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      LA cleans up and protests some more after weekend of defiance against Trump

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      Outside the federal courthouse complex in downtown Los Angeles on Monday morning, two cleaners carrying bins on wheels looked uncertainly at the daunting task in front of them – long walls in several directions covered in spray-painted graffiti after a weekend of vigorous street protest.They donned black plastic gloves and reached for spray bottles and rolls of paper towels, but these seemed hardly adequate even for the black marble plinth bearing the name “Edward R Roybal Center and Federal Building” where they began. Indeed, the rest of the official writing on the plinth was illegible, defaced by three separate graffiti reading “Fuck Ice” and another saying “Dead Cops”.The City of Angels was in recovery and clean-up mode after a fraught, boisterous day of protest on Sunday against Donald Trump’s immigration roundups and his decision to activate the California national guard against the will of the state’s leaders.A mostly peaceful series of demonstrations were marred, as night fell, by more serious acts of vandalism and violence. Some people, who the LAPD chief later said were not affiliated with the protesters, tossed rocks and paving stones off freeway overpasses on to police cruisers and officers below and a line of Waymo driverless vehicles that had already been spray-painted were set on fire.On Monday morning, street cleaning vehicles were out in force on Alameda Street, on the east side of the federal courthouse complex, where the national guard was stationed on Sunday and where thousands of protesters converged, starting in the early afternoon. The sidewalk and the long block of Alameda flanked by the federal buildings were cordoned off to the public.The 101 freeway, which had been occupied by protesters the night before, was open to traffic again, but most of the downtown exits were sealed off by California highway patrol vehicles. A cleaning crew with a pressure washer was hard at work on the outside of the federal building on Los Angeles Street, which houses a passport office, a social security office and other key federal bureaucratic services.View image in fullscreenThe national guard, which played almost no role in policing the protests on Sunday, was once again nowhere to be seen. Federal authorities from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) or the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) were likewise noticeably absent.With much of the Los Angeles police department recovering from a long day and night, the streets were largely given over to representatives from neighboring police forces drafted in to help – from Pasadena, South Pasadena, Burbank, Vernon and other cities. South Pasadena had the job of guarding concrete blocks set up overnight on either side of LA city hall on Spring Street. Its officers also stood guard on the building’s western steps.Much of the city establishment – council members, local elected officials and union leaders – flocked, meanwhile, to a protest of their own in Grand Park, on a hill overlooking city hall, to demand the release of David Huerta, a leader of the Service Employees International Union who was arrested on Friday while monitoring an immigration raid and was expected in court for his first appearance on Monday afternoon.“David Herta is my brother,” the president of his union, April Verrett, told the crowd to rapturous applause and chanting. “What he would say is, use this moment!”The thousands in attendance blew horns and yelled in approval.Union volunteers acted as marshals for the event and kept a close eye on the perimeter to watch for troublemakers – there appeared to be none. A sole Los Angeles police helicopter hovered overhead, but otherwise law enforcement was entirely absent. More

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      RFK Jr to remove all members of CDC panel advising on US vaccines

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      The health secretary, Robert F Kennedy Jr, is getting rid of all members sitting on a key US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention panel of vaccine experts and reconstituting the committee, he said on Monday.Kennedy is retiring and replacing all 17 members of the CDC’s advisory committee for immunization practices, he wrote in piece published in the Wall Street Journal.“Without removing the current members, the current Trump administration would not have been able to appoint a majority of new members until 2028,” Kennedy wrote.More details soon … More

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      California to file lawsuit over Trump’s ‘unlawful’ deployment of national guard

