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AS ICE CONDUCTS MADE-FOR-TV RAIDS, CITIES FROM CHICAGO TO NEWARK
RESIST TRUMP’S IMMIGRATION CRACKDOWN  
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Amy Goodman Interviews Dulce Guzman and others
January 28, 2025
Democracy Now! [[link removed]]

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_ Dulce Guzmán, Chicago immigrant rights organizer, and Amy Torres,
executive director of the New Jersey Alliance for Immigrant Justice
are interviewed For Democracy Now! _

, Democracy Now!

 

Immigration and Customs Enforcement is ramping up raids across the
United States, arresting more than 1,000 people in operations Monday
after detaining a similar number on Sunday. Immigrant communities and
their allies say the raids violate human rights, the Constitution, and
are being carried out in retaliation against sanctuary cities that
have policies aimed at protecting undocumented residents. In Chicago,
immigrant rights organizer Dulce Guzmán says there is “palpable
fear and anxiety among families,” but she lauds elected officials,
including Mayor Brandon Johnson and Governor J.B. Pritzker, for
pushing back against what she says is the Trump administration’s
“white supremacist agenda.” Meanwhile, in Newark, New Jersey,
Mayor Ras Baraka has condemned an ICE raid last week at a seafood
depot where federal agents took three people into custody, including a
U.S. military veteran. “Simply being in proximity to their target,
which is immigrant communities, is enough to arrest and detain you,
too,” says Amy Torres, executive director of the New Jersey Alliance
for Immigrant Justice. She encourages people to know their rights,
such as the ability to record ICE agents and to refuse orders without
a warrant. “One of their most effective tools is fear and panic,”
Torres says.

Transcript
AMY GOODMAN: Well, we’re going to stay in Chicago. Immigration and
Customs Enforcement, or ICE, says it arrested more than a thousand
people, after detaining another thousand on Sunday, in raids that
immigrant communities and their allies say violate the Constitution
and are being carried out in retaliation against sanctuary cities.
Newly sworn-in Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem is in New
York City now on an ICE raid that was covered live, and agents have
been told to be camera-ready. She was live-tweeting the raid. Soon
we’ll go to Newark, where Mayor Ras Baraka denounced a warrantless
ICE raid Thursday that detained a U.S. veteran and other U.S.
citizens.

But we begin today’s show in Chicago, where ICE officially launched,
quote, “enhanced targeted operations” Sunday, with the TV
personality Dr. Phil joining Trump’s border czar Tom Homan and
streaming the immigration raids live by about 10 teams of about 10
federal agents each. Nearly half those arrested Sunday had no criminal
record. ICE says collateral arrests will continue as it claims to
target people who are dangerous. On Friday, school officials in
Chicago refused to allow agents into an elementary school who were
actually not ICE agents, but from the U.S. Secret Service. This comes
as four Chicago-based immigrant rights groups have sued to stop the
raids, and the Chicago City Council voted this month not to lift
limits on involvement in federal immigration enforcement actions. On
Monday, the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee launched
an investigation of Chicago and several other sanctuary cities.

We go right now to Chicago, where we’re joined by Dulce Guzmán,
executive director of Alianza Americas. She’s also a recipient of
DACA — that’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals.

Dulce, thank you for joining us. Can you talk about what’s happening
in your city?

DULCE GUZMÁN: Yes. Thank you for inviting me.

In the city and surrounding suburbs, there is a lot of palpable fear
and anxiety among families. As you just said, there was over 1,100 ICE
arrests across the country, and we still don’t know about how many
of those were from Chicago. What we have heard from families is that
many are choosing to stay home. Many are choosing to not send their
kids to school. Several businesses are reporting that they’re seeing
less business, people coming in. So, there’s a lot of fear and
anxiety that is spreading, for the same reason that we know that ICE
is not only targeting people with criminal backgrounds, but they’re
targeting people that have been here for many years who have not
committed any crime, who are our neighbors.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Dulce, even those that they claim are folks with
criminal backgrounds. apparently many are actually minor infractions.
There was a report of a man in Waukegan who was picked up by
immigration authorities for deportation who apparently had two
— who had been in the country for 20 years and had two DUIs,
driving under the influence, convictions in the past. What about these
minor crimes being treated under federal law as aggravated felonies?

