source: nacla
As Detention Surges Under Trump, Organizers Build a Lasting Movement
As the president pumps $45 billion into ICE over the next three years, activists and communities must balance rapid response with longer-term resistance.
Since September 2025, protesters have gathered every Friday at the Broadview Processing Center just 12 miles outside of Chicago. Their demands are simple: shut down the facility and withdraw Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) from the Chicagoland region. Meant to operate as a temporary holding facility, Broadview has been serving as a de facto detention center, despite having no beds, the capacity for food preparation, or medical treatment.
The people inside have reported instances of extreme overcrowding, water that “tasted like sewer,” and the use of coercion to force people to relinquish their rights and submit to deportation. Outside the facility, protesters have been met with tear gas, billy clubs, pepper spray, and projectiles such as pepper balls and rubber bullets.
“I didn’t know something like this could happen here,” one resident of the Village of Broadview, who asked to remain anonymous, stated after watching Illinois State Troopers lead protestors into the street and into the hands of officers in full riot gear. “It doesn’t erase the shame I feel for my country, but I am proud of what my community is doing to fight back.”
The transition of the Broadview facility into a detention center is emblematic of the broader expansion of immigration detention and enforcement, which has its roots in a long-running bipartisan project. Policies like Ronald Reagan’s 1983 emergency plans—the first use of detention as a deterrent to immigration that required 10,000 beds to be ready for use at any given time—and Bill Clinton’s Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act (IIRIRA) and Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act (AEDPA), made detention the norm and expanded the scope of who could be deported.
Immigration detention has become a boom industry. The two major players in the game—GEO Group and CoreCivic—regularly bring in between $2 and $4 billion every year.
Since then, immigration detention has become a boom industry. The two major players in the game—GEO Group and CoreCivic—regularly bring in between $2 and $4 billion every year. Their profits are largely driven by the official bed mandates made by Congress, which was first officially set at 33,400 in 2009 and then rose to 41,500 in 2024 in an order by the Biden administration. It is now poised to surge past 100,000 beds thanks to the second Trump administration’s planned $45 billion expansion over the next three years—an annual increase for ICE’s custody operations of roughly 265 percent.
In response to the rapid expansion of immigration detention and intensified attacks on Black and Brown communities, organizers and everyday Americans across the country have stepped up to fight back. The success of their work is evident from the fact that Trump’s “border czar,” Tom Homan, has recognized that communities are organized and “making it very difficult” for ICE to do its job in cities like Chicago. However, the work has only just begun.
Trump’s Dark Sites
Thus far, the Trump administration has utilized a patchwork of state and local jails, military facilities in and outside of the country, and highly lucrative private companies to detain more and more immigrants. The goal is in line with previous administrations: to deter immigrants through the threat of detention. However, the execution comes with historic public cruelty and a fascist public relations campaign.
In the Florida Everglades, the Florida Immigrant Coalition (FLIC) has been utilizing all avenues of resistance to fight the now infamous Alligator Alcatraz—a migrant detention facility which Trump and local leaders have boasted as having alligators and pythons for security, and which is now being used as a brand online to sell t-shirts, trucker hats, and beer koozies for the state Grand Old Party.
Alligator Alcatraz has been operating as an extrajudicial black site—denying detainees access to legal counsel, failing to list individuals on the public ICE Online Detainee Locator System, and refusing to allow members of Congress to examine the facility’s conditions.
“Unfortunately, what we’re seeing here is that the state and federal government are testing the limits of the judicial system, which, unfortunately, much of the public may not recognize as the last leg of this democracy,” executive director of the FLIC, Tessa Petit, shared about their fight to close the facility.
What the FLIC would like the public to know is that since its opening in July, Alligator Alcatraz has been operating as an extrajudicial black site—denying detainees access to legal counsel, failing to list individuals on the public ICE Online Detainee Locator System, and refusing to allow members of Congress to examine the facility’s conditions. Conceived through an emergency order signed by Governor Ron DeSantis, the site has maintained its separation from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and ICE in order to create a jurisdictional smoke screen—providing cover for the lack of due process provided to detained immigrants.
“We have a rapid response network going and we’re trying to make sure people can get connected with their families and try to connect them with pro-bono legal services,” Petit said, “but it’s very hard for folks detained in the Everglades to get visits from lawyers. It’s a trend now in the United States, where the executive tests its muscle against the judicial, and you’ve seen it at the federal and state level, where judges passed TROs (Temporary Restraining Orders) or injunctions and the federal government or local government decides that they’re going to keep moving forward with their intentions, with complete disregard for the judicial system.”
Bringing Light to Darkness
In states like Michigan and Washington, organizers have placed a major emphasis on ensuring the atrocities of immigration detention do not slip past the public eye.
