Katie Dunn, a resident of Glen Arbor and Chicago, witnessed and wrote about Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s siege of Chicago neighborhoods last month. Dunn volunteered outside a school in a Latino neighborhood to safely escort students home, joined a protest outside the Broadview detention center, and found hope and resolve at the No Kings rally in Grant Park, which drew more than 100,000 demonstrators on Oct. 18. “Recent reports of ICE sightings near the school had sent a chilling wave through these already marginalized Brown and Black communities,” she wrote. “Countless parents, gripped by the tangible fear of being detained or disappeared by ICE in the mere minutes it takes to get their kids home from school, had entrusted their children’s safe passage to older siblings or neighbors. The whole landscape felt entirely dystopian: ICE’s menacing presence in the neighborhood had transformed a routine school dismissal into a fraught daily ritual.”
