How to Resist Mass Deportations—The Power of Local Organizing

What’s Working, What’s Not & Lessons from Chicago

Jan 30, 2025

As Trump’s administration escalates deportation efforts under Operation Safeguard, Chicago is getting things right, and here is what we can learn.

Since the operation began, over 100 people have been arrested in the Chicago area, with ICE collaborating with federal agencies to carry out mass raids. But despite these aggressive tactics, Chicago’s communities are fighting back.

Trump’s “border czar” Tom Homan admitted as much, calling Chicago “very well educated” in resisting ICE. This is no accident—immigrant communities have been preparing for this moment. They know their rights. They have built networks of defense that make mass deportations difficult, costly, and contested.

How Chicago Has Been Preparing

Legal & Community Defense Networks: Groups like the National Immigrant Justice Center and United Giving Hope are mobilizing legal resources to challenge deportation orders and support detained families.
Sanctuary City Protections: The Welcoming City ordinance ensures that Chicago police do not cooperate with ICE, limiting state violence against undocumented residents.
Disrupting Misinformation: Community groups are countering ICE propaganda, spreading Know Your Rights materials, and keeping people informed and unafraid.

The Weaponization of Deportation

ICE claims it is targeting “criminal aliens,” but the reality is far more sinister. Many arrested have no criminal records or old, low-level offences. ICE is carrying out collateral arrests—detaining people simply for being in proximity to a so-called target.

This isn’t just happening in Chicago. In New York City, ICE conducted raids across multiple boroughs, sparking fear in immigrant communities. Local officials condemned the crackdown, with Councilmembers Althea Stevens and Alexa Avilés calling it “political theatre” designed to intimidate people.

However, NYC Mayor Eric Adams and Gov. Kathy Hochul defended the raids, claiming they only targeted violent criminals. But White House Press Secretary Caroline, with a K Leavitt, made it clear that even undocumented immigrants with no criminal records would be targeted.

Rep. Adriano Espaillat criticized the Trump administration’s mass deportation strategy as “sloppy and inhumane.”

Remember: ICE’s goal is not public safety—it’s to spread fear, destabilize communities, and ramp up mass deportations with little accountability.

How to fight back?

And here’s what we can learn.

Earlier this month, the Chicago City Council voted 39-11 to uphold its Sanctuary ordinance, blocking an effort to weaken protections for undocumented residents.

As Darakshan Raja, Director of Muslims for Just Futures, wrote:

“The ordinance would have opened the door for Chicago police to cooperate with federal immigration enforcement, risking the safety of nearly 790,000 non-citizens. This victory sends a powerful message: Chicago will not tolerate policies that criminalize immigrant families.”

Resistance works when it is local, organized, and relentless.

Building a National Model for Local Resistance

Chicago is not alone. Across the country, communities are fighting back against mass deportations and ICE surveillance. Leah Montange writes:

Pacific County Immigrant Support was formed in 2018 in a rural Trump-voting county in Washington state. Citizen and non-citizen members tracked ICE arrests, accompanied immigrants to court, raised funds for bonds and attorneys, and pressured local law enforcement to stop ICE collaboration.
The Washington Immigration Solidarity Network runs a hotline for reporting ICE raids and connecting immigrants with legal and financial resources.
The Fair Fight Bond Fund and National Detention Bond Fund provide bail money for detained immigrants, ensuring they can fight their cases.
Shut Down the NWDC in Tacoma, and the National Detention Watch Network are exposing ICE’s inhumane detention centres, supporting detainees, and mobilizing strategies to shut these facilities down.

As Montange argues, shutting down detention centres disrupts ICE’s ability to function. When enforced and backed by community power, sanctuary ordinances force ICE to work harder and spend more resources on deportations.

But none of this happens without local organizing.

The Language of Resistance Matters

To fight deportations, we must also fight the language that sustains them.

No human being is illegal. The state criminalizes existence itself to justify its violence. Reject the language of legal vs. illegal. Use documented and undocumented instead.
Do not fall into the “good immigrant” vs. “bad immigrant” trap. No one must be a perfect victim to deserve dignity, safety, and legal protection. The state will always use this binary to divide and conquer. Do not let it.

Language is power. It shapes policy, public perception, and who is considered worthy of protection. Use it to resist.

What Comes Next? Preparing for the Next Wave of Attacks

If history tells us anything, the state retaliates against those who resist.

During Trump’s first term, ICE targeted sanctuary cities with funding cuts and retaliated against immigrant activists, journalists, and artists.
Under Biden, ICE remained fully operational, and new attacks were launched at the state level—Texas prosecuted immigrants for trespassing, criminalized humanitarian aid, and bussed asylum seekers to sanctuary cities to destabilize them.
A second Trump administration will escalate these tactics.

Let’s be clear: Trump didn’t build the deportation machine—he just made it louder. Barack Obama was the original "Deporter-in-Chief." His administration deported more than three million people—more than Bush and Clinton combined. When he left office, he was the reigning deportation champion.

Biden didn’t dismantle this system either. He kept ICE fully funded, expanded surveillance, and let mass deportation infrastructure thrive.

So don’t wait for Democrats to save us. They won’t. If Trump returns, he will inherit a well-oiled deportation machine—ready to be used with more force than ever.

The Takeaway: Local Resistance Works

What’s happening in Chicago and New York is not unique. Every city must prepare. Every community must organize.

The NYC raids prove that even so-called sanctuary cities cannot be trusted to protect immigrants. Despite years of promises, Mayor Eric Adams and Gov. Kathy Hochul immediately aligned with ICE. The lesson is clear: politicians will not save us.

The most potent form of resistance is not just lobbying elected officials or hoping political parties will step in—it’s building power where you live. And don’t be polite.

Do not waste resources on the Democratic Party or any political machine that profits from manufactured crises. Instead, find the organizers who are already doing this work and support them. They don’t need to be replaced. They need to be resourced.

Chicago, New York, and countless other communities have shown that mass deportations can be resisted—but only if we organize, fight back, and refuse to let fear paralyze us.

The lesson is clear: invest in local movements, defend your community, and never let up.