Visible and Invisible: How ICE Is Terrorizing Chicago’s Working Class
Fear, panic, hiding for days—this is the experience of families under assault by the Trump Administration
Sarah Lazare
When federal immigration agents thread through her Chicago neighborhood and circle above her home in a helicopter, Araceli hides with her husband. “You hear the whistles,” she says through an interpreter. “You hear the people yelling, ‘Don’t go out! Stay inside! There’s immigration here!’ ”
Sometimes they are forced to hide for days.
“It’s alarming, it’s not normal, it’s like being in a crisis,” explains Araceli, who is 55 and originally from Mexico City, though she has lived in Chicago for 30 years. That means Araceli often misses work as an apartment cleaner and her husband misses work in construction.
When it’s not safe to leave, she and her husband rely on their two adult children to bring them food. And then, when missed work means missed pay, they rely on their children to help with the rent.
“What harm have we caused in this country?” asks Araceli, who is using a pseudonym to protect her safety, tears streaming down her face. “Do we really deserve this?”
Since initiating Operation Midway Blitz in early September, the Trump administration has sent a surge of federal immigration agents to the Chicago area to terrorize neighborhoods across the city and abduct people, pulling them into vans and cars off the street, from hiring sites, out of their homes while they sleep and during school pickups. Employers and corporate executives are hardly ever the target of such immigration crackdowns. Instead, it’s day laborers, street vendors, construction workers, cooks, textile workers and domestic workers who are most heavily targeted. Border Patrol chief Gregory Bovino left Chicago in mid-November, but abductions are continuing.
Masked federal agents dragged a woman out of the daycare where she worked while the children watched. Agents raided the rideshare parking lot of O’Hare International Airport. They jumped out and snatched an unhoused day laborer from an alley, one of 26 unhoused Chicagoans abducted since Operation Midway Blitz began, according to reporting from Katie Prout.
While the abductions, often in broad daylight, have provoked fear and outrage, the escalation is also unleashing a less visible form of economic treachery on Chicago’s immigrant working class. Once-bustling neighborhoods feel empty as workers hide at home or elsewhere, afraid to leave. When workers miss income, they typically rely on their families and communities for help. But with so many missing their wages, the goodwill is nowhere near enough to meet the need. And when the work isn’t done, a chain reaction begins, especially within heavily immigrant communities. Entire neighborhoods are facing an economic slump, and many of those who do go to work must contend with ever-present feelings of terror, as some employers are more emboldened to mistreat workers.
“We have heard of a lot of people not showing up to work, not going out to engage in economic activity, because of the fear and of the real threat that exists,” says Miguel Alvelo Rivera, executive director of the Latino Union of Chicago. “We know plenty of people who are saying, ‘I’m just trying to get by on what I have for now.’ ”
Marcos Ceniceros, executive director of Warehouse Workers for Justice, estimates that, based on his conversations with workers, a majority — if not all — of immigrant workers in the Chicago area who “don’t have status” are forced to grapple with this fear, even if they are still showing up to work. “We know people who are scared, and they say they would rather not do it, but they have to go to work. They have to provide for their families,” he says. “And so they just have to live in perpetual fear of being detained.”
There are usually 10 people assigned to the machine that Elena works on as a poultry processor. Since the beginning of Operation Midway Blitz, many of her coworkers, immigrants like her, have been afraid to come to work. Some days, three or four of the people who work on her machine don’t show up.
Even with fewer people, the work has to get done. “We are expected to work harder, no raises, no bonuses,” says Elena (through an interpreter), who is 62 and requested a pseudonym to protect her from retaliation in the workplace and targeting by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). “My hands will go numb. I get body pains. I have to take pills in order to help me deal with all this. I can’t miss work — once your points run out, they’ll fire you.”
Immigrants have long been a highly exploited stratum of U.S. workers. Well before the current Trump administration, bosses have used threats of calling ICE to clamp down on organizing efforts and to get away with poor wages and conditions.
