In January 2025, the week Donald Trump was once again inaugurated as President, news broke of what appeared to be the first attempt by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to enter a public school.
Later reports confirmed that the federal agents, who had identified themselves with Homeland Security badges, were actually members of the Secret Service who were there on a non-immigration matter. Still, the incident signaled the new administration’s promises of mass deportations would soon materialize, especially after Trump’s unprecedented move on his second day back in office to lift protections from immigration enforcement at schools and churches. This revocation of what’s called the “sensitive locations memo” has vast implications for municipalities across the country, including sanctuary cities.
“It was really scary,” says Laura Wojciechowski, a first-grade teacher at Minnie Miñoso Academy, about three miles northeast of Hamline Elementary School on the South Side of Chicago, where the federal agents showed up in January.
Yet the most notable aspect of the incident was that school staff wouldn’t allow the federal agents through the door. “I was worried that somehow they would get into our school building even though we aren’t supposed to let them in,” Wojciechowski says, fearing ICE would come to her school next and be waiting outside the building at dismissal, or that “it’d be hard to know if they were ICE or not.”
Hamline Elementary is located in Back of the Yards, a neighborhood with deep connections to the Second City’s rich migrant history. The Southwest Side neighborhood was the backdrop of Upton Sinclair’s book The Jungle, a fictionalized account of the struggles of Eastern European meatpacking workers in the early 1900s. Today, it’s home to a significant community of immigrants from Mexico and other Latin American nations, as well as second- and third-generation families. The area is quintessentially Chicago—which made it a fitting spot to test the Chicago Teachers Union’s plan to keep ICE out of public schools.
That plan only came about through union members’ rigorous organizing efforts. Over the past fifteen years, the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) has established itself as one of the most influential and progressive teachers’ unions in the United States. In developing its strategy to keep ICE out of Chicago Public Schools (CPS), CTU looked to the city of Chicago’s own sanctuary policy, which prevents municipal law enforcement from cooperating with ICE.
“We negotiated, in our contract, sanctuary language that mirrors the sanctuary language in the city ordinance,” CTU President Stacy Davis Gates tells The Progressive of the agreement that members approved in April. The negotiated contract, she says, “puts forward a mandate for training and resources” about immigrant rights and dealing with ICE.
“So when the federal agents came to the door [at Hamline], because the training was robust at that school, security did two things: They asked for a warrant, and they called the administrator,” Davis Gates explains. “The administrator proceeded to alert the different parts of the response team. The school—teachers, students, counselors, security—they all had a duty to perform, down to community partners and legal advisers. People were being walked home, know-your-rights flyers were being handed out . . . . There was a response that was pretty damn dimensional, as a result of what is mandated in our contract.”
Erin Hooley/AP Photo
Federal Agents Schools Chicago
An information card on rights and emergency contacts is posted on the door of Hamline Elementary School after federal agents were turned away on January 24, 2025, in Chicago, Illinois.
That contract was negotiated according to the titular strategy laid out by Bargaining for the Common Good, an organizing network within the Chicago-based Action Center on Race & the Economy. It encourages union members to use their contracts to organize beyond traditional demands in order to create greater investment and structural change in their communities. These demands could feasibly include anything from allotting funds toward community jobs pipelines to offering free, eco-friendly transport, or even limiting standardized testing and expanding mental health services.
“Look, I don’t know how in 2025, you’re bargaining a contract just on wages and benefits alone,” Davis Gates says. Sanctuary protections, for example, can help migrant families feel confident enough to send their children to school, especially in an era of mass deportations. She says the contract also includes provisions for CPS families affected by the decimation of Chicago’s public housing to “be given considerations for housing in this city”—another factor that affects students’ success in school. But in order to achieve these wins, Davis Gates says, “you have to do them together”—organize to make demands—with the students, parents, and communities who “need the schools to exist robustly.”
Although sanctuary language appeared in the CTU’s 2019 contract, it was codified this year in response to members who decided to organize in support of more solid protections following growing worries about Trump’s second term.
