ICE Activity Begins In Chicago As The City Remains On High Alert

CHICAGO, IL — Activists remained on high alert during the second day of planned federal immigration raids as Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents appeared to begin making their way across Chicago Monday.

There was at least one confirmed sighting of ICE agents on the city's northwest side. However, most of the calls and reports that came through to activists' offices and call lines surged with people asking for more information about their legal rights and how to become citizens, or reporting ICE incidents that later proved to be false. It was not yet clear, however, whether any arrests had been made.

"I don’t think we’re going to have a good sense of all of the activity until we give it a little bit more time," said Cara Yi, director of public affairs for the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights. "A lot of people —and Chicago — really come together on this, and all of that may contribute to the quiet. We just don't know."

The confirmed incident happened Monday afternoon in the 40th Ward on the northwest side. An ICE agent entered an apartment building because it did not have a lock, not because he was authorized to enter after someone let him in, said Lilia Escobar, who serves on the neighborhood services team for 33rd Ward Alderman Rossana Rodriguez. Workers from her office and Aldermen Andre Vazquez's office filed 311 complaints against the landlord so officials would require him to fix the lock.

"It's one simple way to protect people," she said.

Rodriguez's team of 60 volunteers who patrolled Albany Park on bikes Sunday were on call to continue to assist people whom ICE agents attempted to pick up Monday, Escobar added. They were ready to assist people with a range of needs, including rights education. For example, she said, many undocumented citizens are not aware that even if they have final deportation orders, they may still seek legal counsel in the first 48 hours they are held and may be able to reopen their cases. They also often don't know what a warrant is or what it looks like, which is important in part because issuing fake warrants is one tactic ICE agents use to bring someone into custody, Escobar said.

Immigrant rights groups said they also were working Monday to confirm several other reports of ICE activity.

The White House confirmed last week that at least 2,000 undocumented immigrants would be taken into custody during raids that began across 10 cities nationwide Sunday. Children, other immigrants and possibly citizens are expected to be swept up as "collateral" during the action, news outlets reported.

Speaking on FoxNews Sunday morning, acting ICE director Matt Albence addressed the enforcement actions.

"I will say that using the term "raids" does everyone a disservice," he said. "What we are doing is targeting specific individuals who had their day in immigration court and had been ordered to be removed."

Hotlines designed to help families who are targeted by ICE also fielded calls by panicked people fearful of suspicious cars parked on streets. Some of the cars turned out to be unmarked police cars with municipal police license plates or private security guards for ComEd, said Xanat Sobrevilla, a community organizer who was answering hotline calls Monday.

Organizers also confirmed that reports of ICE appearing in Joliet, Waukegan and Bolingbrook were unfounded.

ICE sweeps are not new. According to a Politico report, the Obama administration ordered more than 2 million people deported and swept many of them up in series of raids in October and November 2015.