This article is a joint publication of The American Prospect and Workday Magazine, a nonprofit newsroom devoted to holding the powerful accountable through the perspective of workers.
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.
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All employees, regardless of their immigration status, have almost all of the same workplace rights. That includes the right to organize collectively with their co-workers to improve their workplace conditions. Also, it is illegal for employers to retaliate against workers when they exercise their rights. That protection applies to all workers, regardless of immigration status.
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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Marisa Díaz, director of the Immigrant Worker Justice Program at the National Employment Law Project, tells me, “All employees, regardless of their immigration status, have almost all of the same workplace rights. That includes the right to organize collectively with their co-workers to improve their workplace conditions. Also, it is illegal for employers to retaliate against workers when they exercise their rights. That protection applies to all workers, regardless of immigration status.”
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Read the full story at prospect.org.
