Resisting the Miller/Trump Deportation Decree, Part 2
Immigrant Communities Take the Lead
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Stephen Miller, the right-wing fanatic who guided the anti-migrant drive in Trump´s first term, is back, now as deputy chief of staff and top advisor on homeland security. Like Trump, Miller comes from immigrant roots, in his case from a Russian Jewish family. Trump is of German and Scottish descent, and two of his wives came from Eastern Europe. For both, their anti-immigrant rage targets only immigrants who are not of European descent, and is inextricably tied with the ideology of white supremacy.
The human suffering caused by this assault is incalculable. But immigrants themselves are leading the resistance. They deserve the support of the rest of us.
Until 1965, immigration law, based on percentages by national origin as of the 1920s, reproduced this bias towards immigrants from Western Europe. Since then, however, the diversity among immigrants to the United States has grown steadily. And, in recent years, the number of immigrants coming from sub-Saharan Africa in particular has grown from 130,000 in 1980 to over 2 million in 2019. Along with immigrant communities from Latin America and the Caribbean, they are increasingly well-organized and taking the lead in resisting the new deportation drive and raids by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
This set of two AfricaFocus Notes highlights recent analyses of resistance at the national level and in local areas around the country, as well as links for additional resources for immigrants and other supporters of immigrant rights.
This post is focused on the local level, featuring a selection from several locations around the country. Another, also sent out today, focused on the national level. These posts are longer than most AfricaFocus Notes. But, to break them up, I have interspersed the words with selected videos of Manu Chao´s famous anthem Clandestino. Even if you don´t read all of this at one time, I hope you may return for the music! And maybe continue reading as well.
For this post, I am including cases of several places and key organizations: Chicago, Arizona, and organizations of Black immigrant communities.
“Don’t Open the Door”: How Chicago Is Frustrating ICE’s Campaign of Fear
Months of know-your-rights work has Trump’s border czar complaining.
Sarah Lazare and Rebecca Burns
In These Times, January 30, 2025
https://inthesetimes.com/article/dont-open-the-door-how-chicago-is-frustrating-ices-campaign-of-fear
“Tom Homan said Chicago is very organized,” Margarita Klein, director of member organizing for Arise Chicago, proclaimed gleefully in Spanish to a room of 80 people at an immigrant rights training, many of whom laughed and clapped in response.
Klein was calling back to a CNN appearance two days earlier by Trump’s handpicked border czar.
“Sanctuary cities are making it very difficult,” Homan told anchor Kaitlan Collins of the administration’s immigration sweeps. “For instance, Chicago … they’ve been educated on how to defy ICE, how to hide from ICE.”
When Trump moved to make an example of Chicago, sending federal immigration authorities to the city on Sunday, Chicago’s immigrant rights community was braced for it. The city’s vast networks of workers’ centers, unions, and community organizations have spent months preparing, disbursing flyers and cards, and sending the message to residents: Don’t talk to ICE. The two-hour training at Arise Chicago’s offices yesterday night was the organization’s sixth in-house training that month, and just one of numerous actions taking place across the city to defend immigrant residents.
It’s one thing to know, intellectually, how to handle ICE, and another to have the muscle memory, so that you follow the plan in a stressful situation. To that end, Jorge Mújica, strategic campaigns organizer, did some boisterous role playing, in which he banged on the door and marched into the room pretending to be ICE. “Where are you from?” he shouted as he pointed at attendees, many of whom laughed at his lively presentation. Moises Zavala, workplace justice campaigns organizer for Arise Chicago, advised attendees to go home and practice with their families: “After dinner, do role playing: ‘What’s your name, where are you from, what’s your address?” (The answer, as always, was: Don’t talk to ICE.)
Over the last week, the Trump administration has worked to turn its deportation agenda into a perverse Reality TV spectacle, inviting reporters to embed with ICE operations, instructing agents to be “camera-ready” and even livestreaming arrests. It has publicly touted an array of federal authorities that are participating in the sweeps, including the FBI, ATF, DEA, CBP and the U.S. Marshals Service.
Chicago, a sanctuary city where local laws restrict police collaboration with ICE, is a favorite Trump punching-bag, and the center of the media spectacle. Dr. Phil hosted an hours-long broadcast on his MeritTV network on Sunday dedicated to ICE operations in Chicago, repeating widely debunked talking points about the dangers posed by immigrants, and media outlets like Bloomberg embedded with immigration authorities during the raids.
