One of our people was taken… And we were not prepared.

On February 27, 2026, our friend, neighbor and significant other for one of our organizers, G, was taken by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents outside his home in West Garfield Park.

G has a pending asylum case and has been living in Chicago for four years. He is now in ICE detention.

As organizers in Chicago, many of us work closely with immigrant communities and restaurant workers. We talk frequently about preparation: knowing your rights, planning for enforcement actions, gathering documentation, and building support networks.

But when it happened to one of us, we realized something difficult: We were not prepared either.

What followed was a crash course in rapid response, one that required improvisation, coordination, and an enormous amount of emotional labor.

We are sharing what happened so others can prepare in ways we wish we had.

The First 2 – 6 Hours

About one to two hours after the initial detention, one of our organizers received a phone call from G. He had been taken to the ICE processing center in Broadview. She alerted a close friend immediately, and within minutes, that information began moving through trusted networks.

Signal chats were created.
People stepped forward to take on roles.
In the absence of a plan, we built one on the fly.

What We Immediately Needed

• Legal contacts

• The name and contact information for a trusted immigration lawyer

• Fundraising infrastructure

• Someone to set up a GoFundMe to cover legal fees and potential bond

• Draft language everyone agreed on

• Photos

• A realistic fundraising goal

• Family contact

• Someone responsible for communicating with G’s partner and family

• Rapid response outreach

• Contact information for G’s landlord, as rent was due the next day

• Keys to G’s apartment

We began contacting every hotline and legal support organization we could find, including:

• Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights (ICIRR)

• National Immigrant Justice Center (NIJC)

• Midwest Immigration Bond Fund (MIBF)

To even begin those conversations, we needed very specific information:

• Full legal name (correct spelling — not a nickname)

• Birthdate

• A-number (if one exists)

• How they entered the United States

• Date of entry to the United States (Docket date)

• Whether they had ever been detained before

• Whether they had ever been deported before

• Any religious or community affiliations

• Volunteer or community involvement

• Allergies and medications

We also quickly realized we needed one centralized place for information.

We created a shared document to track:

• Who had called which organization and when

• What responses we received

• Tasks still needing completion

• Updates about G’s location

We used a CryptPad document and shared the link only with the core rapid-response group.

After 24 Hours

Within less than four days, G had been moved multiple times. We used the ICE locator, which is very useful for finding where your loved one is. 

https://locator.ice.gov/odls/#/search& https://www.ice.gov/detention-facilitiesis a helpful link. Once we saw where he was being moved, we were able to see about visitation rules, commissary, etc., for each detention site. 

• From Chicago.

• To Broadview

• To Clay County, Indiana.

• Then again, across state lines to Daviess County, Kentucky.

Human Rights Watch also developed their own locator system that will automatically notify immigration attorneys and family members if their detained loved one gets moved, released or deported. Rather than having to manually track yourself, you would get an automated message when there is a change in status, AND this tool keeps an auditable history of detention. The U.S. ICE locator tool only shows you where your loved one is, not where they have been. You can download this tool as a Google Chrome extension.

https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/immigration-client-locato/nfodclghgnpkjenaejdgmiloajlonpll

We were never notified. Each time he moved, we had to wait until he appeared again in the ICE locator system. Each time he moved, all commissary funds had to be re-established in a new system. Money sent in one facility does not transfer to another. Each detention center the commissary had a different app, things don't get transferred and each app is extremely different and confusing. Contact had to be rebuilt from scratch. And, the lawyer we had almost locked down was no longer able to take on G’s case because he wasn’t licensed in the Federal Court District in KY.

A note on setting up commissary: When setting up commissary accounts through detention centers, the person putting money into the detainee's account usually has to upload a photo of their passport or ID and this information is disclosed to the detention center and ultimately ICE. Finding someone who has legal status and is comfortable identifying themselves with immigration enforcement. 

Building His Case

The EOIR website was useful is getting details on his case- who is his judge, when is it, virtual meeting linkhttps://acis.eoir.justice.gov/en/ & search judges and their track records here https://www.mobilepathways.org/dashboards/judge-profiles

Once we secured a new lawyer, we learned another crucial step: To support his bond request, the attorney asked for character affidavits. People in his life, his landlord, employer, friends, and community members, needed to write sworn statements describing:

• His character

• His ties to the community

• His reliability and work history

• His impact on the people around him

This required coordination:

• Someone drafted a template

• Others adapted it into personal statements

• Documents had to be printed

• IDs copied

• Statements notarized

• Everything submitted to the attorney quickly

Even something as simple as finding a notary becomes urgent under these circumstances.
If the people who submit character witness affidavits are able to be present for the bond hearing (it’s usually virtual), it may show the judge that there is a strong support behind the person detained and that they are not a flight risk nor danger to the community. Not all judges will allow this, and there are reports of court watchers and immigration attorneys not being allowed into the virtual courtroom due to “errors” on the platform, Webex. We encourage you to try anyway. Having family or friends be in on these virtual hearings does a great deal to help humanize the "respondent" - establishing "hearing support" is an important step in this process. 

