One year ago this month, the Trump administration launched Operation Midway Blitz, a violent campaign where federal agents disappeared people from Chicago-area neighborhoods and unlawfully detained more than 3,800 people in the rapidly growing network of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention centers.
As Chicagoans cope and rise from the ongoing devastation of the months-long mass deportation operation, we are also confronting new tactics from ICE and the Trump administration which are resulting in more than 1,000 removal orders being issued by the Chicago Immigration Court each week.
The administration is now using the immigration courts and U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) to target people who have spent years, and often thousands of dollars, trying to comply with immigration proceedings.
In recent months, we have seen:
- Adults and children with pending immigration cases being called with little or no notice to immigration court, where judges increasingly acquiesce to unlawful administration policies that result in removal orders and detention
- Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) recipients being targeted for removal, with no pathway to permanent status available despite calling the United States home since their childhood
- Refugees and asylum seekers being blocked from permanent residence and citizenship, and increasingly targeted for detention and deportation, due to racist and xenophobic travel bans targeting people from Muslim and African countries
- Venezuelan families, whom Chicagoans rallied to welcome just a few years ago, being targeted by travel bans and other unlawful policies just as many had begun to put down roots and feel safe from ongoing political upheaval and natural disasters that have made their homeland unlivable
- People from Haiti and Syria losing work authorization and facing the growing threat of deportation after the U.S. Supreme Court approved the Trump administration’s summary termination of their Temporary Protected Status (TPS)
NIJC’s work to defend access to justice is no longer just about securing fairness in legal proceedings.
Increasingly, legal representation is becoming people’s only protection against being disappeared and deported to danger. In Chicago, the Legal Protection Fund (LPF) has been central to this effort.
Since 2017, LPF has enabled NIJC to provide free immigration legal representation in over 1,700 cases and offer more than 3,700 legal screenings. In the past year, close collaboration between NIJC and LPF’s community navigator partners allowed us to act quickly to find Chicagoans who were taken by ICE before they were disappeared, and to get people out of detention and back to their families. Read more about this work in the Fund’s 2026 Annual Report.
Diana, who grew up in Chicago, sought out legal services from NIJC through the Legal Protection Fund in 2023 when she could no longer afford a private immigration attorney.
Diana came to the U.S. as a toddler and grew up in Chicago. In 2017, she and her father survived a violent crime and cooperated with police, later applying for a U visa. When her father suddenly died, the family lost both their breadwinner and their ability to afford a private attorney. NIJC stepped in through the Legal Protection Fund in 2023.
That support proved critical when in 2025, USCIS mistakenly placed Diana in removal proceedings just as her U visa was about to be approved. NIJC fought to protect her, and earlier this year, nearly a decade after she first applied, Diana’s U visa was granted and her case was terminated. With the assistance of NIJC and the Legal Protection Fund, Diana now can remain with her family in Chicago, the only home she’s ever known.
Read more about Diana and the Legal Protection Fund in Block Club Chicago.
In the coming months, Chicago’s City Council will decide whether to continue supporting the Legal Protection Fund’s vital work.
At a time when the federal government is pouring billions of taxpayer dollars into ICE detention, surveillance, and deportation systems, American communities are turning to our city and state governments to invest in defending due process and human rights for all.
Please join us in defending access to justice for Chicago residents by sending a message to your alderperson asking them to maintain $3 million in funding for the Fund in the 2027 budget.
Cecilia Mendoza is the associate director of government relations at NIJC.