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      California plans to file a lawsuit against the Trump administration on Monday, accusing the US president of “unlawfully” federalizing the state’s national guard to quell immigration protests in Los Angeles.Previewing the suit, the attorney general, Rob Bonta, said the extraordinary deployment of troops had “trampled” the state’s sovereignty, overriding objections by the governor Gavin Newsom and going “against the wishes of law enforcement on the ground”. Bonta said the legal action will ask the court to declare Trump’s call deployment of the guard unlawful and will seek a restraining order to halt the use of its troops to manage the protests.“We don’t take lightly to the president abusing his authority and unlawfully mobilizing California national guard troops,” the attorney general said during a virtual news conference on Monday. Later, multiple news outlets reported that the Pentagon planned to temporarily mobilize about 700 marines to Los Angeles while additional national guard troops arrive in the city, a provocative escalation by the federal government.Democratic officials have argued that local law enforcement agencies had been adequately managing the protests, which began on Friday in response to a series of immigration enforcement operations across the LA area.“This was not inevitable,” Bonta said, arguing that the demonstrations had largely dissipated by the time Trump, on Saturday, announced his plans to assert federal control over at least 2,000 national guard troops for at least 60 days, which Bonta said inflamed the situation. On Sunday, roughly 300 California national guard troops arrived in Los Angeles, prompting an outpouring of anger and fear among residents.Trump’s call-up order “skipped over multiple rational, common sense, strategic steps that should have been deployed to quell unrest and prevent escalation”, he said.Bonta said his office would file the suit later on Monday.Newsom has accused Trump of intentionally sewing chaos, claiming Trump “wants a civil war on the streets” and appealing for protesters not to give the administration the spectacle of violence it is hoping to stoke.“This is a manufactured crisis to allow him to take over a state militia, damaging the very foundation of our republic,” Newsom said in a statement announcing the lawsuit. “Every governor, red or blue, should reject this outrageous overreach. This is beyond incompetence – this is him intentionally causing chaos, terrorizing communities, and endangering the principles of our great democracy.”On Sunday, Newsom formally requested that Trump rescind his order and return command of the guard to his office. In a letter to the defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, the governor’s legal affairs secretary, David Sapp, argued there was “currently no need” for such intervention by the federal government and that local law enforcement was capable of “safeguarding public safety”.“Trump and Hegseth jumped from zero to 60,” Bonta said. “Bypassing law enforcement expertise and evaluation, they threw caution to the wind and sidelined strategy in an unnecessary and inflammatory escalation that only further spurred unrest.”In a rhetorical back and forth between Newsom and Trump, longtime political foes who clashed repeatedly during Trump’s first administration, Trump said he endorsed a threat by his “border czar” Tom Homan to arrest Democratic leaders in California if they impeded law enforcement, including Newsom. “Gavin likes the publicity but I think it would be a great thing,” Trump told reporters on Monday.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionNewsom responded to the taunt on Twitter/X, calling Trump’s support for the arrest of a sitting governor “an unmistakable step toward authoritarianism”.The Trump administration has said that the immigration protests in Los Angeles amount to a “form of rebellion” against the authority of the United States government.The order does not invoke the Insurrection Act, the 1807 law that allows the president to deploy US soldiers to police streets during times of rebellion or unrest. Instead, it cites a rarely used section of federal law, known as Title 10, that allows the president to federalize national guard units in circumstances where there is a “rebellion or danger of rebellion” or the president is “unable with the regular forces to execute the laws of the United States”.“There was no risk of rebellion, no threat of foreign invasion, no inability for the federal government to enforce federal laws,” Bonta said. He told reporters his office had studied the Insurrection Act and was prepared to respond should Trump later invoke it as a legal authority to deploy the US military. “We’re prepared for all of it,” he said.The statute has been invoked only once in modern history, Bonta noted, in 1970, when president Richard Nixon mobilized the nationalguard to deliver the mail during a strike by the postal service. The last time a president activated the national guard without a request from the state’s governor was in 1965, when president Lyndon Johnson sent troops to Alabama to protect civil rights demonstrators.In 1992, George HW Bush sent troops to LA to calm widespread civil unrest following the acquittal of four white police officers for brutally beating Black motorist Rodney King. But in that case both the California governor and the mayor of Los Angeles requested the federal intervention. More