What We Were Not Prepared For

Legal Costs: Immigration detention moves quickly into expensive territory.

For G’s legal case:

• $150 consultation with the attorney

• $4,500 retainer for his bond case

• $5,000 for his asylum case, which could increase depending on how many hours of work it requires

Total: roughly $9,000 before bond.

Bond: We still do not know what his bond will be.

We have been warned it could range anywhere from:

• $3,000 to $20,000.

Constant Transfers: In just a few days, he was moved across multiple states.

Each move disrupted communication and access to funds. 

The Administrative Burden: Supporting someone in detention is a full-time logistical effort:

• Monitoring the locator system

• Managing funds

• Coordinating legal work

• Communicating with family

• Gathering documents

• Organizing community support

• Translation and language barriers. 

  • Even for those of us who are native English speakers, communicating with lawyers and other authority figures was confusing and at times challenging. We often buddied up for important phone calls or meetings so one person could listen and ask questions while the other took notes.

None of this is intuitive. Most of it we learned on the fly.

What We Wish We Had Done Before This Happened

If you are part of a community where immigration enforcement is a risk, preparation cannot start after someone is taken. It must begin now.

Things that would have helped enormously:

• A rapid-response team

  • A small trusted group who already know their roles - base their roles on what your natural skills are. For example: who is good at research or understanding legal language? 

    • When setting up commissary accounts through detention centers, the person putting money into the detainee's account usually has to upload a photo of their passport or ID and this information is disclosed to the detention center and ultimately ICE. Finding someone who has legal status and is comfortable identifying themselves will be the best person to take on commissary accounts.

    • Main point of contact

    • Someone on legal

    • Someone on housing and utilities 

    • Someone on finances and commissary

    • A person to keep notes, master doc, and spreadsheet updated

• A shared document system

  • One place to track information and updates

    • We recommend Cryptpad

• Legal contacts ready 

  • A vetted immigration lawyer already identified and with admission to practice at the federal level

• Prepared fundraising language

  • Photos and text ready to publish quickly

• Copies of key documents

  • Passports

  • Copies of utility bills to pause, continue, or close accounts

  • Immigration paperwork

  • ID cards

  • Work verification

  • Housing documentation

  • Asylum application and relevant materials that support claim

• Affidavit templates

  • Character statements prepared in advance

• Community infrastructure

  • People who trust one another

  • People willing to act quickly

  • People able to take on different roles

  • People willing to show up to court hearings to show support for the detained person – this demonstrates that they are rooted in the community, and not a flight risk or danger to community

Notes On How Convoluted the Immigration Legal System Is

The rapidly changing legal context for immigration cases causes confusion among detained persons, their community, immigration attorneys, AND immigration judges. Part of this confusion is because immigration judges are employees of the Department of Justice, or Executive Branch. They are not employed by the Judicial Branch (the courts–I know this is confusing). So, when the DOJ issues guidance saying all detained immigrants have no right to bond or release, and some courts say otherwise, confusion ensues. In all of these, the final decision maker is the U.S. Supreme Court, but these cases have yet to make it there. 

There are different rulings on mandatory detention and right to bond hearings in different states– we advise you to look at any Circuit Court of Appeals ruling related to this for the district in which your loved one is detained.

For example, the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the government DOES have the right to detain immigrants without bond until their removal proceedings or asylum cases are complete. The 5th Circuit governs over Louisiana, Texas, and Mississippi.

However, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, which governs California, Arizona, Alaska, Hawaii, Montana, Idaho, Oregon and Washington State, ruled that detained immigrants have a right to a bond hearing and through that, potential release from detention. Not all Circuit Courts have issued rulings, or been brought cases over which to decide. Ultimately this means this issue will end up at the Supreme Court in the next year or two, due to the Circuit Courts split on decisions. So, pay attention to where your loved one is detained and which Circuit Court governs over that state, and look for any rulings related to this. 

Prepare Now

This experience has been terrifying, exhausting, and expensive. But it has also shown us something else: community is the only reason we have been able to respond at all.

Friends stepped up immediately. People donated. People wrote affidavits. People spent hours navigating unfamiliar systems over and over again. None of this would have been possible alone. If you take anything from our experience, let it be this: Prepare now. Build community now. 

• Have the difficult conversations.

• Identify the people who will step in.

• Draft the language.

• Make the copies.

• Build the trust.

Because when one of your people is taken, everything moves quickly.

And you will need one another. 

While this experience has been exhausting, we are heartened by how quickly we mobilized for one another. 

To quote abolitionist Mariame Kaba, “Hope is a discipline.” It is an intentional practice and commitment to a better world. That is what has carried us through this. Not just hope for G and his freedom, but hope that through this work and deep love for one another, we are building the foundation for that better world.  

Hope builds confidence. We are confident that we will continue to support and care for one another no matter what comes our way. Confidence builds trust, and trust builds power. 

Power is what can topple the same regime that is imprisoning G right now.