How ICE Terror Campaigns Are Used to Discipline Labor

[Celerity]

https://prospect.org/labor/2025-10-01-how-ice-terror-campaigns-are-used-to-discipline-labor/



CHICAGO – The last time Regina heard from her mother, Laura Murillo, she was calling from inside the ICE detention center in Broadview, Illinois, last Friday. “She just told us that she loved us. She seemed shocked, and she said she’s wanting to fight the case,” Regina says. Regina, 19, is standing at the street vendor booth in the Back of the Yards neighborhood of Chicago, where Murillo was detained. She’s now missing college to work at the booth, selling tamales and champurrado, a Mexican hot chocolate drink, to make sure the business doesn’t go under.

Video footage shows Murillo, 54, being arrested by at least three masked federal agents at this site last week, while onlookers shouted at them to let her go. Regina, who requested I use a pseudonym to protect her privacy, wipes away tears as she explains that she believes her mom was racially profiled and swept up in a broader attack on workers in the area. “My sister needs her,” says Regina, pointing to her 16-year-old sister standing next to her. “We need her.”

Since the Trump administration unleashed “Operation Midway Blitz” on September 8, workers across the Chicago area have been targeted at hiring sites, on the way to work, and as in the case of Murillo, while on the job. While the Department of Homeland Security says it has made 500 detentions in Chicagoland, Brandon Lee, communications director for the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights, cautioned against citing the agency’s numbers as fact, because “ICE lies.” While rapid response organizers told me they don’t have their own independent tally, they are certain that detentions are escalating.

Organizers say that the crackdown has created a climate of fear and intimidation that is not only directly harming workers and their families, but is also stifling ongoing worker efforts to improve conditions on the job, and organize to protect themselves from raids. There are documented cases of employers seemingly taking advantage of this climate to clamp down on organizing efforts among their workforce. “The atmosphere that the Department of Homeland Security is trying to create is one where they’re chilling speech and chilling organizing among immigrants, among immigrant workers, and among advocates,” Lee says.

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