It’s been a challenging year for the City of Chicago and the Committee on Immigrant and Refugee Rights, as we’ve navigated the brutal campaign of immigration enforcement and its impact on our neighbors. But we are so proud of how our city has come together to stand up for the rights of immigrants and refugees in our community. Check out a summary below of some of what the Committee team worked on this year––we look forward to getting back to it in 2026!
Policy and Legislation
In 2025, Chicago’s status as a Welcoming City was put to the test on a number of fronts. To ensure that we are living up to our values, Ald. Vasquez introduced or Co-Sponsored the following legislation:
- O2025-0021035: an ordinance requiring any companies contracting with the city to fill out an “Immigration Enforcement Disclosure,” to disclose whether they are working with or profiting from immigration enforcement services.
- O2025-0019959: an ordinance requiring all City departments, delegate agencies, and contractors to report all interactions related to immigration enforcement agencies to the Office of Emergency Management and Communication.
- SOr2025-0017810: an order requiring that the Chicago Police Department, Office of Emergency Management and Communications, and the Mayor’s Office Order provide City Council with all reporting data and communications regarding U.S. Department Homeland Security presence at 2245 S Michigan Ave and vicinity locations on June 4, 2025.
- O2025-0019956: an ordinance clarifying the investigative authority of the Civilian Office of Police Accountability and the Office of the Inspector General regarding Welcoming City Ordinance violations. This ordinance was submitted after it was revealed during our hearing on the June 4th mass detention incident that neither entity had officially opened an investigation, due to a perceived lack of clarity in the municipal code.
- O2025-0018168: an ordinance requiring the Executive Director of Public Safety Administration to submit monthly reports of Freedom of Information Act requests and responses to Chair of Committee on Immigrant and Refugee Rights. This ordinance was introduced as a result of multiple examples of the Trump administration seeking to use government data to target vulnerable populations. To address these concerns, we also introduced R2025-0018172: a resolution calling on all City departments and offices that respond to Freedom of Information Act requests to discuss internal training, response policies, and public maintenance of FOIA records.
In addition to immigration-focused legislation, we also introduced and passed a number of other pieces of legislation this year! You can see a full round up in the 40th Ward Annual Report [LINK].
Community Engagement
In 2025, CIRR held 34 events throughout the city of Chicago! We were able to reach over 3,000 people to make sure they were informed about their rights, as well as changing immigration policies and their impact on Chicagoans.
Know Your Rights
We held 33 Know Your Rights workshops to inform the community of their rights in interactions with immigration enforcement. These workshops were geared toward different communities—including schools, parents, business owners and employees, and more—and covered topics like emergency planning for families, changes in immigration policy, how to safeguard businesses against unwarranted ICE visits, and more.
To make sure we were reaching as many Chicagoans as possible, we held workshops across the city in 16 communities across the city and nine languages, including English, Spanish, Hindi, Urdu, French, Haitian Creole, Wolof, Vietnamese, and Kichwa.
In total, we reached over 1,600 people with these events to inform them of their rights. Special thanks to CPS Parent University, Indo American Center, the Cook County Public Defenders Office, Community United Organization, Metropolitan Family Services, United African Organization, Northwest Center and Family Focus, University of Illinois Chicago Law School, the Consulates of Mexico, Guatemala, and the Dominican Republic, Arise Chicago, Illinois Workers in Action, and the many other partners who joined with us in holding these events!
Immigration Briefings
In 2025, we piloted a new Immigration Briefings to make sure the community was getting up-to-date information on the most pressing immigration issues. Given the rapid pace of change under the second Trump administration, these briefings were crucial in informing immigrants and immigrant-serving communities. We held 11 briefings this year, reaching a total of 1,193 people. Special thanks to the National Immigrant Justice Center, Immigration Attorney Rocio Velasquez Kato, University of Illinois Chicago’s International Human Rights Clinic, the Latino Policy Forum, and scaleLIT for partnering with us in bringing these events to the community!
Other Events
In addition to our main events series, we also held a number of other events this year, including:
- Budget Engagement Workshops: we held two workshops to inform organizations on the city budget process and how to best advocate for their communities.
- Community Defense Workshops: we supported two community defense workshops this year, in both the 40th and 46th wards, to help communities learn how they can best support and protect their neighbors who may be targeted by immigration enforcement.
- Resource Fairs: we supported a number of resource fairs this year, including a Bilingual Family Resource Fair at Amundsen High School, an a Black and Brown Unity Resource Fair in the 25th District, and the Chicago African Resource Fair, among others.
Advocacy
In large part due to the descent of immigration enforcement on our city, 2025 has been a year of advocacy for the Committee team, as we worked to protect the rights of Chicago immigrants and refugees from federal government attacks and to strengthen Chicago policies that have the biggest impact on immigrant and refugee populations.
Welcoming City Protections
On June 4th, members of the Committee staff were present at the ISAP Supervision Building on 2245 S. Michigan Avenue when federal immigration enforcement agents conducted a mass detention of ~20 immigrants, who had been told they were showing up to a routine check-in, only to be forcibly separated from their loved ones and denied their right to an attorney.