The full impact of the federal immigration actions is not yet known. Chicago police superintendent Larry Snelling said Tuesday that he believes approximately 100 people had been detained by federal officials, though he said he couldn’t give an exact figure. Immigrant rights groups in Chicago confirm that immigration authorities are in the city, but do not have a complete tally of detentions.
What is clear is that the PR push seems designed to incite fear.
But at the Arise Chicago office in the West Town neighborhood, the mood was not one of defeat; all of the people who spoke with In These Times and Workday Magazine wanted to underscore that their community is trying to fight fear with preparation and organization. “Obviously there is nervousness,” Klein said, as Arise Chicago members ambled into the office and greeted friends with smiles and hugs. “But we don’t see our community being paralyzed.”
Chicago’s sanctuary status means that no city agency, including the police department, is supposed to work with ICE to deport residents. The 2006 Welcoming City Ordinance enshrining these policies was recently upheld at City Hall following a large public mobilization to defend it, despite an effort by some alders to water down its sanctuary provisions.
Since taking office, Trump has unleashed a bevy of anti-immigrant actions nationwide, including indefinitely suspending refugee admissions, deploying troops to the border, cancelling asylum appointments and attempting to limit birthright citizenship rights, though the latter has been temporarily halted by a federal district court judge. Trump declared on Wednesday that he plans to cancel the student visas of Palestine solidarity demonstrators and use the Guantánamo Bay military prison to hold up to 30,000 deported migrants.
Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson said in response, “We are not going to be intimidated by those acts of terror to radically shift our way of living.”
Targeting sanctuary cities is key to the new administration’s strategy. On his first day in office, Trump signed an executive order that “sanctuary jurisdictions” will be cut off from federal funds “to the maximum extent possible.” And his Justice Department is instructing its prosecutors to investigate and charge state and local officials for “failing to comply” with immigration actions. Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson said in response, “We are not going to be intimidated by those acts of terror to radically shift our way of living.” Johnson is one of four mayors who has been called to testify before a congressional committee about their cities’ sanctuary status.
On January 25, four Chicago-based organizations filed a lawsuit in federal court, charging that the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown in Chicago is a bid to crush the sanctuary movement and violates activists’ First Amendment rights.
Antonio Gutierrez is an organizer with Organized Communities Against Deportations, one of the groups that filed the lawsuit. “We urge other groups to potentially think about similar lawsuits in their own cities,” Gutierrez says.
“Don’t open the door, remain silent if you’re arrested, tell your children not to open the door, and don’t sign anything,” Zavala told the crowd, most of whom are members of Arise Chicago, which organizes primarily Polish and Latino immigrant workers in low-wage industries like food production, manufacturing, domestic labor and food service.
The same principles apply if ICE shows up to your workplace, he underscored, and employers should know that ICE can’t enter without a warrant signed by a judge — unless the employer or another authority lets them in.
Even if the worst happens, and ICE detains you, it is best to remain silent and speak to an immigration attorney, whose number you’ve hopefully memorized, the trainers explained. Klein drove this point home with some gallows humor. “I know that when we are afraid, sometimes when we are nervous, we start talking and babbling too much and start telling them about all sorts of things like how many pimples we have on our back,” she said, jabbing her finger at an imaginary blemish as the room laughed.
African Immigrant Organizations
These are only a few of many around the country
Black Alliance for Just Immigration (https://baji.org/)
BAJI educates and engages African American and Black immigrant communities to organize and advocate for racial, social and economic justice. There are local BAJI Organizing Committees in New York, Georgia, California and Florida with staff in Texas and Minnesota.
Priority Africa Network (https://www.priorityafrica.org/)
Priority Africa Network (PAN) is an Oakland-based non-profit that supports and advocates for Black immigrant communities, working as 'bridge builder' between Black immigrants and African Americans.
African Communities Together (https://africans.us/)
African Communities Together is an organization of African immigrants fighting for civil rights, opportunity, and a better life for our families here in the U.S. and worldwide. It has offices in New York City; Alexandria, Virginia; Washington, DC; and Philadelphia.
Tucson activists to rally at state capitol for justice, community empowerment
By Susan A. Barnett on Jan 29, 2025
Susan Barnett is Deputy Editor of Tucson Spotlight and a graduate student at the University of Arizona. She previously worked for La Estrella de Tucson. Contact her at susan@tucsonspotlight.org.
Tucson Spotlight is a community-based newsroom that provides paid opportunities for students and rising journalists in Southern Arizona. Please support our work with a paid subscription.
