A-Infos (en) US, BRRN: "A Dense Web of Solidarity": How Chicago Public School Workers Defend Students Against ICE (ca, de, fr, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

ICE's invasion of Chicago during Operation Midway Blitz sparked a range 
of organized community responses, from rapid response teams to fighting 
detentions at Broadview ICE Facility. In this interview, Heather, a 
teacher with Chicago Public Schools (CPS) and the Chicago Teachers Union 
(CTU), reflects on their organizing experiences during that wave of 
struggle. Drawing on their work in school and supporting a picket line 
in the Little Village neighborhood, they describe building and 
mobilizing sanctuary teams while connecting immigrant defense to worker 
struggle.

This ground-floor recollection shows self-organization in the face of 
fear, few options for durable collective infrastructure, and uncertainty 
as to what the deportation siege might bring. It practically outlines 
the importance of solidarity and connecting struggles across sectors and 
sites. As the leadership of ICE/Border Patrol continues to change, 
bringing a lower-key (and successful) tactical shift, we must revisit 
our approach. This interview provides insights to apply to future 
struggles against ICE, Border Patrol, and whatever other forms of 
domination capital and the State throws at us.

Black Rose/Rosa Negra (BRRN): Tell us how you learned about Operation 
Midway Blitz. What was the sense at your school site and in your district?
Heather: Even before Midway Blitz, immigrant rights organizers in our 
union had run a training series, during the first Trump administration, 
about building sanctuary teams in the workplace. Our union also won 
"sanctuary" language in our contract during a strike in 2019, which set 
an institutional precedent to turn away ICE whenever legally possible. 
So, smaller groups of more active members were preparing, even before 
the surge began.

After, there was a long lead up of news stories where the Trump 
administration was threatening and attempting to deploy the National 
Guard, threatening more ICE activity, etc. Our union was already seeing 
how the National Guard was harassing Black youth in Washington, D.C., 
and how ICE racially profiled people so blatantly, so among the more 
active members of our union, we were interpreting this as a direct 
threat to basically every student and family of color in our school 
district. During this lead-up, some federal agents showed up at a public 
elementary school wanting to see a student, and the workers and 
administrators successfully turned them away, which put the threat and 
the possibility of defeating it in everyone's minds. It later came out 
that it was actually Secret Service agents trying to question the 
elementary schooler about social media posts, but that didn't change 
anything for anyone. So when Midway Blitz began, parents and workers I 
knew were already fired up to do something about it.

BRRN: How did you and other public school workers prepare for the 
potential of ICE deployments to your sites?
Heather: At my school, we pulled together a "sanctuary team" that 
included myself, a security guard, the English Learner Program Teacher 
(ELPT), and other interested teachers and support staff. I took point on 
gathering all the resources and examples from my union's trainings to 
share with the team. The ELPT had relationships with some of our most 
vulnerable families, so she was on distributing know-your-rights 
information to them, and other interested staff were going to do the 
same to families they had connections with. The security guard is 
responsible for watching our school's entrance and he was the only one 
looped in with our administrators' implementation of district-wide 
guidance. At times when the administration delayed implementing the 
district's guidance at our school, the security guard was able to push 
them along, as well as fill in the sanctuary team on any gaps in their plan.

As a sanctuary team, we never had a set plan about how exactly we would 
respond if ICE showed up. Based on if ICE showed up during recess, 
drop-off, normal class, after-school, the front or back entrance, etc. 
our response would have to be completely different. We followed the 
advice from case studies we got at union trainings: go over general best 
practices, distribute know-your-rights and rapid response hotline 
information as widely as possible, think of different response options, 
and be prepared to communicate quickly if ICE shows up.

Some coworkers and I also flyered parents after school a few times with 
legal resources, info on the district policy's protections for immigrant 
students, and know-your-rights info that applied to interactions with 
ICE, the National Guard, and the Chicago Police Department. We also 
worked with our clerks and other parent-facing roles to make sure they 
knew the full scope of district policies protecting immigrant students.

Throughout all this, we had to combat some misconceptions about which 
students were vulnerable. Some coworkers thought only our students whose 
families were seeking asylum from Venezuela were going to be targeted. 
Many of those students had moved schools over the summer, so they 
thought we had nothing to worry about. We had to have conversations to 
explain how many of those families had legal status at the time, but a 
huge portion of our students might have someone undocumented in their 
family or they could just be profiled, including not only Latine 
students but Asian, Arab, and Black students.

