Community Voice: ICE Is A Tool, White Nationalism Is The Goal
Illustration by Jasmin Hernandez
By Ankur Singh
During the summer, I got a call from a friend. She asked if I could go to the Town of Cicero Health Department to pay a bill for her son’s dentist appointment. She was too scared to go by herself. Just a day earlier, a video went viral of a man confronting a team of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers who were meeting in the department’s parking lot. When I finished paying the bill and started walking home, some teenagers riding their bikes passed the parking lot and yelled out, “Fuck ICE”. The raids were on everyone’s minds.
Cicero continues to be a hotspot of ICE raids ever since Donald Trump took office in January and it’s only been getting more frequent and violent since then. In September, Trump announced Operation Midway Blitz which led to some of the heaviest raids yet. The stories and videos that continue to circulate on social media of ICE’s excessive violence are endless.
It should not be lost on us the significance of Trump deploying ICE during Independence Day celebrations throughout the month of September. Where immigrants from across Mexico and Central America celebrate their country’s independence from colonial Spain. It was not just about the large crowds expected in the Chicago area throughout September, but a profound reminder to all those descended from colonized peoples of their place in the global racial hierarchy.
Genocide experts who have studied numerous well-documented cases throughout history have warned that early signs of genocide include the use of dehumanizing language to entire groups of people. Trump himself has repeatedly referred to immigrants as “animals” who are “poisoning the blood of our country.” Rhetoric like this is increasingly becoming policy enforced by a rogue and violent agency.
Just as Israeli Defense Forces has been organizing a genocide in Palestine for the past two years, ICE is increasingly resembling a military occupation. It’s armed with the same technology and tactics as the IDF, tasked with determining who belongs on this land using a simple rubric: the color of their skin and the languages they speak. The moves have led U.S Representative Maxine Waters, who represents a large area of Southern California, to file a petition to the United Nations to investigate allegations of “ethnic cleansing against Latino minorities in the United States.”
Years ago, when I lived just a short distance from the U.S. Mexico border in Nogales, Arizona, a routine traffic stop escalated. Police officers surrounded my car with their guns drawn and pointed at me. They put me in handcuffs and detained me as they searched my car and belongings. I had become subjected to a multibillion dollar border security apparatus that has now been brought to Chicago.
My body memory of that night has been activated all year. Today, my body tenses up when I see videos of police surrounding cars. My nervous system freezes. I’m not able to fall asleep at night and it's so so hard to wake up in the mornings. It's the physical embodiment of powerlessness, which is how any occupation force wants us to feel. Because right now, the usual tactics to resist seem so…. inadequate.
While Rapid Response Teams across the city, including in Cicero, bravely document raids on the ground and support affected families, Illinois elected officials with governor J.B Pritzker at the helm have chosen the courtroom as their main resistance tactic, filing numerous lawsuits in cases such as Trump’s deployment of the National Guard, ICE officers hiding their identities, excessive force against protestors, and warrantless arrests. However, court action alone is not enough of the underlying reason behind ICE's very existence. The advancement of white Christian nationalism, and the violence required to enforce it, is not addressed.
In Neither Settler Nor Native: The Making and Unmaking of Permanent Minorities, Mahmood Mamdani wrote, “When atrocities are committed, human rights activists find the perpetrators, name them and shame them, maybe even put them in jail. What these activists rarely seek to do is understand why the atrocities happened…where violence is merely criminal, we can only see it as a function of individual pathology. We cannot see it as a political outcome calling for a political solution.”
But the main opposition party, the Democrats, have failed to offer a political solution to the growing white nationalist movement. During the 2024 election, they refused to offer a proactive vision of a multiracial democracy where equal rights for all are protected.
For example, the Democratic National Convention took place at the United Center in August 2024, a few miles away from Cicero. Kamala Harris took the stage gloating about the Democratic Party’s support for what was, at the time, one of the strictest immigration enforcement bills in history. It would have continued the bipartisan agenda of increasing funding for both Border Patrol and ICE.
Meanwhile, Texas Governor Greg Abbott was bussing Venezuelan migrants from the border to sanctuary cities like Chicago. I spent the week of the DNC talking to migrants outside of the three shelters located walking distance from the United Center.
Many of them had told me what they needed were work permits and living wages, dignified housing, and access to attorneys. The Democrats weren’t listening. Instead, they embraced a watered-down Trump agenda while ignoring the protestors in the streets calling for an end to genocide in Palestine. There wasn't space for a Palestinian speaker at the DNC, but there was one for a Texas border sheriff. Writer Ta-Nehisi Coates said it best. If the Democrats couldn’t draw the line at genocide abroad, they probably would be unable to defend democracy at home.
We’re only 9 months into the Trump presidency and it’s still the early days of what could very well lead to a campaign of violent ethnic cleansing that doesn’t stop at deportations. The administration has said so itself by their actions.
It's an unprecedented time for many of us who are taking deep breaths pondering how to best use the remaining time we have left on this earth, but it's not unprecedented within the long arc of history. Nationalist movements follow similar playbooks and the early stages make now the more effective time to take action.
Ankur Singh is a Cicero-based, Chicago adjacent freelance journalist and organizer. His work has been published in The Washington Post, In These Times, Chicago Reader, Prism Reports, Truthout and more. He is a co-founder of the hyperlocal, bilingual news outlet Cicero Independiente.
Our “Community Voice” section gives Cicero and Berwyn residents an opportunity to share their thoughts, experiences and opinions. Information is fact-checked for accuracy. To contribute a “Community Voice” article email info@ciceroindependiente.com.
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