Tucson activists are traveling to the state capitol with LUCHA to advocate for justice, celebrate community efforts, and address concerns over immigration policies.
An Arizona group that empowers Hispanic communities is driving Tucsonans to the state capitol Tuesday to demand that legislators put people over profits.
Living United for Change in Arizona is a member-based organization that fights for social, racial and economic justice. Tuesday’s event isn’t a protest, but a space for people to gather, recognize and celebrate efforts to create change. It will feature food, performances and a celebration of the group’s volunteer organizers. The event is one in a series that will continue with March’s Advocacy Day and in May, when the state will be finalizing the budget.
So far LUCHA has only filled about half of the seats on the 60-person bus, but organizers hope more people will join in their efforts to call attention to key issues the group is advocating for and against.
Home to the state capitol, Phoenix is the fifth-largest city in the United States with Maricopa County voters turning out in November largely in support of President Donald Trump.
But, “our state is more than Phoenix,” said Rocky Rivera, a Tucson-based organizer for LUCHA.
The lesser-populated Tucson was long known as a blue spot in the red state, a qualifier that’s visible in presidential election results. Tucson was one of only four counties carried by presidential candidate and vice president Kamala Harris.
Democrats also dominate the local political landscape in Tucson, from Tucson Mayor Regina Romero to its all-Democrat city council.
Hundreds of people took to the streets of Downtown Tucson on Inauguration Day to protest Trump’s return and his “millionaire agenda.”
That’s why LUCHA is bussing Tucsonans to Phoenix next week and encouraging people to register for the event and stand in solidarity with communities that will be impacted by new immigration orders and changes to path to citizenship.
“There's a lot of anxiety in the community over mass deportation,” Rivera said. “We're worried, we're scared, we're fearful, we want to see change. But yet, we want to sit in our comfort zone and stay home. We don't want to show up for our own selves. So if you're not going to do it for you, do it for your community or future generations.”
On his first day in office, Trump signed an executive order rescinding policies put into place by former President Joe Biden that protected marginalized communities, the environment and public health, among other things.
Elsa, who spoke to Tucson Spotlight before Trump’s inauguration, said that while she’ll be on the bus to Phoenix, she’s fearful of being at the forefront of advocating for her community.
Elsa is living in a state of limbo in which she’s not exactly undocumented, but she’s also not a U.S. citizen. Out of respect for Elsa's situation, Tucson Spotlight is not publishing her last name.
She said that she knows participating in the event will take a toll on her mental health, but she plans to go nonetheless.
“I just wish I felt more safe about it. If I was like a citizen, maybe I'd be more brave to do it, but right now I'm just so overwhelmed,” Elsa said. “When it comes to me being visible in public, I kind of fear for my life.”
She said she’s terrified of possible raids in Phoenix, but feels protected and excited by the number of people she expects to show up.
Since the inauguration, Elsa has tried to remain indoors as much as possible, only going out for work and necessities. She used to shop at El Super in South Tucson, but has stopped going to the south side, due to fear of being pulled over or detained.
“I really just wish that things were different,” she said. “I wish I didn't have to be scared to go outside, to live my life, that I didn't have to see all this violence in this country that calls itself the land of the free. I don't want to wake up scared anymore, but unfortunately, it is our reality, we just have to live with it and stay safe.”
The Laken Riley Act, passed bipartisanly by Congress, allows Homeland Security to detain migrants if they are charged with certain criminal offenses. While Pima County Sheriff Chris Nanos said he has no plans to enforce the law, Elsa is still concerned about the potential impact.
“It’s definitely been in the back of my mind,” Elsa said.”As a juvenile I committed petty crimes, as an adult I got a DUI very stupidly. It's not my character, but it's a scary thought, that because of a past mistake, something that I've rectified, I've changed, I'm going to be pointed out because of that.”
She and her partner, Luna, are now seriously contemplating moving back to Mexico, even though both women have been living in the U.S. since they were young children.
Both women have full-time jobs and volunteer with various community groups like Derechos Humanos and PANTERAS.
Luna, who is on DACA, hopes that there won’t be any serious attacks on the program. But for now, the two are trying to stay safe.
“I've seen the prosperity that happens if somebody's given a chance here,” LUCHA’s Rivera said. “We need to shift this narrative and shift this belief. It starts by bringing people's stories to the front.”
Love how Homan has been complaining about immigrants knowing their rights. Umm, pretty sure if you're against people knowing their rights, you're the bad guy. Thanks for sharing!