Chicagoans wary of raids continue to mobilize

Volunteers began walking a busy business district on the city’s South Chicago neighborhood Monday morning to inform residents of their rights if confronted by federal immigration agents.

Mass deportation arrests that were expected Sunday largely didn’t happen, but Chicago’s immigrant communities remain on edge.

“It’s just really important that we educate people on knowing because the fear of the unknown is the worst thing, right, when things get in your head, it can really take over,” said Ald. Susan Sadlowski Garza (10th), who attended a news conference at 90th Street and Commercial Avenue.

Ana Guajardo, executive director of United Workers’ Center, a community organization dedicated to fighting for immigrants and workers on the Southeast Side of Chicago and south suburbs, said sometimes residents confuse Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents with Chicago police officers, who are not supposed to cooperate with ICE arrests.

“Last year we held a fashion show in the basement of a church to show what police looked like versus what ICE looked like,” Sadlowski Garza said.

State Sen. Robert Peters, D-Chicago, railed against President Donald Trump.

“Racist Donald Trump will not and cannot defeat us,” he said, calling Trump’s raids that never seem to materialize “political theater for Trump’s right-wing agenda.” Sadlowski Garza agreed. “Trump’s whole campaign, his whole presidency, is about fear,” she said.

“People that don’t look like us, act like us and don’t come from here are the enemy and that’s not right,” she said of Trump’s worldview.

In the 1960s and 1970s there were about 70,000 immigrants living and working at South Side steel mills, she said.

“We built the John Hancock, we built the Sears Tower. We can’t live in fear and havoc of people wondering if ICE is going to snatch them up. In the ’50s and the ’60s we didn’t have this issue, people flocked here. We want to make sure that they still flock here and that they know they’re safe.”