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      Trump announces $1,000 government-funded accounts for American babies

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      Donald Trump unveiled a federal program Monday providing $1,000 government-funded investment accounts for American babies, getting big time backing from top business leaders who plan to contribute billions more to an initiative tied to “the big beautiful bill”.At a White House roundtable with over a dozen CEOs, including from Uber, Goldman Sachs and Dell Technologies, Trump relayed the details of “Trump accounts” – tax-deferred investment accounts tracking stock market performance for children born between 2025 and 2029.“For every US citizen born after December 31, 2024, before January 1, 2029, the federal government will make a one-time contribution of $1,000 into a tax-deferred account that will track the overall stock market,” Trump said.The accounts will be controlled by guardians and allow additional private contributions up to $5,000 annually. Trump called it “a pro-family initiative that will help millions of Americans harness the strength of our economy to lift up the next generation”.CEOs from major companies including Michael Dell, Dara Khosrowshahi of Uber, David Solomon of Goldman Sachs, and Vladimir Tenev of Robinhood committed billions for employees’ children’s accounts. Trump praised the executives as “really the greatest business minds we have today” who are “committed to contributing millions of dollars to the Trump account”.Mike Johnson, the House speaker, also at the roundtable, championed the program, saying: “It’s a bold, transformative policy that gives every eligible American child a financial head start from day one. Republicans are proud to be the party we always have been. It supports life and families, prosperity and opportunity.”The program passed the House as part of a massive budget bill but faces stiffer Senate Republican resistance over the broader package. The accounts cannot be implemented as a standalone program and depend entirely on passage of what Trump calls the “one big, beautiful bill” that is “among the most important pieces of legislation in our country’s history”, claiming it’s “fully funded through targeted reforms” including welfare changes and a proposed remittance tax.However, the congressional budget office last week found the bill would also add $2.4tn to the national debt over the next decade while cutting Medicaid and food assistance programs. The CBO analysis showed the bill, which passed the House by a single vote and no Democratic support, would leave 10.9 million more Americans without healthcare by 2034.The treasury-funded accounts, previously called “Maga ccounts” resemble existing 529 college plans but with lower contribution limits – leading some financial advisers to say the Trump accounts may not offer the best investment incentives.The move is also not without precedent the United Kingdom operated a similar Child Trust Fund with government seed funding from 2002-2011 before discontinuing the program, while Singapore runs the Baby Bonus Scheme that includes government-matched savings accounts for children.Trump was optimistic about returns, saying beneficiaries would “really be getting a big jump on life, especially if we get a little bit lucky with some of the numbers and the economies into the future”.Johnson warned that failure to pass the legislation would result in “the largest tax increase in American history” and pushed for swift congressional action on what he called “pro-growth legislation” that would “help every single American”. More

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      Talkshow host Dr Phil joined Ice agents for Los Angeles immigration raids

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      The television personality Dr Phil was embedded with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) officers as they carried out controversial raids in Los Angeles that led to days of protests in California, his TV network said.Phil, whose full name is Phil McGraw, was with Ice before and after its agents conducted a series of raids on multiple locations across LA on Friday. Immigration advocates said at least 45 people were arrested, and the action was condemned by California’s governor and LA’s mayor.It was the second time McGraw, a former practising psychologist who hosted a TV talkshow for two decades, has been embedded with Ice this year. In January, he joined the US border czar, Tom Homan, in a choreographed immigration raid in Chicago, in a stunt that was criticized at the time.CNN was the first to report on McGraw’s presence at the Los Angeles raids. McGraw was there “to get a first-hand look at the targeted operations”, his conservative TV channel, MeritTV, told CNN. McGraw had “exclusive” access to Homan before and after the raids, CNN reported.During the Chicago raids, McGraw was on the ground with Ice officers and even spoke to some of the people the agency had detained. His experience in LA was less immersive, MeritTV said.“In order to not escalate any situation, Dr Phil McGraw did not join and was not embedded” during Friday’s raids, a MeritTV spokesperson told CNN.On Sunday, he appeared with Eric Adams, the mayor of New York City, at a synagogue, as Adams signed an executive order which ordered city agencies to adopt a controversial definition of antisemitism.McGraw, who is not Jewish but has said it was his “duty” to support Israel, has increasingly immersed himself in political issues in recent months, particularly regarding immigration.In April, he McGraw backed Donald Trump in the 2024 election, and in May he described Trump as “a man of deep faith, a man of deep conviction”. More