But Geovanni Celaya, a migrant worker-organizer for the Latino Union of Chicago, says he has seen a marked increase in complaints from workers about wage theft and mistreatment, including many day laborers, since Operation Midway Blitz. “Now, with this current administration, folks have felt empowered to take advantage of workers and exploit them and not pay them,” Celaya says. “We see the new ways that contractors go about wage theft, knowing that they have the backing of an immigration system that targets lower-class working people.”
A spokesperson for Mayor Brandon Johnson’s office affirmed that reports of wage theft in the city had skyrocketed, increasing 28% in 2025 over the same 10-month period in 2024.
“From January 1 to October 31, 2025, the Office of Labor Standards (OLS) received 265 wage theft complaints. During the same timeframe in 2024, OLS received 206 wage theft complaints,” according to the spokesperson.
“The cause of the increase can be attributed to a variety of factors, including awareness of OLS, as well as the ongoing immigration crackdown by DHS dubbed ‘Operation Midway Blitz,’ ” they wrote in a statement to In These Times and Workday Magazine.
It’s not just Chicago. Victor Narro, project director for the UCLA Labor Center, has been in touch with worker centers and unions throughout the Los Angeles area. He says he is hearing that workers are more afraid to speak up. “The ICE raids are everywhere,” he says, “so there’s already that fear. The employers tap into that fear to keep them in a situation where they become afraid to complain about working conditions. So then you see a higher level of violations.”
But there is also a new dynamic at work, Narro says: “It’s not only undocumented workers who are going to be afraid. It’s any immigrant workers, because it’s apparent that the enforcement strategy of this administration is to go after anybody who has brown skin and looks immigrant.”
Labor leaders have been among those targeted by federal agents, including beloved worker advocate and Chicago day laborer Willian Giménez González, who was abducted outside his barbershop on September 12. (He was released from ICE custody on October 28.) But the vast majority of those picked up are not members of unions or worker centers, and getting basic information about who has been taken has been challenging.
“The violent ICE raids happening in Chicago and across the country are attacks on hard-working communities meant to break us and our solidarity,” says Rep. Delia Ramirez (D-Ill.).
Immigrant workers are continuing to organize despite this chilling effect. Shelly Ruzicka, communications and finance director for Arise Chicago, a worker center, says: “We definitely have some folks that are very scared. Some folks are scared even to be going out at all and to come to our office for events. We have seen a little bit of a decline in numbers. There are other folks who say, ‘I’m concerned, but I have to work, and I’m going to still come to Arise. I’m just being really careful.’ Some folks say ‘I’m basically only going back and forth, from work to home.’ There are workers who have no one else they can rely on and have to go to work.”
Things are “different from six weeks ago or so,” Ruzicka adds, speaking in early November. “We still had people say, ‘I’m concerned, but I have to live my life. I have to work.’ The very intense violence, the unmarked cars, definitely has increased the concern and the fear levels from folks.”
Elena says that, at her workplace processing poultry, there is a pervasive fear that workers will be fired if they speak out about the increased pace of work.
“My colleagues, my coworkers, they tell me to keep my mouth shut, that I can’t say anything,” she says, “because they’re going to fire all of us if I speak up.”
But Elena says it is not in her nature to keep quiet when she witnesses wrongdoing: “I don’t care. I’m going to say something anyway.”
Since Operation Midway Blitz began, some Chicago streets have often been eerily quiet, says Alvelo Rivera of the Latino Union of Chicago.
“Essentially, after any report of ICE activity in the neighborhood, street vendors clear out, and a lot of the local businesses — even though they stay open — won’t have as many customers come in,” says Alvelo Rivera. For those who know a neighborhood and are familiar with what is normal for that area, the streets are hushed, he says, as those most vulnerable to ICE hide.
One telling sign is that organizers are reporting fewer day laborers at hiring sites. In June, there would be 35 or so day laborers in the parking lot of the Home Depot on 47th and Western, in Chicago’s Back of the Yards neighborhood, according to one volunteer with the Adopt a Hiring Corner organizing effort of the Latino Union of Chicago. “Now, there are between five and 10, maximum,” they explain.