“We knew what we were going to get,” Davis Gates says. “There’s an extraordinary amount of anxiety in immigrant neighborhoods and communities in the city. I think that’s the point of what Donald Trump and his team of alphabet boys are doing, making sure people are fearful.” She says that CTU-mandated trainings for faculty and resources for students and families have helped to raise locals’ awareness of their rights, as well.
But these aren’t the only efforts CTU members have made to better serve immigrant students. When Republican Texas Governor Greg Abbott began busing asylum seekers from the border to Democrat-run cities, Davis Gates explains, in Chicago, “many of the young people who were from Venezuela were being enrolled in majority-Black schools that did not have any bilingual infrastructure. Consequently, we had Black teachers in bargaining meetings pushing for bilingual continuing education support, because they found themselves on Google Translate . . . . We were able to negotiate continuing professional development [for them] that the district absorbs.”
CTU’s policies are backed by elected officials, including Democratic Mayor Brandon Johnson, who have supported similar policies at the city and state level. And Davis Gates says there’s still a way forward for educators with hopes of organizing to protect their students’ right to be in the classroom, Monday through Friday.
“What CTU does is practice good leadership, and it practices being a good neighbor,” Davis Gates says. “So I recommend finding those people in your community, forming alliances, and creating the conditions that are necessary to make your space a sanctuary space.”
How the Trump Administration will interact with Democrat-run sanctuary cities and states is still developing. Many in Chicago are worried about how standoffs between authorities could impact the flow of federal funding to the city. And now, more than six months in, there are signs of where things are headed. Hundreds of local police departments are already cooperating with ICE, and undocumented immigrants who have not committed any criminal offenses are being detained daily.
Historian Sergio González, an assistant professor at Marquette University in Wisconsin, has been studying the original sanctuary movement of the 1980s—a political moment he says carries some lessons for the current moment.
“There’s always been the potential for blowback,” González explains.
“But the Supreme Court can really change the ground on which people are making decisions,” he says. For example, in June, the Court ruled to make it more difficult for lower courts to block Executive Orders, such as Trump’s attempt to end birthright citizenship.
Though González says he doesn’t see Chicago changing course on its sanctuary policies under Mayor Johnson and Illinois Democratic Governor JB Pritzker, he says federal funding cuts could potentially force local officials to compromise.
He urges advocates to keep an eye on Los Angeles—which has been the target of major ICE deportation operations and corresponding protests and direct actions—to see how the “lines get blurred” between sanctuary policies and police cooperation with ICE. Los Angeles has the oldest immigrant sanctuary policy in the United States, enacted in 1979. Yet, as González points out, the Los Angeles Police Department has fulfilled a “role of protecting ICE agents, or Border Patrol, or [Department of Homeland Security] agents, whatever it is, as they’re performing these operations in Los Angeles.”
There is also some debate about how well Chicago’s sanctuary policies will hold up under increased federal pressure from the Trump Administration—particularly when it comes to city law enforcement. On June 4, masked ICE agents in the South Loop arrested at least ten people who had reportedly received text messages calling them in for “surprise check-ins” at an ICE facility. According to Block Club Chicago, activists who showed up on the scene to respond saw “Chicago police vehicles and officers . . . inside and outside” that facility. If this accusation is true, city police may have violated Chicago’s sanctuary policies by preventing free movement; in response, several alderpeople have called for an investigation into the incident.
Sanctuary, González explains, was “born in religious spaces because in the 1980s, faith communities could very easily define the boundaries of a space that was considered a sanctuary.” Houses of worship have been pivotal to the migrant movement. In 2006, Chicago activist and undocumented immigrant Elvira Arellano became the face of the sanctuary movement when she took refuge in a local Methodist church for a year in an attempt to avoid being separated from her young son, who had health concerns. Her case became so well-known, she was even included in Time magazine’s Person of the Year issue that December.
By removing protections from immigration enforcement in schools and churches earlier this year, the Trump Administration has disintegrated a long-established U.S. legal norm. “We’re seeing ICE agents creeping into the parking lots of churches,” González says. And secular sanctuary policies, like those enacted by cities or school districts, face a potentially greater problem: The boundaries of control are much blurrier.
But González does see a way forward for the immigrant rights movement, even under Trump.
