(NewsNation) — Escalated demonstrations bringing community immigrant advocacy groups face-to-face with Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents are becoming common around the United States as President Donald Trump’s border crackdown and mass deportation efforts are carried out.
On Wednesday, agents were confronted by protesters in Chicago, where more than a dozen migrants were taken into custody after showing up to check in for scheduled immigration appointments.
Masked ICE agents raid Chicago immigration supervision building
NewsNation affiliate WGN reported that community advocates were tipped off that ICE was detaining migrants early Wednesday, when a woman who is enrolled in a program that provides migrants with an alternative to deportation received a text message this week, telling her to show up.
When she and others did, they were met by masked ICE agents who took the migrants into custody as family members and neighbors watched. An ICE spokesperson told WGN that those who were arrested had “executable final orders of removal” issued by a judge and had not yet complied with the order to leave.”
“The response is that people are coming in support as witnesses,” Chicago Alderman Byron Sigcho-Lopez told NewsNation on Thursday. “I think we all have the responsibility when the federal government is violating the law to protect our neighbors from constitutional human rights violations.”
Sigcho-Lopez and community activists such as Antonio Gutierrez, the co-founder of Organized Communities Against Deportations, said that the community response to ICE operations needs to continue to keep the activity from becoming “normalized.”
ICE did not respond to multiple requests for further comment regarding the confrontation with protesters from NewsNation on Thursday.
Chicago Police told NewsNation on Thursday that officers arrived at the scene of the protest without knowledge that immigration enforcement was taking place. A spokesman said that officers remained on-site to ensure that everyone remained safe, including those exercising their First Amendment rights.
ICE clashes with protesters, community members across the country
Those who enter the frontlines in supporting migrants, like rapid response teams that showed up in Chicago on Wednesday, feel they cannot allow ICE’s actions, which one city official characterized as Gestapo-like, to be ignored.
“People are upset, I mean, it’s wrong what’s happening all over,” Minneapolis resident Star Downwind told the Associated Press after a search of a local taco restaurant this week was carried out by federal agents.
ICE said that the raid was part of a “groundbreaking criminal operation” that “represents a new chapter in how we confront complex multidimensional threats” the Minneapolis Star Tribune reported.
Recent ICE activity in San Diego, Nashville, Newark and New York have been met with resistance by protesters and others from the community.
In San Diego, a local restaurant was forced to close temporarily after ICE carried out a workplace enforcement operation, claiming the popular eatery had violated immigration laws by hiring employees who had entered the country illegally, NewsNation affiliate KUSI reported.
Agents wearing tactical gear entered the restaurant as it was preparing to open late last week.
At least two workers were detained. The restaurant’s owner confirmed to the local television station that his staff is made up of undocumented immigrants. During the operation, ICE agents encountered protesters, which led the agency to use flashbangs as protesters approached and surrounded ICE vehicles, KUSI reported.
“We believe in what Trump is doing and his message is, ‘We’re not going to stand for it,’” customer Pedro Gonzalez told the station.
Another customer, Jean Di Carlo-Wagner, decried ICE actions at the eatery, telling the San Diego TV station, “What they did was wrong, heavy-handed and traumatizing.”
Salvador Sarmiento, a spokesperson for the National Day Laborer Organizing Network, described the ICE operation at a recent news conference as “the goon squad that showed up to brutalize the workers that serve us.”
ICE arrests ramping up
The uptick in ICE activity comes as White House border czar Tom Homan and other administration officials have pushed the agency to make 3,000 arrests per day.
Homan recently called the numbers “good, but not good enough.”
ICE wrapped up what they said was a month-long operation in Massachusetts this week, arresting 1,500 peopIe.
Wednesday’s total of 2.368 apprehensions marked an all-time high for single-day arrests, NewsNation has learned. The agency had been averaging an average of around 1,600 arrests per day, officials told NewsNation.
Source link
https://findsuperdeals.shop/
