Community leaders and protesters marched down Sheridan Road in North Chicago and protested in front of Naval Station Great Lakes while calling for ICE to leave Illinois.
Coalition for Spiritual and Public Leadership held an “interfaith prayer march” on Saturday afternoon where faith leaders and many other grassroots community organizations attended.
The groups say they share a commitment to “nonviolent direct action as a path to justice and peace.”
Community members and faith leaders first gathered and marched down Sheridan Road in North Chicago before later marching to the naval base.
Protesters held signs that said, “Stop the raids. Keep families together. Abolish ICE” and “God loves immigrants and so do we.”
During the prayer march, attendees took to the intersection of Sheridan Road and Martin Luther King Jr. Drive while chanting, dancing and playing musical instruments.
Several people spoke to the crowd, with one reverend saying that ICE has “blood on its hands” and calling them killers.
“They have attempted to strike fear in our hearts but they will not succeed because we are not afraid,” he told the crowd, which chanted “no militarization.”
A rabbi who spoke said that most people in the nation are immigrants or children of immigrants. “We are all one.”
He called for the “release of our captives” from ICE custody. “Let our people go,” the crowd chanted.
The protest, denouncing ICE and “military presence,” continued outside the naval base later in the afternoon.
Mano a Mano Executive Director Dulce Ortiz said there has been an “escalation” from ICE agents in the way they’re “kidnapping people, the way that they’re intimidating.”
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) surged hundreds of federal agents to the Chicago area as part of “Operation Midway Blitz” earlier this month.
Over 500 people have been arrested so far. The hundreds of agents are operating out of Naval Station Great Lakes and housed in nearby hotels for the immigration operation.