Resisting Mass Deportation Under Donald Trump

Chicago, Ilinois—In the lead-up to this election, Donald Trump promised the “largest deportation program in American history to get the criminals out.” Although immigrants statistically have some of the lowest rates of criminal activity, for Trump and his associates, all people who have entered the country without proper documentation are criminals. When Trump says he wants to deport criminals, he means every undocumented immigrant in our communities: workers, homeowners, small-business owners, parents, spouses, and children.

Such a massive deportation regime would be devastating for our American communities—large and small—resulting in the separation of families, the closure of businesses, and the hollowing out of entire neighborhoods.

During Trump’s first term in office, he ordered Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids in major cities, including cities and counties like our own, which have sanctuary policies. His xenophobic statements and actions caused immense harm to our immigrant communities. Now, as he returns to office on the promise of an even more extensive deportation dragnet, local governments and communities must take bold action to challenge the systems that criminalize our neighbors.

At the core of this resistance is grassroots organizing. We must be prepared to take direct action at the local level to challenge a federal deportation regime. This means continuing and expanding what many communities across the United States did in 2017: enacting comprehensive and robust sanctuary-city policies, organizing neighbors to engage in direct action to protect their immigrant neighbors, and building networks of mutual aid and solidarity.

Community-based grassroots organizing has been one of the most potent tools for resisting mass deportation. In 2017, communities across the nation, including our own in Chicago, organized deportation defense networks. On Chicago’s Northwest Side, we organized the Community Defense Committee out of the 35th Ward office. We trained hundreds of neighbors on how to identify ICE in our communities and how to engage in nonviolent civil disobedience; we knocked on thousands of doors to inform neighbors of their fundamental constitutional rights and what to do if ICE came to their door, workplace, or neighborhood. In 2025, we must continue this grassroots organizing work, and elected officials who represent immigrant communities must make Know Your Rights education and deportation defense work part of the core constituent service offered by their district offices.

To disrupt Trump’s deportation regime, local and state governments must adopt robust local noncooperation policies with ICE. It is not enough to declare our cities, states, and public institutions as sanctuaries—we must ensure that local and state laws protect undocumented communities from ICE by prohibiting information sharing and collaboration with ICE, including by third-party contractors.

In Chicago, our grassroots organizing to defend our neighbors led to one of the most robust big-city sanctuary-city policies in the nation. The Chicago Police Department is legally barred from working with ICE in any case, with no exceptions. During Trump’s second term, it will be critical to defend such policies already on the books, to expand the number of cities and states that have these policies on their books, and to close loopholes that undermine these policies. For example, while Chicagoland’s Cook County has prohibited public official cooperation with ICE, ICE still targets the county’s undocumented residents through data purchased from third-party data brokers who do business with the county. That’s why the two of us are working to pass No Data for ICE legislation through the County Board of Commissioners.