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      Los Angeles protests: a visual guide to what happened on the streets

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      After a series of immigration raids across the city of Los Angeles on Friday inspired mostly peaceful protests involving a few hundred people, the situation escalated on Saturday when the US president, Donald Trump, took the unprecedented step of mobilizing the national guard – the country’s military reserve units – claiming the demonstrations amounted to “rebellion” against the authority of the US government. The governor of California, Gavin Newsom, called the decision “purposefully inflammatory”. Here’s a look at what actually happened on the streets.Most of the events took place in downtown Los Angeles, in a fairly localized area. The vast majority of the gigantic metropolis was not affected.Friday 6 June, morning. Federal immigration officers raid multiple locations across Los Angeles, including a Home Depot in Westlake; centers where day laborers gather looking for work; and the Ambiance clothing store in the fashion district. The Coalition of Humane Immigrant Rights (Chirla) says there are raids at seven sites.Friday 6 June, afternoon. David Huerta, the president of California’s biggest union, is arrested while apparently doing little more than standing and observing one of the immigration raids. Footage shows the 58-year-old head of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) being knocked down by a masked agent. He was taken to a hospital, then transferred to the Metropolitan detention center in downtown LA. “What happened to me is not about me; this is about something much bigger,” he says in a statement from the hospital. “This is about how we as a community stand together and resist the injustice that’s happening.” In a statement the US attorney Bill Essayli claims Huerta “deliberately obstructed their access by blocking their vehicle” and says he was arrested on suspicion of interfering with federal officers.Friday 6 June, afternoon. Demonstrators gather outside the federal detention center in downtown Los Angeles where Huerta and others are being held. There is a tense but largely non-violent standoff with police.7pm: The LAPD declares unlawful assembly in the area and deploys teargas to break up the crowd.8.20pm: The police force declares a city-wide tactical alert.Saturday 7 June, morning. As border patrol agents are seen gathering opposite another Home Depot location, this time in the largely Latino, working-class neighborhood of Paramount, news spreads on social media of another raid. A couple of hundred protesters gather outside the Paramount Business Center. Sheriff’s deputies block off a perimeter near the 710 Freeway and Hunsaker Ave.12pm. Border patrol vehicles leave the center, with officers firing teargas and flash grenades at protesters. Some follow the convoy of federal vehicles up Alondra Blvd, throwing rocks and other objects; a few others set up a roadblock near the Home Depot.Saturday 7 June, 4pm. The area near the Home Depot confrontation is declared an unlawful assembly and protesters are warned to leave. Approximately 