“This moment is going to require the same amount of creativity that sanctuary activists in the 1980s were engaging with,” he says, “and that creativity sometimes requires people to think outside the boundaries of what is considered legal, or what is considered culturally accepted.”
While people on the other side of the state line in Illinois may deny it, Lake County, Indiana, is considered part of the Chicago metropolitan area. This is more than just a point of friendly Midwestern rivalry: Chicago is a sanctuary city in a sanctuary state. But that is not the case in Indiana nor in any of the towns and cities in Lake County. That means that the 7.2 percent of the county population estimated to be foreign-born by the U.S. Census has a different set of concerns than their Chicago counterparts, especially when it comes to dealing with ICE.
Last year, the Indiana attorney general even threatened to sue the city of Gary and did sue nearby East Chicago, Indiana, for their decision to enact welcoming city ordinances that prevented police from cooperating with ICE. Gary is more than 75 percent Black, while East Chicago has a large Latin American population—and both are located in a part of post-industrial South Chicagoland that has been economically depressed since the 1970s. Although both Indiana towns eventually overturned their policies under state pressure, some schools have tried to pick up the slack.
Victoria Pliego-Poza teaches seventh-grade social studies at Lake Ridge New Tech Middle School in Calumet Township, Indiana, which includes part of Gary. We have known each other since we were schoolchildren in South Chicagoland ourselves. She says she sought guidance from the district after hearing that ICE had likely detained one of her former students. As a union representative, she hoped administrators would provide her with some direction that she could share with her colleagues. And they did.
“The plan is we deny entry; they’re not allowed in the school,” Pliego-Poza explains. “We call our lawyer, and then have our resource officer with us, and the school goes on lockdown.”
Unlike in Illinois, the district plan isn’t supported by state or municipal policies, but that doesn’t mean it won’t be carried out by teachers.
If ICE were to show up on school grounds, “I would do whatever I could,” Pliego-Poza says. “I don’t know what that would be, right? But my goal is to protect my students. To protect my students, I’m prepared to take a bullet for them every day,” she says, referring to the gun violence that occurs in U.S. schools. “So of course I’d be willing to get arrested.”
When Trump’s border czar, Tom Homan, arrived in the Windy City in January after federal agents attempted to enter Hamline Elementary, he was disappointed by what he found. As Homan told CNN: “Sanctuary cities are making it very difficult to arrest the criminals. For instance, Chicago, very well educated. They’ve been educated how to defy ICE, how to hide from ICE. And I’ve seen many pamphlets from many NGOs . . . . They call it ‘Know your rights.’ I call it ‘How to escape arrest.’ There’s a warrant for your arrest, and they tell you how to hide from ICE. No, don’t open your door. Don’t answer questions.”
Despite the city’s reputation as being starkly segregated, in the months between the 2024 election and the Inauguration in January, the CTU joined scores of activist groups in an effort to ensure their undocumented neighbors knew that despite what the Trump Administration said, they do have legal rights in the United States, including the right to due process.
Leo (who uses his first name only to protect his identity), is a blue-collar worker who came with his family to Chicago from South America in 2023. He says his children have received know-your-rights education at their CPS middle and high schools, which falls under the CTU mandate to educate students and staff about migrant rights.
“My children’s schools have been constantly educating families about our rights as immigrants, through communications, workshops, videos,” Leo tells The Progressive. “I feel calm and proud that my children are in safe and conscious schools, concerned about their students.”
As for the children, he says,“all in all, they’re calm and informed of what we should all do in case of having an encounter with ICE.”
But being a migrant and a parent is more difficult than it was even a few months ago, he says. “It is almost impossible to stay home since we have financial responsibilities to cover, and the most worrying thing . . . for all migrant parents and families, is basically deportation, abandoning everything you have built in such a radical way, separating you from your family, from your pets, from your friends, from your projects, from your life in these lands.”
As a final word, Leo offers advice to other migrants—evidence of the city-wide campaign the people of Chicago organized to protect one another, and perhaps in Homan’s view, to vex ICE.
“Let’s know our rights, don’t get involved in problems, and as you know, don’t open the door—or your mouth!”
Claudio Montecinos contributed reporting to this article.