Palmira Figueroa, spokesperson for the National Day Laborer Organizing Network, says other cities, too, are seeing fewer day laborers out at hiring sites. “The environment in many cities is such that people are being racially profiled and being hunted in places where they are normally waiting for work. And even our construction sites are not safe anymore.”
Maria Orozco worked as a street vendor (and her mom currently works as a street vendor) before she got her current job running development and outreach for the Street Vendors Association of Chicago. “Our street vendors normally work five to seven days a week,” Orozco says. “The only days off are normally bad weather. Since everything started with ICE agents attacking Chicago, 90% of our vendors aren’t vending like they used to. So they just haven’t gone out — that’s going out to sell, or anything.”
“Staying inside is really hard,” says Elena, who lives in Albany Park, a diverse neighborhood that includes many immigrants. “Being home is kind of traumatic. … When I’ve had to stay inside, I have a window that looks out to the front. And I look out the window and there’s nobody outside. There’s nobody. There’s no cars. Sometimes I might step out and there’s no one outside. There’s nobody at the stores. It’s just completely empty.
“That’s not the Chicago that I know.”
Celaya, from the Latino Union of Chicago, hears from domestic workers, street vendors and day laborers about the economic consequences of the abductions. “I had a message the other day from a volunteer [saying] that the main person who was working and providing for a family got detained,” Celaya says. “And it wasn’t until a few days that the family realized, and they’re already late on rent. And rent is one issue, but what about food? What about childcare? What about all the other necessities people need?”
To address the intense level of need from lost income, Orozco says the Street Vendors Association of Chicago started a relief fund, surpassing their goal of $300,000. Even still, the need is tremendous: It was developed to serve 600 people but has so far had 800 applicants, Orozco says.
Meanwhile, communities have found creative ways to show solidarity with street vendors. Bicyclists with the group CyclingxSolidarity go on long rides and then buy out vendors vulnerable to ICE detention so that they don’t have to spend all day outside selling tamales. Neighbors have been informally doing this, too, throughout the city.
Across sectors, communities have launched numerous efforts to distribute resources to those in dire need. “There are multiple GoFundMe fundraisers that are autonomously organized, that are supporting different individuals that have either experienced some of these attacks, or are the family members of people that were taken,” Alvelo Rivera says.
The Latino Union of Chicago has a worker support network that aims to connect volunteers with immigrants who need help getting their basic needs met. “Workers make asks and let volunteers know what they need,” Celaya says. “For example, getting groceries, going to the doctor, someone going to a work site with them so they feel more comfortable, someone picking up their kids. And other things, like direct assistance resources.”
The outpouring has been tremendous, but it’s nowhere near enough. “All I can do is provide people with the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights (ICIRR) family support network, and then try to find local mutual aid groups that can provide support,” Celaya says. “But in the long term, that’s not going to provide a solution. That’s not going to alleviate the constant struggle of having to look for resources.”
ICIRR manages a statewide hotline to report ICE sight- ings or detentions, and it works with the group Organized Communities Against Deportations, which reaches out to people whose loved ones have been taken, then connects them with legal and organizational support. National networks also help, but ultimately, people fall through the cracks.
“The nature of ICE and CBP’s [Customs and Border Protection] operation right now is that they are approaching people and taking them off the streets at worksites, and a lot of times people don’t even know who is taken,” says Brandon Lee, spokesperson for ICIRR. “If someone approaches a landscaper and takes them, and all that’s left is a lawnmower that’s still running and nobody riding it, it’s almost impossible to know who was taken. That’s where rapid response teams and local organizations would canvass the neighborhood, try to get the name of the company and get more information.
“It shows the way that ICE and CBP are truly disappearing people into their detention system,” Lee says.
Araceli and her husband, who live in Little Village, a predominantly Latino area, have been trying to go to work as much as possible. When they do, their daughter drops them off and picks them up. Work and home are the only places they travel, with rare exception. They live in fear, despite Araceli’s work permit.
“We’re not doing anything else,” Araceli says. “There’s the fear, because you really need to be careful.”