100 people gather further west in the neighborhood of Compton, at the intersection of Atlantic Ave and Alondra Blvd, where three fires are set, including a vehicle in the middle of intersection. Rocks are thrown at LA county sheriff’s deputies, and officers retreat to the bottom of bridge to the east.7pm. The Trump administration announces it will deploy the national guard, claiming the limited protests were a “rebellion” against the US government. The California governor, Gavin Newsom, immediately denounces the move, the first time a US president has mobilized US military forces in a domestic political situation without the request of the state’s governor since 1965.The US defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, also announces that 500 marines at Camp Pendleton in California have been placed on high alert.Saturday 7 June, evening. Federal agents emerge in a phalanx from inside the Metropolitan detention center to confront approximately 100 protesters, firing teargas and “less lethal” weapons at them.9.30pm. Officers and vehicles force the crowd on Alondra Blvd back west, and by midnight most protesters have dispersed.Sunday 8 June, morning. After curfews are declared across LA county overnight from 6pm-6am, by Sunday morning about 300 national guard troops are deployed to the city. Two dozen appear to news crews outside the federal complex, as though intent only on posing for photographs.10.30am. Protesters begin congregating near the Metropolitan detention center, where national guard troops have arrived to support immigration officials – though they do not appear to be engaging in active policing.1pm. Thousands of protesters gather in downtown LA.Sunday 8 June, afternoon. The LAPD again declares the protest an unlawful assembly, ordering everyone to leave, but still the protests continue. Police patrol on horseback and report several arrests. Journalists and protesters are reportedly struck by projectiles, while LA police say two officers are injured after being struck by motorcyclists attempting to “breach a skirmish line”. Ice officers and other federal agents use teargas and pepper balls in an attempt to disperse the crowds. Throughout the afternoon, there are isolated episodes of vandalism – graffiti sprayed on buildings and vehicles, and a protester who damages the side mirror of a parked car. A line of spray-painted Waymo driverless cars, one with a smashed windshield, are later set on fire.Downtown Los AngelesSunday 8 June, afternoon. Hundreds of protesters block the 101 Freeway. They take over two lanes.Evening. Tensions have risen, with demonstrators throwing garbage and rocks at police. Newsom and the Los Angeles mayor, Karen Bass, double down on their plea to protesters to stay peaceful. “Protest is appropriate to do, but it is just not appropriate for there to be violence,” Bass says, while the LAPD chief, Jim McDonnell, calls the violence “disgusting” and says officers have been pelted with rocks, and shot at with commercial grade fireworks. Crucially, he notes that those engaging in violence were not among the people demonstrating against the immigration raids, but are “people who do this all the time”. More

