Chicago has been holding its collective breath as we witness escalated ICE

September 2025 — Moving the Needle // Woods Fund Chicago

Chicago has been holding its collective breath as we witness escalated ICE violence and brace for potential National Guard deployment.

The use of federal armed power against Black and Brown communities has a long history in this country, and the recent National Guard deployment in LA and threatened deployment in Chicago represent an unprecedented use of force by a federal administration over the objections of city and state governments. Whether or not that deployment materializes, ICE has already intensified operations in Chicago: brutalizing protesters, detaining organizers and parents, and killing at least one man. In a moment of justified fear, it is deeply galvanizing to remember that our city is full of neighbors fiercely committed to protecting one another.

Organizers across the city have been hard at work these past weeks, mobilizing people to the streets to make clear that ICE and the National Guard are not welcome in Chicago. Know Your Rights efforts are everywhere: via multilingual posters, workshops, social media decks, state websites, and canvassing. The Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights (ICIRR)’s Family Support Network Hotline is a resource both for people under threat of detention and for anyone who witnesses ICE activity and wants to alert their neighbors.

First Defense Legal Aid and National Lawyers Guild stand ready to support people detained, be it at a traffic stop or a protest — the former has re-worked Know Your Rights trainings to include ICE interactions, the latter has legal observers at protests across the city. Immigrant rights organizations have successfully pushed Chicago and Illinois to protect kids in school, regardless of immigration status, and further enshrine noncooperation with ICE and federal forces. If the National Guard does not enter Chicago, it is a credit to the basebuilding and unified messaging of this coalition.

In these moments, people say that courage is contagious. If that is true, Chicago has an abundance, from organizers who have been working to protect the rights of their neighbors for decades to people who are being activated for the first time in this fight. Philanthropy, too, can take up this courage, funding the just work of our Grantee Partners and standing with them in the face of federal persecution. These fights are not new, but they are breaking alarming ground: we cannot be anything less than all in.

The state violence unfolding in Chicago — the brunt of which we know is most likely to fall on BIPOC communities in the city — comes against the backdrop of an explicit disavowal of equity efforts on the federal level. Even as a recent Supreme Court ruling condoned racial profiling in immigration stops, federal targeting of DEI initiatives has led many in the nonprofit and philanthropic sectors to move away from identity-based language, or even to question its utility in our larger fights. But decades of funding organizing have taught us the critical value of leadership by the most impacted. A vision of a just future cannot be enacted without centering racial justice.

Fueling Black-led organizations and organizations that explicitly center racial justice is a potent pathway toward collective liberation. Looking just at the recent years of Woods Fund Chicago funding yields two key examples: organizing against displacement and organizing on every facet of the carceral system.

In a deeply segregated city, Black organizers are at the helm of fights against displacement and for equitable housing on the South and West sides. As referenced in the articles on tenants unions below, organizations like East Lake Tenants Union and Southside Together are organizing tenants against absentee or private equity landlords. Those same organizations are fighting for community benefits agreements (CBAs) as major developments threaten the affordability — or, in the cases of data centers or polluters, viability — of neighborhoods across Chicago.

In Chicago, organizations like the Workers Center for Racial Justice, Equity and Transformation, and the Chicago Torture Justice Center are all fighting aspects of a carceral system that continues to harm all those caught up in it: according to Injustice Watch, in 2021, Black people were incarcerated in Cook County at 17 times the rate of white people. A massive coalition of dedicated organizers won the Pre-Trial Fairness Act in 2021, which ended money bond in Illinois in 2023. As recently as this summer, many of those same organizations celebrated the passage of a bill that directs much needed resources to the state's public defender system in the state.

As Chicago works to resist ICE incursions, workshops and Know Your Rights materials initially developed to empower Black and brown communities disproportionately targeted by police have been revised and re-worked to equip immigrants in the face of discriminatory enforcement, recently affirmed by the Supreme Court. After the recent killing of Silverio Villegas-Gonzalez, Black activists in Chicago have been vocal in their condemnation. We stand behind this leadership, which calls for solidarity in the face of state violence.

Woods Fund Chicago funds community organizing and advocacy toward racial and economic justice. We believe deeply that the vast changes required to build a country where everyone can thrive will come from organized movements for justice, and we fund that work. And. Black-led organizations need support to build critical infrastructure, to house and feed neighbors, to spread information and resources. Every year, we receive far more requests than we can fund, all critical pieces to fighting for a better world. We call on our peers in philanthropy to remain rooted in leadership by the most impacted, and to fund Black-led organizations — more than ever in this political landscape.

As Chicago faces escalating ICE detentions and potential National Guard deployment, our communities are justly afraid. Organizations across Chicago have put together resources that can be shared online and off to help empower every Chicagoan — regardless of immigration or housing status — in their homes, on the streets, and exercising their rights to protest. We’ve collected the resources below for easy sharing and distribution:

FAMILY SUPPORT NETWORK HOTLINE —

Whether or not you have loved ones at risk of ICE detention, you can save ICIRR’s Family Support Network hotline number in your phone, for immediate reporting of ICE sightings.

KNOW YOUR RIGHTS AS AN UNSHELTERED PERSON —

Chicago Coalition to End Homelessness created an outreach page with printable materials for unsheltered neighbors on staying safe amid potential enforcement actions.

SHAREABLE KNOW YOUR RIGHTS SLIDES —

A coalition including Equity and Transformation and the Chicago Black Voter Project put together a collection of Know Your Rights resources, easily shareable on Instagram, that cover rights if stopped by ICE or police, and while protesting.

COMMUNITY TRAININGS —

Hana Center and Equity and Transformation are among the groups hosting regular Know Your Rights trainings. Want to learn alongside your church, mutual aid org, or workplace? First Defense Legal Aid partners with organizations and communities across the city to offer trainings on demand — their inquiry form is here.

The application for the Cultivate Leadership Program 2025 – 2026 cohort is now open. Cultivate seeks to build a cadre of emerging women, women identifying, non-binary, and two-spirited persons of color leaders engaged in social, economic, and racial justice movements and whose collective voice and power can be leveraged to realize a shared vision of the Chicago region’s future. If you are a woman or nonbinary leader of color working in the social, economic, and/or racial justice movements and are interested in leadership development and receiving Executive Coaching, please consider applying!

Read more at cultivatewomenofcolor.org/criteria-application.

This opportunity is limited to current grantees of Crossroads Fund, Chicago Foundation for Women, Chicago Community Trust, and Woods Fund Chicago.

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