Community members witnessed CPD officers on the scene, appearing to assist immigration enforcement: blocking off streets, appearing to stand guard for ICE vehicles, and accompanying ICE agents in and out of the building. The Welcoming City Ordinance sets clear parameters that prohibit CPD from providing on-site support to assist in civil immigration enforcement operations, including setting up traffic perimeters.
In response, CIRR submitted an order (SOr2025-0017810) requiring the release of any information related to the June 4th incident, and held a hearing on July 1st, 2025 to examine CPD’s involvement in the incident and their protocols for ICE enforcement operations. During the hearing, representatives from CPD, OEMC, and COPA and OIG testified. When it became clear that neither the OIG or COPA had initiated an investigation, due to a lack of clarity on which agency was responsible for investigating violations of the Welcoming City Ordinance, we followed up by submitting legislation to clarify each agency’s investigative authority.
Following the hearing, the Committee successfully secured the release of the information, including body-worn camera footage. After analyzing 12 hours of footage, we compiled a list of what appear to be potential violations of the Welcoming City Ordinance, and sent them to the Mayor’s Office and the investigative agencies.
While we still have a ways to go to ensure that accountability is served for this incident, we are proud to have shed light on gaps in the city’s process when it comes to enforcing the Welcoming City Ordinance, and we hope to continue working to shore up our city’s protections in the coming year.
Immigration Enforcement Response
The impact that the violent immigration enforcement campaign the Trump administration inflicted on our city is incalculable. Thousands of immigrants, the majority of whom had no criminal record, were detained forcibly and often without warrant or probable cause. That campaign is nowhere near over, but as a Committee, we have spent the past year working to strengthen Chicago’s infrastructure of immigrant support and protection.
Here are some of the ways CIRR stepped up to help:
- CIRR Detention Support Guide: we put this guide together for municipal offices to better understand how to support their constituents if they are targeted for immigration enforcement.
- Ward Office Plan of Action for Federal Visit
- Immigration Response Toolkit: we also created this toolkit for members of City Council to help them prepare for immigration enforcement in their wards and protect and support their constituents who may be targeted.
- Chicago Immigration Enforcement Summary: after the conclusion of Operation Midway Blitz, we prepared a document for other cities detailing our learnings, to help them prepare for similar campaigns in their communities.
- Immigration Roundtables: we held bi-monthly roundtables with staffers from Chicago municipal offices at every level—federal, state, city, and county—to discuss strategies and response to immigration enforcement and policies from the Trump administration:
- Local Progress Task Force: through this task force, we learned from and worked with other cities facing immigration enforcement campaigns to share strategies on how to strengthen our cities’ protections against the erosion of rights represented by the Trump administration.
- Immigration Enforcement Violations Report Form: we created a centralized form to track reports of violations of City or State law related to immigration enforcement, to ensure that those violations are reported to the correct agencies.
Chicago is With You Taskforce
Chair Vasquez and Clerk Anna Valencia are co-chairs of the Chicago is With You Taskforce, an effort to support immigrants in Chicago. This year, they launched Chicago Loves Local, a campaign to promote local and uplift local commerce.
This has been an incredibly hard year for small businesses. A lot of businesses have lost employees and revenue to the ICE raids over the past couple of months, not to mention the impact of tariffs and economic uncertainty. Small businesses are the heart of Chicago’s identity, culture, and economic resilience. Every neighborhood has a story, and our small local businesses keep that story alive.
That’s why the Committee on Immigrant and Refugee Rights, along with the Andersonville Chamber of Commerce, Chicago Is With You Task Force, and the Rogers Park Business Alliance, partnered up to create this campaign to boost and support the local businesses in all 77 community areas of Chicago. Follow @chicagoloveslocal on Instagram!
Street Peddler and Street Vendor Advocacy
Among the many groups that have been targeted by immigration enforcement, street peddlers and vendors have been some of the hardest hit.
For several years now, the CIRR team, in partnership with the Cook County Human Trafficking Task Force, Pachacamak Foundation, Sociedad Civica Ecuatoriana, Consulate of Ecuador, Illinois Venezuelan Alliance, and City of Chicago Department of Family and Support Services, has been working to support street peddlers—folks, often new arrivals, who are selling candy and other items on the street. We have hosted several trainings for local businesses and organizations to inform them on cultural competency regarding new arrivals. We’ve also held 9 canvasses of local business corridors to connect new arrivals with social services and inform them of their rights.
Most recently, we hosted two workshops for street peddlers to inform and assist our new neighbors on the process of obtaining their street vendor’s license, connecting to daycare services, obtaining their CityKey ID, and more.
In addition to assisting street peddlers, we’re also working with street vendors—folks selling prepared food on the street— to obtain their street vendor license, and develop a new license type that reflects native food preparation while maintaining sanitation and hygiene. We held a workshop this past December to assist vendors with applying for their license, and look forward to continuing this work next year.