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      Trump has unleashed something terrifying in the US – that even he may be powerless to control | Gaby Hinsliff

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      She was live on air to viewers back home, her TV microphone clearly in hand, when the rubber bullet hit her. The Australian reporter Lauren Tomasi was the second journalist after the British photographer Nick Stern to be shot with non-lethal rounds while covering protests in Los Angeles sparked by immigration raids. But she was the first to be caught on camera and beamed around the world. There’s no excuse for not knowing what the US is becoming, now that anyone can watch that clip online. Not when you can hear her scream and see the cameraman quickly swing away to film a panicking crowd.It was the scenario everyone feared when Donald Trump took office. Deportation hit squads descending on the kind of Democrat-voting communities who would feel morally bound to resist them, triggering the kind of violent confrontation that creates an excuse to send in national guard troops – and ultimately a showdown between federal and state power that could take US democracy to the brink. Now something like this may be unfolding in California, where the state governor, Gavin Newsom, has accused the president of trying to “manufacture a crisis” for his own ends and warned that any protester responding with violence is only playing into his hands. Suddenly, the idea that this presidency could ultimately end in civil conflict no longer seems quite so wildly overblown as it once did.Or to put it another way, Trump has got what he wanted, which is for everyone to switch channels: to stop gawping at his embarrassing fallout with Elon Musk over unfunded tax cuts, and flick over to the rival spectacle he has hastily created. After a brief interruption to scheduled programming, the great showman is back in control. But in the meantime, the world has learned something useful about who wins in a standoff between two giant egos, one of whom has all the money and the other of whom has all the executive power. In US oligarchies just as in Russian ones, it turns out, it’s presidents who still get to set the agenda.You can’t ride the tiger. That’s the lesson here: once populism has grasped the levers of power, even the richest man in the world cannot be sure of exploiting it for his own ends, or imposing his own agenda on the chaos. Not when a vengeful White House still has the power to destroy even the most powerful business empire, anyway. At the weekend, Musk meekly deleted explosive tweets about the president’s alleged relationship with the convicted sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein, and by Monday he was loyally sharing Trumpian messages about the LA protests. His father, meanwhile, tactfully blamed the outburst on Musk Junior being “tired” after five months working round the clock for the White House.That ought to ring some bells on this side of the Atlantic. For oddly enough, it’s the same excuse offered up by Zia Yusuf, the millionaire businessman brought in to professionalise Reform UK’s perennially chaotic operation, who last week quit as chair in exasperation. Trying to get the party into power was no longer a “good use of his time”, he tweeted, after publicly clashing with its newest MP, Sarah Pochin, over her decision to ask a question in parliament about banning burqas (which isn’t officially Reform policy, or at least not yet). Yusuf, a British Muslim, has long been seen as Farage’s trusted bulwark against those inside Reform desperate to pick up where the jailed thug Stephen Yaxley-Lennon left off, and to become a full-blown, far-right anti-Islam movement.But this time, it seems, Yusuf may have bitten off more than the boss was ready to chew. A whole two days after storming out, Yusuf ended up storming awkwardly back in, telling the BBC that actually, having thought about it, he probably would ban burqas and other face coverings. He had just been exhausted, he suggested, after barely having a day off in 11 months. (If nothing else, it seems Reform really means what it says about fighting back against modern HR practices.)To be fair to him, even Farage seems to find the process of trying to control his parties exhausting at times, judging by the regularity with which he has taken breaks from them over the years. While Yusuf won’t return as chair, he will now join Reform’s so-called British Doge, supposedly taking a Musk-style chainsaw to council spending – which sounds like a breeze compared with managing Reform MPs. Until, that is, you reflect on how exactly Doge has turned out across the Atlantic.The reason parts of Silicon Valley were quietly enthusiastic about their fellow tech tycoon’s slash and burn approach to US bureaucracy was that they saw profitable method in the madness: a plan to hack the state back to the bare minimum, opening up new markets for digital services and unleashing (or so they hoped) a new wave of economic growth by slashing national debt.Five months on, however, it’s clear that any Doge savings will be utterly dwarfed by Trump’s forecast to send national debt soaring to uncharted and potentially unsustainable highs. Any tech titan hoping for the US equivalent of Margaret Thatcher on steroids, in other words, has ended up with Liz Truss after one too many espressos instead – plus troops on the streets of California and the slowly dawning realisation that, as the billionaire venture capitalist Michael Moritz put it, they have “no sway” over what they unleashed.There will be plenty of people back in Britain who couldn’t care less about obscure comings and goings in the Reform party, even as its poll lead means it’s starting to make the political weather. Others simply don’t expect it to affect their lives much either way if Reform permanently supplants a Conservative party from which it already seems hard to distinguish, and a few may already be calculating that they can turn its rise to their own advantage.Yet what the last few frightening days in the US have demonstrated is that once populism has its feet firmly enough under the table, chaos wins. There’s no ability to belatedly impose order, no house-training it either. All you can do is deny it a room in the house in the first place. In Britain, at least, it’s not too late for that.

      Gaby Hinsliff is a Guardian columnist

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      How can US cities resist Trump’s mass deportation agenda? Look to Chicago

