cross-posted from: https://ibbit.at/post/53398

From In These Times via this RSS feed

“The Department of Homeland Security has become the department of state terror,” said Rep. Delia Ramirez.

Even though President Donald Trump says he is pivoting from plans to deploy the National Guard in Chicago — now eyeing Memphis as his next target — Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers appear to still be escalating operations throughout the area, with devastating consequences.

Willian Gimenez, a day laborer, was reportedly abducted outside of a barbershop in Little Village, a neighborhood in southwest Chicago, by ICE agents on Friday. On Saturday morning, immigration rights advocates, public officials and labor groups like Arise Chicago, the Chicago Workers Collaborative and Workers Center for Racial Justice, gathered with Gimenez’s friends and family outside of an ICE facility in Broadview to demand his release.

Gimenez, who is in his late 30s and is from Venezuela, is one of five migrant day laborers involved in a federal lawsuit claiming that, among many other things, they ​“endured physical violence at the hands of off-duty Chicago Police Department officers” who were working as security officers for Home Depot, according to the complaint. The lawsuit also alleges ​“a conspiracy to criminalize day laborers’ attempts to find work in Chicago.”

Speakers at a Saturday morning news conference organized by workers’ advocates said they believe he was intentionally targeted because he is a plaintiff in that suit. (An ICE spokesperson, after In These Times and Workday requested comments about the abduction, defended the arrest but would not say where Gimenez was taken or being held.)