The Immigrant Rights Working Committee is a committee within the Chicago Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression, united in our struggle towards the national campaign of Legalization For All. In Chicago, our committee is organizing around ending CPD-ICE collaboration. Read more and get involved in our work below.

THE CAMPAIGN:

As the Trump Administration continues to escalate terror on Black, Brown, and working class communities, Chicago must fight back by stopping ICE terror every way possible. This includes stopping all bodies who aid ICE in their tactics, such as the Chicago Police Department. In Chicago and other cities, we have seen that the sympathetic presence of local law enforcement emboldens ICE and results in injuries to the public. CPD’s pattern of brutality, oppression and violence against Black and Brown Chicagoans grows as the force continues to aid ICE, and in turn, Donald Trump’s racist attacks on our city.

The people of Chicago have fought over the last several decades to establish protections for immigrants in Chicago and beyond-- this is a sanctuary city, county, and state. The Welcoming City Ordinance (WCO), passed in 2006, set a cultural and legal precedent that Chicago will always be a city safe for anyone who wants to live here. However, over the past year and especially during Operation Midway Blitz, the Trump Administration has tried time and time again to crush the spirit of Chicago. The city has turned a blind eye to CPD’s blatant and illegal collaboration with ICE. We have seen that CPD crowd control during immigration enforcement activities legitimizes and encourages ICE’s extra-judicial kidnappings and recognized violations of federal law. In Chicago specifically, ICE has a pattern and practice of detaining people without warrants or probable cause. Being protected by a line of CPD officers allows them to carry out these illegal detentions with little public accountability. Further, hundreds of eye-witness reports, as well as footage from Marimar Martinez’s shooting, show countless examples of CPD purposely refusing to document evidence of ICE’s crimes or arrest ICE agents for crimes committed in the community.

If the federal government wishes to carry out immigration enforcement activities in Chicago, then their own resources should be sufficient to manage all of the consequences. The people of Chicago should not have to worry about aggression from their own law enforcement as they simultaneously face the violence and brutality of federal agents.

The Community Commission for Public Safety and Accountability is the appointed body whose primary purpose is to serve as a model for police accountability and reform. As a body that plays a central role in setting CPD policy and goals and evaluates progress for both CPD and other police accountability bodies (COPA, the Police Board) in Chicago, and promotes transparency within Chicago's police department, the CCPSA has the power to shape CPD policy that would truly end CPD-ICE collaboration and hold CPD accountable for violations of the WCO. Over the past few months, thousands of community members have shown up to CCPSA meetings to demand they show real initiative in tightening the reins of CPD amidst news of resurgence of ICE activity this spring. Alongside families, students, and workers, CAARPR’s IRWC has shown up to every meeting to demand that the CCPSA:

• Present to the community, on a monthly basis, all communications, internal memos, and guidances regarding CPD and ICE collaboration,

• End CPD crowd control during immigration enforcement activities,

• End pretextual traffic stops,

• End CPD’s use of tactical teams,

• Remove all current and former oathkeepers and other members of white supremacist hate groups from the police force, and

• Transfer oathkeeper investigations from the BIA to COPA.

The CCPSA has vowed to address CPD-ICE collaboration as a part of their annual goals for 2026, and both COPA and CPD Superintendent Snelling have agreed to this. Our loved ones are being abducted and forced into abhorrent conditions without any recourse. We will not allow Chicago to be complicit in the terrorism ICE has brought to our communities. We will continue to put pressure on the CCPSA until CPD-ICE collaboration, in all of its forms, is eradicated. If the CCPSA is not capable of making this happen, then it is ever clearer that the people of Chicago need the Community Power Over Policing referendum, more now than ever before.