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      “Know Your Rights” posters, with critical information for interactions with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) officers, are all over the city of Chicago. Plastered across subways or advertised along local bus routes, the Know Your Rights campaign is a coordinated effort on the part of city officials and local immigration advocacy groups to alert individuals of their rights during interactions with Ice. The posters are evidence of Chicago’s activism, long history of protecting its immigrant communities and resistance to attempts by previous administrations to weaken their protections.Now, as Donald Trump continues to roll out unprecedented attacks on immigrants – notably increased detentions and deportations without due process – organizers in the city are stretched thin and scrambling to expand traditional tools used in the fight for immigrant rights to accommodate ballooning needs.“I’ve been around since the beginning [in 2012], when we pivoted into doing multi-generational, anti-deportation work,” said Antonio Gutierrez, a co-founder of the immigrant advocacy group Organized Communities Against Deportations (OCAD). “We have never felt as stressed out or at capacity, even during the first Trump administration.”Communities in California are also feeling that stress as they rally against Trump’s anti-immigration tactics. On Saturday, hundreds of protesters demonstrated in Los Angeles against Ice raids across the city. Trump dispatched about 300 national guard troops to the area, a move which Gavin Newsom, the California governor, has called an “unconstitutional” deployment.Since he took office in January, Trump has worked to fulfill campaign pledges to carry out mass deportations after promising to remove “millions and millions of criminal aliens”. The latest figures show sharp increases in detentions and deportations after Trump expressed anger at plateauing levels earlier this year. On 3 June, Ice officers arrested more than 2,200 people, a record high. As of 23 May, nearly 49,000 people are in Ice detention, NBC News reported. In April, more than 17,200 people were deported, a 24% increase compared with last year. These figures represent the first time in Trump’s tenure that deportations have outpaced those during the Biden administration.The Trump administration has also rolled out unprecedented attacks on immigrant rights. More than 200 people have been removed from the US and transported to El Salvador’s notorious Terrorism Confinement Center (Cecot), many without any form of due process. Kilmar Ábrego García, 29, was removed from the US on 15 March and was returned to the US last Friday. He now faces human trafficking charges. Garcia’s attorneys maintain that Garcia is innocent and called the charges an “abuse of power”.View image in fullscreen“Our perspective is that there is no law and order,” said Gutierrez of OCAD’s view on the state of US immigration. They added: “We continue to see that this current administration is going unchecked by many different things.”Compared with other cities, Chicago is better situated than most to navigate Trump’s assault on immigration – a fact that Trump officials have pointed out. Following Trump’s election win in November, his so-called “border czar”, Tom Homan, announced that mass deportations would begin in Chicago. Homan warned Chicago’s mayor, Brandon Johnson, and other Democratic officials to “get the hell out of the way”. But in January, Homan complained that Chicago was “very well educated” in its ability to resist Ice agents. Johnson defended Chicago’s protections for undocumented immigrants before a Republican-majority Congress.Chicago organizers have implemented a swath of strategies to resist efforts from Ice, responses rooted in collaboration between organizations that have been in place dating back to the first Trump administration. OCAD holds regular community meetings with its clients to educate on the near-daily changes in Trump’s anti-immigration tactics, with meetings now occurring bimonthly. OCAD and other collaborators also oversee rapid-response groups that monitor Ice activity.As demand for services increases, volunteer interest has also surged, another product of Chicago’s activism culture. Volunteer interest in anti-deportation efforts has increased by 300% since 2024, Gutierrez noted: there are now more than 400 volunteers working in 27 neighborhood response groups. But there was still “definitely a strong sense of fear” among immigrants in Chicago as Trump threatens to ramp up deportations, said Gutierrez. OCAD’s hotline, which handles calls for Ice sightings and other immigrant-related questions, has seen an increase from five calls a month last year to more than 100 each day in the weeks following Trump’s inauguration. Now, the hotline averages about 50 calls a week. Beyond deportation, immigrants across ethnicities have expressed concern about Trump’s attacks on green-card holders, birthright citizenship or overall delays in visas, several advocacy groups said.Even with its robust organization efforts, Chicago immigrant advocacy groups have still faced considerable challenges. Conservative city council members attempted to change Chicago’s sanctuary