Police Attack Anti-Deportation Rally, Three Arrested in Gary, IN

Report back on recent anti-deportation demonstration in Gary, Illinois.

More than 75 people gathered outside the Gary/Chicago International Airport on January 18th to protest deportations regularly carried out at the airport by Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Demonstrators said they also gathered to protest ahead of Trump’s inauguration on the 20th as part of a nationwide call for “festivals of resistance.

The Gary/Chicago International Airport has been used since at least 2013 to fly deportees out of the region. GlobalX, an airline company based in Miami, FL, subcontracts with ICE to deport people every Friday from Gary/Chicago airport to Kansas City, MO before taking them out of the country. More than 19,000 people were deported out of Gary between 2013 and 2017 according to public records obtained through a Freedom of Information request by a local organizer.

Demonstrators were leaving the airport on foot Saturday morning when around two dozen Gary police officers descended on them. Officers grabbed and arrested two protestors who were in the process of complying with police instructions. A photojournalist was also seized and arrested by the officers while documenting the other arrests, in what amounts to a violent attack on the freedom of the press.

The march, held two days before Donald Trump takes power for a second time, represents the Gary community’s commitment to their immigrant neighbors in the face of state violence, but builds on the diligent work of community organizers over the years. Since 2017, interfaith groups, immigrant rights activists, and rank-and-file union workers from East Chicago and elsewhere in northwest Indiana regularly held prayer circles and other peaceful protests, but had not been met with significant repression.

“This is an unprecedented escalation in police violence against immigrant solidarity protests in Northwest Indiana. This makes sense, though, in the context of rising Trumpism, as well as the pattern of violence in the Region against our Black neighbors and striking workers,” said an organizer of the demonstration.

“In order to protect ICE operations separating Chicagoland families, Gary police carried out the first arrests of the second Trump administration, even before the inauguration. This is a crucial reminder that the police do not keep our communities safe, we do” said a local resident in attendance.”

On Friday, Beatriz Ponce de Leon, deputy mayor for immigrant, migrant and refugee rights, publicly announced that ICE is planning to conduct street sweeps for undocumented people in the coming weeks. ICE contractors use the Gary airport to evade sanctuary regulations and widespread opposition in Chicago.