neighborhood resident and a cyclist who was riding by, both U.S. citizens.

Thousands Protest in SF Bay Area Against Potential ICE Raids

On Thursday, October 23, protests broke out throughout the San Francisco Bay Area in response to a “surge” planned by the Trump administration, with ICE raids and threats to send the National Guard into Oakland, San Francisco, and San Jose. 

In Oakland, several hundred protesters gathered at the entrance to Coast Guard Island early in the morning. This Coast Guard base in Alameda, across the Bay from San Francisco, was where ICE was going to be staging. That afternoon several hundred marched from the immigrant Fruitvale district in Oakland to bolster the demonstration at Coast Guard Island. The protesters clashed with the California Highway Patrol that was attempting to stop them from blocking the island’s entrance. Legal organizations fanned out in Oakland to warn people of the possibility of raids. During the day, cops fired rubber bullets and live ammunition at what they perceived as “threats.” 

In San Francisco, over 5,000 marched from Embarcadero Plaza to the ICE detention center. They carried signs like “No ICE Troops in the Bay” and “Protect Our Neighbors—Keep Families Together.” 

Hundreds gathered outside San Jose City Hall to protest the planned ICE surge. They carried signs saying, “When Injustice Becomes Law, Resistance Becomes Duty!” and “Full rights for all immigrants, abolish ICE.” 

Trump called off the planned “surge”—for now—when tech executives reached him and reportedly convinced him not to do it.

People in the Bay Area remain tense to any future ICE activity in their cities, as activists are patrolling immigrant neighborhoods in preparation to confront ICE if they show up. Gabriela DelaRiva, a retired nurse who lives in Alameda, said, “I’m so proud to be in the Bay Area where people do get activated.”