city status in January, allowing police to collaborate with Ice in certain circumstances; Illinois Republican state legislators have tried to implement similar laws. Such attempts have failed.Chicago has remained “pro-immigrant for decades”, said Gutierrez, a stance that is evident through the city’s extensive policies protecting immigrants of all statuses and its resistance to conservative attempts to roll back progress. Back in 1985, then mayor Harold Washington signed an executive order making Chicago a sanctuary city, and neighborhoods such as Uptown, Albany Park and Little Village served as hubs for arriving immigrants of all backgrounds. Social services providers such as World Relief and Refuge One set up offices in those communities, collaborating with local landlords to secure housing for refugees.View image in fullscreenImmigrant advocates have worked for decades to limit the power of Ice in Chicago communities. In 2012, Chicago’s city council passed the Welcoming City ordinance, which restricts city agencies from providing information on undocumented immigrants to Ice or inquiring about an individual’s immigration status. Ice is also not allowed in Chicago public schools and school officials are not allowed to share student information, as written in the 2019 Chicago Teachers Union contract. These safeguards were reaffirmed in CTU’s latest contract, which passed in April.At the state level, officials have passed laws to protect immigrant rights, said Brandon Lee, communications director at the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights. Members of the ICIRR have previously lobbied the Illinois state legislature to enact the Trust Act, a 2017 bill which prohibits local Illinois law enforcement from carrying out immigration enforcement.Getting the Trust Act passed and subsequent additions to the law was a “years-long campaign” with a coalition of organizations, said Grace Pai, executive director of Asian Americans Advancing Justice – Chicago. “There were a lot of pieces of follow-up legislation to add on additional protections that weren’t passed in that first piece of legislation, but that’s legislation that we’re obviously really proud to have,” she said. Such laws have limited the ability for Ice to gain access to sensitive information from police collaboration, a critical tool for resistance as the Trump administration attempts to use police for immigrant detention efforts.That strategic organizing is only possible due to a statewide network of organizations that has existed for decades, said Lee. Every year, the ICIRR organizes advocacy days during the legislative session during which member organizations and their constituents lobby Illinois lawmakers.Educating constituents has remained critical for immigrant groups. A coalition of groups share resources, including translations of educational material, said Grace Chan McKibben, executive director of the Coalition for a Better Chinese American Community (CBCAC). Beyond the citywide Know Your Rights campaign, groups are often working to combat misinformation through sessions and information blasts, said McKibben, or working with non-immigration groups to make sure immigrants sign up for benefits they are eligible for, such as food assistance and healthcare services.On the policy side, groups still collaborate to lobby representatives to support pro-immigrant initiatives. Every May on Asian American Action Day, the CBCAC, Asian Americans Advancing Justice and other Chicago groups travel to Springfield, Illinois’s capital, to advocate for laws including funding for immigrant-specific programming. More than 500 people joined the lobbying efforts this year, an increase from the 300 to 400 people who have attended in previous years.The ability for Chicago organizers to respond to Trump’s anti-immigration rollout comes down to “building relationships so that there’s trust and care for each other”, said McKibben. “That’s what’s remarkable about the Chicago model of organizing. [It’s about] how connected the organizations are. It takes coordination, communication and a common commitment to what is good for the group.”Still, the fight to protect immigrant rights continues, especially as Ice arrests people at record levels. Just Wednesday, Ice agents in Chicago detained at least 10 people at a routine check-in for a monitoring program, including an OCAD member.Chicago police department officers were also onsite, generating concern about the possibility of potential collaboration between the two agencies. ICIRR has asked the Illinois attorney general to investigate whether or not there were violations of the state’s Trust Act.“Yesterday was an escalation on the part of Ice, all in the name of meeting the cruelty quotas set by Trump and Stephen Miller,” said Lee. “Everyday neighbors from across Chicagoland were apprehended, lured into a trap. This tactic Ice deployed … is now forcing families into impossible situations with no good outcomes and incredible risk.”As Chicago organizations continue to fight against Trump’s immigration crackdown, activists are encouraging other cities to create their own networks of advocacy. Due process, judicial accountability and other rights are being eroded, but the strength of solidarity is not. More