BRRN: You also helped with ICE watch at a nearby picket line. Set the 
scene of the struggle for us and how defense against ICE figured into it.
Heather: A bit over 100 mainly Black and Latine workers at a 
multinational packaging plant in Little Village called Mauser were 
striking over dangerous conditions, inadequate protective equipment, low 
pay, and management's refusal to incorporate anti-ICE language in their 
contract. It was a grueling strike; it had already been going on for 3 
months when I heard about the ICE watch effort through my union's 
communication channels.By then, Mauser was threatening to close the 
plant because they refused to pay for the repairs needed to make the 
workplace a safe environment, and the battle was shifting to trying to 
secure a strong severance package.

By the time I got there, the whole of Little Village was basically under 
siege as part of Midway Blitz. During some stretches, there were 
intensive ICE or Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) operations starting 
early in the morning every day for a week or two weeks in the same 
neighborhood. "ICE not welcome here" signs were on every block, local 
restaurants would bring food to the ICE watch volunteers, and more 
horrifying scenes came out on the news every day. It was just interwoven 
into daily existence in that area.

To defend the strike, a local workers' center led an ICE watch effort on 
the picket line. When I was being trained, the union had secured a 
location nearby where all the workers would go that they could lock up 
to buy time as they get the word out and people mobilize to support them 
and hopefully make ICE back down. As ICE watchers, our job was to stay 
posted at the intersections with greater visibility so we could warn the 
workers  if ICE showed up. We also tracked some local rapid response 
channels so we knew what cars to be on the look out for that day and 
when ICE was heading our direction.

BRRN: Were there issues with ICE or other federal agents surveilling or 
harassing the picket?
Heather: Once, a CBP or ICE team of 2-3 cars was driving just a block 
away from the picket, and neighbors were tailing them honking and 
driving slowly in front of them. At one point an agent pointed a gun or 
a taser at a driver to make them get out of the way, and ICE/CBP was 
driving and swerving absurdly dangerously of course. When I saw them, I 
alerted the workers and they went through with the emergency plan, but 
CBP or ICE just continued on, so it was a false alarm, which was pretty 
common.

Agents also showed up to the picket another time when I wasn't on shift, 
including Gregory Bovino, who was the public face of Midway Blitz, but 
they didn't detain anybody. It seemed like it was more an intimidation 
or PR move-and a failed one at that since it didn't break the strike and 
the picket continued.

Ultimately, the strike ended after several months with the plant getting 
closed down, but through their collective action, workers secured a 
pretty good severance deal. The workers, including Mauser truckers who 
had joined the strike despite not being part of the bargaining unit, 
also won protections from retaliation for supporting the strike.

BRRN: Drawing from these experiences, what lessons would you like to 
leave for other education workers who want to protect students and each 
other?
Heather: The main thing picket line support taught me was the importance 
of having a plan for turning out public pressure or confrontation with 
ICE. In a lot of scenarios both there and at my school, ICE/CBP could be 
outside and you're kind of trapped inside for some time while agents are 
trying to get in, which isn't an ironclad plan. The next step for 
organizing both at school and the picket line was to help form a 
tangible plan for how to spread the word publicly or to rapid response 
networks so that we could mobilize folks ASAP, like a phone tree. That 
can be especially tricky if you're worried about ICE activity early in 
the morning. We started moving in that direction, but never created a 
plan that would have met the need of those situations.

I would also just say try to organize as early and as broadly as 
possible. No agents ever showed up at our school. However, the school 
community is still a powerful place to organize community resistance to 
ICE. In our school community, that looked like getting know-your-rights 
information out to as many parents and families as possible, including 
but not limited to our most vulnerable families. At other schools, that 
looked like 'walking buses' of parents and neighbors walking students to 
school in large groups, 'solidarity strolls' by school workers to watch 
for any ICE or CBP activity during pick-up and drop-off, and 
collaborations or mobilizations with neighborhood-based response groups. 
You want to have a dense web of solidarity - the more people who know 
what to do when ICE shows up and are organized to communicate, the 
stronger your entire school community is, whether someone is targeted at 
school, at home, or in between.

https://www.blackrosefed.org/web-solidarity-chicago-ice/
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