After weeks of preparations by Chicago's immigrant communities — and a weekend of fear sparked by multiple reports that the city would be the site of the first major deportation raids of the new Trump administration — there were no reports of immigration enforcement on Tuesday.
President Donald Trump has promised what he calls the largest domestic deportation in American history, and Chicago has long been in the administration's crosshairs. Rapid responders patrolling the streets, looking for signs of raids or arrests, said they saw no activity, but warned of the continued risk of deportation. They said the local community must remain alert.
“I woke up at six o'clock, (thinking) it was too late,” said Juliette de Jesus Alejandre, executive director of Palenque, LSNA, an organization that works to empower black, brown, indigenous and immigrant people. (Immigration) is stopping people on their way to work.” Residents of Chicago’s Northwest Side.
Once De Jesus Alejandre noticed that, except for a few false alarms and requests for more leaflets with information about people's rights, there were no deportations, she felt relieved that they had more time to educate people.
“People are on high alert,” De Jesus Alejandre said. “I am so grateful that even with these false reports, we are able to see how organized our neighbors are.”
The Trump administration initially said it planned to deploy immigration enforcement agents to Chicago on Trump's first full day in office, saying they would target immigrants with deportation orders and criminal records.
But by late weekend, Trump's “border czar” Tom Homan indicated the administration might reconsider after the agency's plans were leaked to multiple outlets.
However, city and state officials said the threat is real.
Over the weekend, all levels of government urged calm amid reports that Chicago was the target of widespread immigration raids. Community organizations, advocates and city council members held “Know Your Rights” training sessions online and in-person. They also created deportation defense infrastructure that included neighborhood-level rapid response teams.
On Tuesday, Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker said his administration had “heard” that the Trump White House was “targeting as many as 2,000 people” for deportation “in the city of Chicago alone.” But he said federal officials have not contacted his office.
Also Tuesday morning, the parking lot at a Home Depot on the outskirts of Cicero, usually packed with day laborers not authorized to work in the United States, was unusually slow. Some advocates believe the site could be a target for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, officials. A combination of cold and threats of deportation has emptied the area where workers usually stand.
Two men, shivering from the cold, stood in front of the hardware store. They said they were aware of the threat of deportation but needed to act anyway. They were each given flyers with information about their legal rights, and said they were instructed to remain silent if approached by ICE agents.
“I actually had a job scheduled, but they canceled my availability, so I had to come here,” one man said in Spanish.
Rumors have spread online about seeing federal immigration agents in the Chicago area, but groups like Chicago-based Communities Organized Against Deportation reported they had no information about ICE arrests as of Tuesday.
There have also been rumors of immigration agents in suburban Elgin, where Latinos make up about 48% of the city's population, but city officials said Tuesday afternoon they had no confirmed information about the reports and the police department had not received any related calls for service. .
ICE's Chicago field office would not comment on whether any arrests have been made since Trump was sworn in.
Other areas around the city believed to be potential targets remained quiet, including three city-run shelters where some newly arrived asylum seekers are living. A small number of adults and children could be seen entering and exiting the shelter in Hyde Park.
The downtown immigration court was closed Tuesday due to below-zero temperatures, as a steady stream of people still arriving at the building on East Monroe were turned away by building security. While the courts were closed, USCIS offices remained open inside a shared annex building on South Clark Street.
Immigration lawyer Magdalena Grobelski waited for a client who was scheduled to attend a naturalization hearing, a welcome respite after spending the morning fielding calls from anxious clients — about 40 before 8:30 a.m.
“They want to know if they should go to work. I've had clients tell me they won't go this week,” said Grobleski, who said she has asked her clients to try to continue with their normal lives. “It is their rights if they are approached by (ICE officers).” “I don’t want them to be afraid. “Maybe something will happen, but there is definitely a psychological impact that I’m worried about.”
In an interview with WBEZ's Reset on Tuesday, Mary Meg McCarthy, executive director of the Chicago-based National Immigrant Justice Center, called Trump's executive orders on immigration “heartbreaking” and “horrific.” She said they will closely monitor Chicago's immigration enforcement efforts.
“I have no idea what they're thinking in terms of the process, but I do know that you can't go to Home Depot and arrest every person in the parking lot based on their skin color or their accent. That's illegal,” McCarthy said.
Mawa Iqbal and Mohamed Samra contributed to this story.
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