DULCE GUZMÁN: Yeah, I think that this administration is trying to
make a point about public safety, when we know that this is not about
public safety. If this really was about public safety and legality, we
would not have seen the 1,500 pardons of people that stormed the
Capitol and made — caused violent crimes on police officers. I
believe that this is a very high media strategy that’s being used to
elevate what this administration is trying to push, which is a white
supremacist agenda.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And also, Illinois does not permit the detention of
people who are subject to potential deportation, so where are the
people that ICE is picking up in Chicago and the surrounding areas?
Where are they being sent?

DULCE GUZMÁN: As of now, we don’t know, but we suspect that they
might be going to nearby states like Indiana, where Indiana does allow
detention centers.

AMY GOODMAN: Dulce, we want to go across the country, from Chicago
back here on the East Coast to Newark. Dulce Guzmán is with
— executive director of Alianza Americas. In Newark, New Jersey,
another sanctuary city, which is in a state where nearly one in four
residents are foreign-born, nearly half of all children are part of
immigrant families, three days after President Trump’s inauguration,
ICE agents raided a seafood depot in Newark without a warrant, taking
three people into custody, including a U.S. military veteran. This is
the Newark Mayor Ras Baraka condemning the raids.

MAYOR RAS BARAKA: It’s a slippery slope when we think it’s OK to
suspend the Constitution of the United States in order to make a
political point or statement. … And if we allow people to identify
us or put us in categories of criminal or any other thing just by the
way we look, then we’re going back to a time that was very dangerous
in this country, specifically for people that look like me.

AMY GOODMAN: For more, we’re joined by Amy Torres, executive
director of the New Jersey Alliance for Immigrant Justice. She was on
the ground soon after the raid took place. And you’re the largest
immigrant group in New Jersey. Talk about what happened. Describe the
scene for us in Ironbound, one of the most diverse areas of Newark.

AMY TORRES: Sure. I mean, I think it’s important to understand what
the Ironbound is. This has been an immigrant enclave and hub forever,
you know, starting with the Portuguese whaling industry, something
that is so archaic, it’s like outside of our living memory, right?
So, this is not these sort of, like, new arrivals, the criminal gangs,
all of the things that this administration says that they’re
targeting.

The other thing is that, you know, ICE has called what they’re doing
across the country “targeted enforcement operations.” They refuse
to call the detention centers camps. They refuse to call deportations
anything but expulsions. Now they’re refusing to call raids anything
but raids, right? But what we’re seeing is that ICE officers stormed
this workplace. They immediately announced, “Do you want this
announcement in Spanish or Portuguese?” If this is a targeted
enforcement operation, don’t ICE officers know what they’re
enforcing? Don’t they know what languages they’re speaking if
they’re targeting certain people for arrest? And if this is such a
targeted enforcement operation, why are U.S. citizens and veterans
being interrogated and detained on the spot and having their
credentials questioned?

I think it’s really important, above all else, to understand what
our constitutional rights are.

AMY GOODMAN: Did they have a warrant?

AMY TORRES: They didn’t produce a warrant. And subsequently, they
haven’t produced one since. So, look, understanding what our rights
are, presidential administrations come and go, right? ICE directives
come and go. The Constitution is here to stay, and our constitutional
rights are here to stay. And so long as you understand that unless an
ICE officer produces a warrant with your name clearly and correctly
spelled, and signed by a judge, you do not need to answer their
questions. If you understand that, you can also develop an analysis
that everything that ICE officers do outside of that warrant is a
deception tactic, it’s manipulation, just like they use the theater
of fear and panic to intimidate people into giving more information
than they should. And that is how ICE operates in our community. They
operate — one of their most effective tools is fear and panic.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Amy, I wanted to ask you about this, the highly
publicized nature of these raids, with having reporters and
celebrities accompany the raids and having them all filmed, when the
reality is that even at the rate of a thousand arrests a day, that
would take the Trump administration — in one year, they’d have
365,000 people arrested. It would take them 30 years, even at this
rate, to be able to deport all the people they claim they are aiming
to deport.

AMY TORRES: Yeah. Well, I think two things. If Dr. Phil can film ICE
officers during an arrest, there’s no reason that you and I can’t,
either. If you are a bystander and you see ICE in your neighborhood,
you see ICE on your block, you take out your phone, and you start
filming, because if Dr. Phil can do it, you better bet that you can do
it, too.

