Community organizations and groups in the city and suburbs are anticipating for more possible immigration raids in the workplace as the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement continues to conduct sweeps across the country.
The city is bracing for ICE to deploy special response teams to aid with immigration enforcement. Organizations like Warehouse Workers for Justice are worried about some of the people they serve.
“We believe that every worker deserves to work with dignity and respect every single worker regardless of where you’re from,” said Marcos Ceniceros, Warehouse Workers for Justice Executive Director.
Ceniceros told NBC Chicago their organization supports and advocates for workers across the region with offices in Joliet and Chicago. Ceniceros said some of those workers are scared to go to work worried that ICE will be waiting.
“We see workers who are afraid of utility vehicles pulling into a warehouse to do maintenance,” Ceniceros said. “That kind of anxiety is traumatizing every day, what this administration is doing is causing people to go to work every single day to provide for their families being traumatized.”
Just this week, ICE said it conducted the largest workplace raid at a meatpacking plant on Tuesday in Omaha, Nebraska.
More than 70 people were detained for not having legal work authorization, the agency said. Some had active warrants, criminal records and had been previously deported, according to the agency. ICE also said it arrested 25 people at two different construction sites in Texas in a release.
“These raids are happening, our fear is they’re going to increase in both scale and intensity,” Ceniceros said. “It’s not that they’re targeting necessarily violent criminals, they’re targeting just working people.”
The president of the Little Village Community Council, Baltazar Enriquez, is now seeing more and more people coming in asking for help. Enriquez said that’s because they haven’t been able to work over fears of being deported.
“People are scared, people have not gone to work, the temp agencies, day laborers at Home Depot, they’re not coming to work, and this does have an impact now they don’t have money to feed their families,” Enriquez said.
Enriquez said they’re directing people to rental and utilities assistance along with providing free clothing. The council is hosting another “Know Your Rights” workshop for the community next week.
“We are a receiving community, hardworking community, most of these people don’t have a criminal background, most of these people are doing it the legal way,” Enriquez said. “They are doing it through the immigration process where they’re checking in, they’re reporting to immigration, but this administration has totally ignored the due process.”
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