Read our editorial on mass deportations here, and the ongoing struggle against it here.
On September 12, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) abducted Willian Gimenez, a Venezuelan immigrant day laborer in his late 30s, outside of a barbershop in Little Village, Chicago.
Gimenez had previously filed a lawsuit against off-duty police officers working security at a Home Deport for abusing migrant day laborers. The lawsuit claims that Gimenez and four other day laborers “endured physical violence at the hands of off-duty Chicago Police Department officers” and also alleges “a conspiracy to criminalize day laborers’ attempts to find work in Chicago.”
The suit describes how the migrant workers were “choked, thrown around, punched, slapped and otherwise struck after they were handcuffed and brought into a security room at the Home Depot” by the off-duty police officers.
Activists convened a news conference the following morning outside of the ICE facility in the Chicago suburb of Broadview demanding answers from the government regarding Gimenez’s condition. Speakers emphasized that Gimenez was abducted because he dared to expose the police for their abuses, and agitated against ICE officers outside the torture site. Gimenez’s wife—who was present during his abduction—was in attendance, and collapsed just before the conference began.
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has refused to provide information on where Gimenez is being held and is denying contact with his attorney. In a statement, DHS justified the abduction by accusing Gimenez of being “a criminal illegal alien from Venezuela,” his crime being entering the US. Gimenez’s lawyer, Kevin Herrera, said that Gimenez holds a valid work permit and is currently in the process of seeking asylum.
ICE disappeared Gimenez the same day another ICE agent outside Chicago murdered 38-year-old Mexican immigrant Silverio Villegas-Gonzalez during a traffic stop. Also on the same day, protesters carried out a 12-hour demonstration aimed at blocking ICE operations at the Broadview torture site—a booking facility that lacks beds, showers, and kitchens, where detainees are being held for extended periods of time, according to protesters.
Demonstrators confronted heavily-armed federal agents in military garb, who became increasingly violent and, according to one witness, fired pepper balls at protesters at close range and hospitalized three protesters. The protests, which have become a regular occurrence, have previously succeeded in turning away an ICE vehicle from entering the concentration camp, and have spread across the Chicago metro area as ICE terrorism continues.
This comes in the wake of DHS’s so-called “Operation Midway Blitz,” a terror campaign aimed at attacking the immigrant and Hispanic working class in Illinois “sanctuary cities,” especially Chicago. The ruling class hopes to recover from their deepening economic crisis of overproduction in part by destroying segments of the working class—especially immigrant workers—and making their conditions more precarious, forcing increased competition among workers for diminishing wages.
Photo: Press conference outside of ICE’s Broadview facility. The glass has been boarded up due to the repeated and increasingly militant protests demanding the closure of the torture site.
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