How Chicagoans Are Supporting Their Neighbors Amid ICE Raids

Welcome to our news segment: TL;DR of Immigration News, for when the news is Too Long and you Didn’t Read it.

This is a weekly collection of immigration-related news stories. These bite-size summaries will keep you up to date without overwhelming your inbox.
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Knoxville advocacy group calling for the release of local organizer detained by ICE in Nashville

Alejandro Guizar Lozano, resident of Nashville for two decades and beloved community organizer, has been detained by ICE after reporting for his routine check-in. Members of Allies of Knoxville’s Immigrant Neighbors (AKIN) were unable to locate Alejandro in spite of taking immediate action, because of the way ICE moves detainees quickly between locations across state lines.

The NBC affiliate linked above quotes AKIN member Meghan Conley: “Alejandro is a beloved member of every community he has ever been part of, and that is especially true here in Knoxville… This administration and every law enforcement agency in Tennessee that is complicit with ICE is attacking the fabric of our community, but we will not let Alejandro’s impact be erased. Across the country, there are communities just like ours, and immigrants just like Alejandro, whose stories will be told and remembered.”

Action items:

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Unfettered and Unaccountable: How Trump is Building a Violent, Shadowy Federal Police Force

The story of immigration enforcement operations in Santa Ana, California, is the story of the entire United States in miniature: rampaging ICE officials, beyond the bounds of restraint or decency, striking terror into the community.

ProPublica reports, “In some cases, the men wore plain clothes and refused to identify themselves. There was no way to confirm whether they were immigration agents or imposters. In six of the calls to Santa Ana police, residents described what they were seeing as kidnappings.”

ICE is flush with cash: on top of their billions in regular budgeting, supplemental budgeting has given them an additional $7.5 billion just for recruiting. They’ve lowered their recruitment standards, giving out $50k signing bonuses to fill their ranks. And accountability, rare before, is now non-existent.

Resistance in Santa Ana, as elsewhere, slows the gears of the kidnapping machine. ICE watches, interventions from onlookers - these efforts have slowed, and in one case, even reversed an ongoing ICE operation.
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GEO Group Stock Tanks as Detention Horrors Surface

In a rare moment of economic justice, immigration raid profiteer GEO group saw its stocks plunge last week as accounts of conditions in its concentration camps circulated widely. The company, long a separator of children from families, denier of medical care, starver and abuser of those confined in its terrible facilities, maintains its flagship “staging facility” in Alexandria, Louisiana. Equipped with its own airport, Alexandria is a central hub for the deportation machine, processing up to 7,000 people a day.

The Alexandria facility has become notorious for its abuses, which are widespread in the detention centers maintained by GEO Group and its counterpart profiteer, Core Civic. Georgetown scholar Bader Khan Suri, detained there last year despite his legal visa, described it as a place with “no rights at all.” Another detainee, Amilcar Lisser-Posadas, a Honduran father and former DACA recipient, described being locked in Alexandria for 12 days, sick with fever and chest congestion but denied care until just before his deportation flight. “It was just not a place for human beings,” he told The Guardian.

As ICE's largest contractor, GEO Group reported total second-quarter 2025 revenue of $636.2 million, a 5% increase from the second quarter of 2024.

But the circulation and consequence of reports of abuses at Alexandria is a success for our movements. It means that the media and the public are listening, and we need to keep up the pressure!

Action item: Learn more about the struggle for immigrant rights in Louisiana by reading about the state’s ACLU task force.
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LA County officials approve emergency declaration over immigration raids

Officials in LA County, the most densely populated county in CA, have voted in favor of declaring a state of emergency, giving the Board of Supervisors power to provide rent assistance and other financial relief to people in the region who have been affected by the ongoing ICE raids.

This is good news as about one third of the county’s 10 million residents are foreign born, and the county has an opportunity to provide material assistance to folks who have been afraid to leave their homes in order to work, as well as people who have had family members taken.

On Tuesday morning, October 21st, ICE agents shot and injured a citizen journalist, TikToker LA Richard, during an ICE raid near Santee High School in South Central LA. A US Marshal was also injured. This is a developing story and as we learn more about what exactly happened, we will share it in this newsletter.
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Look For The Helpers: How Chicagoans Are Supporting Their Neighbors Amid ICE Raids

Amid the continuing fear-inducing presence of federal agents in Chicago over the past month, some hope can be found in how Chicagoans are showing up in support of one another. All of this work is entirely community-led. There is no taxpayer money involved.

Examples of the support offered include:

  • Residents are equipping themselves with whistles by the thousands, readying neighbors to alert one another if they see ICE agents nearby.
  • Street Vendors Association of Chicago provides support to vendors too fearful of ICE raids to conduct normal business. The nonprofit organization The Mural Movement’s Operation Buyout will buy out a vendor’s supply and give them $500 to $1,000 along with groceries and other necessities.
  • Volunteers with the Neighbor to Neighbor program will go on grocery runs for community members who are afraid to leave their homes.
  • In a new “walking school bus” program to provide families support against ICE presence at schools, seven or eight volunteers position themselves along school routes to accompany families during drop-off and pickup.

Neighbors have pledged to continue showing up for one another in these ways as long as the increased ICE presence continues.
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Action items:

Support the community in Chicago:

End Avelo Airlines’ deportation flights:

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Did you know ICE’s budget will triple this fiscal year? That’s why Never Again Action needs to raise $54k (triple chai) to fund our response. As the attacks on our immigrant neighbors escalate, our solidarity must grow in equal measure. Learn more and donate to our 5786 Sukkah of Sanctuary fundraising campaign at this link.

Will you contribute to the Jewish voice against ICE?
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If you have questions, comments, or suggestions for next week’s roundup, drop us a line at neveragainaction@gmail.com.

Never Again Action