The other thing to keep in mind is that this is an administration that
is built for the billionaire class. Yes, ICE’s current directives
are built on racism. It’s built on the post-9/11 nationalism that
bore Department of Homeland Security to begin with. But this is also a
gift to private prison corporations. That’s very true here in New
Jersey, where the world’s largest private prison corporation,
CoreCivic, is looking to expand its footprint and to challenge our ban
on immigration detention. It’s true in Newark, where GEO Group, one
of the other largest private prison corporations, is looking to expand
here in Newark, New Jersey, and in other cities across the state.

So, yes, whether it’s 100 arrests today or 1,000 arrests today, it
is built on fear, so that if we can’t detain people for profit, we
are detaining them in the isolation of their own homes. We are
segregating them from society. We are making people so fearful that
they’re withdrawing their kids from school. They’re too fearful to
see a doctor. They’re too fearful to go to their pharmacy. You know,
outside of Newark, we had a pharmacy raid in Paterson here in New
Jersey just this weekend. And what that does is segregate society so
that if the federal administration can’t physically remove you, you
are physically removing yourself into a shadow economy, into places
where you can’t stand up or you don’t feel confident standing up
for your rights.

And I think the important thing for folks to remember who are not from
the immigrant community is that what we learned from Newark with the
interrogation of a U.S. citizen and the interrogation of a U.S.
military veteran is that it’s not enough to have the privileged
status. Simply existing in the same place as immigrants makes you
guilty by association. ICE officers are not going to discriminate on
whether you look or sound like a citizen, whether you are able to
produce documents that show that you are a citizen or a military
veteran. Simply being in proximity to their target, which is immigrant
communities, is enough to arrest and detain you, too.

AMY GOODMAN: Amy Torres, I want to get your response to Democratic
Congressmember Josh Gottheimer of New Jersey signing a letter
condemning private immigration detention in New Jersey, but he also
voted to support the Laken Riley Act, the Laken Riley Act which will
fill more ICE jails.

AMY TORRES: Look, I think a lot of folks have spent time asking
immigrant communities, “How are you feeling? What does this moment
feel like? What are communities saying?” I want to know how Josh
Gottheimer feels. I want to know how other people, other politicians
in power feel, knowing that, you know, Trump was first elected to
office nearly 10 years ago. It’s been this long that immigrant
communities have been telling people in power how we feel. I want to
know if they feel shame. I want to know if they feel disgrace. Do they
feel guilt? Because I’m tired of talking about how our communities
feel, what is our reaction. They know how we feel. But we need to hear
from them. If they have taken a commitment to public office, if
they’ve taken a commitment to public service, if this is not the
hill that they’re going to die on, they picked the wrong fight.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Yeah, I’d like to bring in Dulce Guzmán from
Alianza Americas again. Dulce, how have you seen the elected officials
in Chicago responding to this crisis, especially considering that
Trump’s border czar, Homan, has actually said of both the governor
and the mayor that they suck, and if they try to impede his work, that
he could prosecute them?

DULCE GUZMÁN: Mayor Johnson and Governor Pritzker are standing up for
immigrants. They’re reiterating their commitment to protecting our
communities by enforcing our trust laws, enforcing our sanctuary city
ordinance here in Chicago. They have been speaking up for our
immigrant communities because they know that we belong here and they
know that we contribute to our neighborhoods. We help grow our
economies. So I think that we’ve had a very welcoming response both
from Mayor Johnson and Governor Pritzker.

But we need more elected officials to speak up on our behalf. As Amy
was saying, it’s not enough for us to be telling people how we feel.
We’ve been doing that for decades. It is a time for us to show up
for our neighbors, to speak up about the economic, cultural and social
contributions that immigrant families make to our cities.

AMY GOODMAN: We want to thank you both for being with us. Of course,
this is an issue we will continue to cover, and we will be doing an
interview in Spanish after the show and post it at our Spanish
website, which you can link to at democracynow.org. Dulce Guzmán,
executive director of Alianza Americas, joining us from Chicago, and
Amy Torres, executive director of the New Jersey Alliance for
Immigrant Justice.

Coming up, we look at the Democratic Republic of Congo, where
Rwandan-backed M23 fighters have entered the eastern Congolese city of
Goma, and we look at what’s happening in Sudan. What does the global
gold industry have to do with it? Stay with us.

The original content of this program is licensed under a Creative
Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United
States License [[link removed]].
Please attribute legal copies of this work to democracynow.org. Some
of the work(s) that this program incorporates, however, may be
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* Immigration and Customs Enforcement
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* New Jersey; Chicago;
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