The statewide coalition No Detention Centers in Michigan (NDCM), originally formed in 2019 to oppose the creation of a detention center in Ionia, MI, has set its sights on combating human rights violations in the North Lake Correctional Facility in Baldwin—the largest detention center in the Midwest.
Formerly the North Lake Correctional Facility, the private prison was converted into a detention center by Geo Group in the summer of 2025. It now holds individuals such as Nael Shamma, a stateless Palestinian immigrant who has been in the United States since 1973, and was abducted by ICE agents in August. “All of our kids are having a hard time. All of us, we’ve got severe anxiety every day he’s gone,” Christina Shamma, Nael’s wife, said in a phone call.
For organizers with NDCM, sharing the stories of those detained is a priority.
“Right now, we have our prisoner support working group and press working group coming together to focus on our witnessing project, and to develop new strategies to shut this facility back down,” JR, a detention abolitionist and member of NDCM, said of the group’s strategy. “But the main thing we’re doing right now is supporting those inside.”
Organizers with La Resistencia in Tacoma, Washington, have similarly made platforming affected community members a pivotal strategy in their opposition to the detention and poor treatment of immigrants in the city’s Northwest Detention Center.
“We were founded on the idea of exposing the conditions by having direct contact with the people inside detention,” the La Resistencia organizer, Josefina, shared.
“We learn about their stories, their demands, and we try to be a public-facing outlet for detained people… We talk with people and say, ‘Hey, do you want to release a statement to the public? We’ll have an artist draw a portrait of you, and we’ll put together a petition so that the public can put some pressure on your release.’”
Their goal of intensifying public pressure is not only to bring light to darkness, but also to reshape the narrative around who is inside—reminding us that not every immigrant’s story is the same.
Getting People Free
Amajor challenge for organizers in the immigrants’ rights community is the growing difficulty of getting people out of detention and into a better position to fight their cases.
“Where things are going is towards a situation where many immigrants know they cannot get a bond, and even if they can, the increased scrutiny of judges is leading to higher bonds than before or an outright denial of bonds,” Richard Kessler, an immigration attorney and member of NDCM, said of the changing landscape of immigration law in the Midwest. “And when that happens, it becomes much harder to get out.”
One way organizers are combating this trend is by creating bond funds. Realizing there was a need for support through bonds, organizers in Chicago formed the Midwest Immigration Bond Fund (MIBF) in 2020. “Since then, we’ve been posting bonds on a revolving basis,” Rafa with MIBF stated. The goal of the fund is simple: to pay immigration bonds in order to free individuals from ICE custody and build a community support system for the abolition of immigration detention. Since the recent uptick in ICE operations, the work of the bond fund has been persistent.
“Since January, we’ve posted about 49 bonds,” Rafa continued, “last year we only posted around 19.” And while MIBF does not deny individuals the opportunity to receive their support, the fund is facing challenges due to increased demand and the evolving landscape of the immigration legal system.
“It’s a thought-out plan. Immigration judges are being fired left and right… So, you’re not having many judges able to hear cases, and you’re not granting bond to many people while also expanding detention facilities across the country. This means the end goal is detention.”
underneath the terracotta arch in the heart of Little Village—a predominantly Mexican neighborhood under heavy attack by ICE. (Conner Martinez)
How Organizers Capitalize on the Moment
Despite the acute challenges of the current moment in this country’s long history of inhumane detention of immigrants, organizers are not discouraged. Instead, they’re seeking to confront those who hold the levers of power in order to build a long-term movement. For the Immigrants’ Rights Working Committee within the Chicago Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression (CAARPR), this means going on the offensive.
“While rapid response and ICE-watching is great, it’s defensive,” Omar, co-chair of the working group, said about capitalizing on the moment. “There will come a day where people will go back to not care about immigrants again. I know that sounds nihilistic or cynical, but a day will come where this won’t be the hot issue. This means we need to focus on campaigns that can be long-lasting, and right now that means taking offensive strategies,” Omar stated.
According to Omar, an offensive strategy is one in which you identify your long-term targets: “our campaigns and our targets are the people who rolled out the red carpet for ICE and DHS. They’re the people who will be here when those agencies are gone.” For Chicago activists, the targets are those who hold the power to shut down the Broadview Facility—the State’s Attorney, Eileen Burke, and Attorney General, Kwame Raoul.
“Our role as a grassroots movement is escalation, targeting, and making sure people have eyes on the prize… We want them to think long-term, and we want people to be bold in their actions.”
Immigration detention did not appear overnight. It was deliberately built over decades by a bipartisan coalition of political actors and greed. Now, as the Trump administration provides its lawless street-level thugs with a historic slush fund, organizers are continuing to demonstrate a simple truth: organized resistance always outlasts cruelty.
