Chicagoans Continue Protests Against Trump and ICE Thursday

Chicago is facing another day of protests against ICE raids Thursday as demonstrations continue across the country against President Donald Trump’s deployment of troops in Los Angeles amid his immigration crackdown.

In the first of two anticipated protests, approximately 100 activists, including the Rev. Jesse Jackson and Fr. Michael Pfleger, marched outside the Target at the intersection of South State and East Madison Streets to condemn Target’s recent policy reversals around diversity and “escalating civil rights rollbacks.”

Speakers condemned immigration enforcement that has swept up people, including children, at workplaces, court and in the street across the country.

“America doing the electric slide backward,” said Pastor Jamal Bryant, who likened the scene on State Street to a Woolworth’s lunch counter. “This is the America we thought we changed.”

By 4 p.m. protesters from the first began dashing to the second demonstration, organized by the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights.

“Nowadays, you have to choose between whether you want to get your medication and whether you want to pay your rent,” said Margaret Heywood-Smith, 70, as she hurried south down State Street where about 400 people had gathered by Michigan Avenue and Ida B. Wells Drive. The crowd raised red signs and chanted their support for immigrants.

Mayor Brandon Johnson, anticipating that the city may see further federal action in the coming days, called on Chicagoans Wednesday to “resist in this moment” if Trump mobilizes the military in Chicago to support ICE raids. Johnson’s chief of staff Cristina Pacione-Zayas told reporters that Chicago was expecting a blitz of ICE enforcement at workplaces starting Thursday.

Advocates and activists reported several sets of arrests around the city Thursday, including at immigration court. At least two demonstrations were planned for downtown — one Thursday afternoon on South State Street and another outside an U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement outpost in the South Loop.

“People are joined together…we will be marching to demand a stop to the raids and protection for our families,” said Lawrence Benito, executive director for Illinois Coalition for Immigrant Refugee Rights, at a Thursday morning news conference ahead of the protests.

The Chicago Housing Authority office at 60 E. Van Buren St. closed early today due to the protests downtown, a CHA employee told the Tribune. Chicago’s immigration court also closed early, according to a post on X by the U.S. Department of Justice.

The wave of protests that began Friday in Los Angeles has spread to other cities including New York, Austin, Seattle and Las Vegas among other cities and towns. Chicago saw its first large-scale demonstration Tuesday evening when thousands marched through the Loop and beyond to demand that the federal government stand down on its arrests of undocumented immigrants. The demonstration spanned much of the Loop and River North neighborhoods and periodically snarled traffic on several crowded thoroughfares, including DuSable Lake Shore Drive.

Chicago police said 17 people were arrested at that protest, and four were charged with felonies. More a dozen people were charged or cited for defacing public property including squad cars and CTA buses, police said. But that tension still pales in comparison to California and Texas, where National Guard troops have mobilized at the direction of Trump and Texas Gov. Greg Abbott.

Johnson, Gov. JB Pritzker and Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle, all Democrats, are all vocal supporters of Illinois and Chicago’s “sanctuary city” status — meaning the city and state do not cooperate with federal immigration enforcement — and Johnson said Wednesday that they were committed to “maintain the sensibilities of our democracy, the ability to freely express protest, that’s fundamental to our democracy.”

Pritzker on Thursday defended Illinois’ sanctuary laws for immigrants in the U.S. without legal permission before a House committee.

“The vast majority of immigrants contribute to our communities, pay taxes and abide by the law. We should value their entrepreneurship, ingenuity and hard work. Both political parties are to blame for America’s broken immigration system. I hope that this committee chooses (to) be part of the solution by pursuing bipartisan comprehensive federal immigration reform,” the state’s two-term governor said in remarks submitted to the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.

Andrew Herrera, a spokesperson for the Chicago Workers Collaborative, said the modern sanctuary city movement grew out of ICE raids at workplaces in the 2000s, when the public targeting of undocumented workers at meatpacking plants and industrial centers revealed how deeply disruptive federal immigration enforcement could be.

The movement gained momentum after high-profile raids in 2006 and 2008 under former President George W. Bush, including the raids at Swift & Company meatpacking plants in several Midwestern states and a meat processing plant in Postville, Iowa, which led to hundreds of arrests and devastated entire communities.