Workers across the Chicago area are feeling “an earthquake that shakes the foundation of workers” that “kind of ripples through the community, regardless of whether you, yourself, are undocumented,” according to Liz Winfield, a teacher at Benito Juarez Community Academy, a heavily immigrant high school.
One Thursday, a student from Winfield’s homeroom class was abducted by federal agents on his way to school, she said. He has since been released, but his education was majorly disrupted by the ordeal.
Parents, too, are being abducted.
“If a person is at a Home Depot or working in a labor job and they get snatched up, and then maybe they have children who are citizens and they’re going to school,” says Winfield, who is an associate delegate for the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU), “those children are impacted, their education is impacted negatively because their mind is on their father, who got taken, or on how they’re going to make it as a family if their primary breadwinner is now detained by ICE and possibly won’t come back.”
After Operation Midway Blitz was announced on September 8, overall attendance at Chicago Public Schools dropped by 1.25 percentage points — more than double the drop in attendance at this time last year, according to a Chalkbeat analysis. But at some heavily immigrant schools, this drop is far greater, explains Jackson Potter, CTU vice president.
“It’s why we’re arguing for a remote option,” Potter says. “Teachers are worried. We want to provide more infrastructure that allows staff to do home visits for food, mutual aid, academics, all of it.”
When students are harmed, the effect “ripples through into the teachers,” Winfield says. “And so we’re struggling to figure out how we can help and support our students who are impacted, as well as make meaning out of it in our own classes and curriculum, to meet the moment. Teachers are scrambling to do all of those things, in addition to the other things that they do, like take attendance. I have to give exams. I have to give grades.”
Communities are trying to fight back. Rapid responder groups have followed ICE by foot, bike and car, sounding danger with whistles, shouting and honking horns. Parent and community groups are working with the CTU to protect students and families as they travel to school. Across the city, people are rushing out of their houses to try to stop federal agents.
“Any single person that they’re able to steal has been stolen from our community, has been denied due process,” says Ezra, a volunteer with the Latino Union of Chicago’s Adopt a Hiring Corner effort, which covers more than a dozen hiring sites throughout Chicago and nearby suburbs. (The group has coupled the effort with a proposal to the city to formally establish safe hiring sites.)
Several times a week, Ezra goes to the Back of the Yards neighborhood to visit with day laborers gathering for work. Several other people in the neighborhood do the same.
The idea is to make sure ICE knows the community is watching, to proactively make the hiring sites safer for workers.
Home Depot stores across the country have been the sites of repeated federal raids. At one store in Monrovia, Calif., a man fleeing federal agents in August ran onto a freeway, where he was hit and killed by an SUV. Communities have criticized the company for failing to mount the slightest opposition to federal agents operating on its property. Protesters gathered at a Home Depot in the Chicago neighborhood of Belmont Cragin on November 1 to urge the company to refuse entry to federal agents.
But activists are not waiting idly for the company — whose co-founder, Ken Langone, is a known Trump supporter — to put up a fight.
“The more that we are able to be a presence with them and stand with them, the more that they know there will be people who will see them and care for them and recognize what is going on,” says Ezra, who requested a pseudonym. “And any form of deterrence or protection that that offers is worth more than gold.”
Elena is not out at the hiring sites, but she does find comfort in her neighbors doing simple things, like sitting outside and sipping coffee and “saying, ‘We’re here, in solidarity with you.’ ” She adds, “People have been really helpful by going out and showing that they’re not scared. I’ve been to some [marches] myself. If we all go out to protests, it shows we are all unified.”
Araceli, who organizes with Arise, is determined to support other workers even as she faces intense fear in her own life. “It’s so sad and traumatizing,” she says. “I’ve been living in Chicago for 30 years, and I’ve never felt threatened like this, never felt like I couldn’t go out to a store.
“These attacks, they need to stop.”
This article is a joint publication of In These Times and Workday Magazine.
Sarah Lazare is the editor of Workday Magazine and a contributing editor for In These Times. She tweets at @sarahlazare.
