CATA, ICIRR to protest ICE raids, demand Cook County State's Attorney Burke stand up to feds
Coalition Against the Trump Agenda (CATA)
For Immediate Release: Wednesday, September 24th, 2025
CATA, ICIRR to protest ICE raids, demand Cook County State's Attorney Burke stand up to feds
Livestream will be available on @coalitionagainsttrump on Instagram. Footage rights released with credit to “Coalition Against the Trump Agenda”
Who: Coalition Against the Trump Agenda (CATA) and Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights (ICIRR), plus CATA members Chicago Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression (CAARPR), USPCN-Chicago, Chicago Teachers Union (CTU), Organized Communities Against Deportations (OCAD), Casa DuPage Workers Center, United Working Families, Grassroots Collaborative, Warehouse Workers for Justice, Community Renewal Society, GoodKids MadCity, Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) at UIC, 290 IPO, Mientras Haya Amor Haya Esperanza, and many others.
What: Protest and march to challenge ICE’s widespread attacks on Immigrants and demand Cook County State’s Attorney Eileen Burke stand up to ICE
Where: Daley Plaza, 50 W. Washington St., downtown Chicago
When: Saturday, September 27th, at 1 PM
In response to the Trump administration's escalating attacks on immigrants, as well as the recent murder of Silverio Villegas-Gonzalez by ICE agents in the Franklin Park suburb of Chicago, the Coalition Against the Trump Agenda (CATA) and the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights (ICIRR) are mobilizing for a mass demonstration in opposition to ICE’s tyranny, with Cook County State’s Attorney Eileen Burke as a particular target.
While immigrant communities are living in fear of being kidnapped and deported, and hundreds of known survivors of Chicago police torture and wrongful conviction suffer in Illinois prisons, Burke has positioned herself as a staunch enemy of justice and police accountability.
Instead of standing on the side of the people against Trump's racist mass deportations, Burke has said she will work with federal agents to prosecute protesters, and has shown she will let racist cops off the hook when they commit crimes. Burke has established a pattern of enabling racist policing by reversing the progress Cook County had made freeing torture survivors and the wrongfully convicted.
In December of last year, she even dropped the charges the previous State's Attorney Kim Foxx had brought against Patrick O'Donnell, one of three racist Oak Lawn, Illinois, police officers who beat then-17-year-old Palestinian American Hadi Abuatelah within inches of his life.
CATA and ICIRR will mobilize thousands into the streets this Saturday to demand that Burke:
1. Investigate the Broadview ICE staging facility;
2. Investigate the killing of Villegas-Gonzalez; and
3. Call for the freedom of all survivors of torture and wrongful conviction!
“We cannot accept the divide-and-conquer rhetoric that calls our neighbors criminals, calls our siblings illegals,” said Omar Flores of CAARPR’s Immigrant Rights Working Committee. “These are the people that Trump is attacking. So we have to stand up together and say very loudly and proudly that we won't allow this to happen in our city and county any longer!”
CATA and ICIRR mobilized over 8,000 people to say “NO TRUMP, NO TROOPS” on Saturday, September 6th, and another 3,500 on Tuesday, September 9th, in opposition to “Operation Midway Blitz,” because the people of Chicago and Cook County are united against these racist and reactionary attacks against our communities.
### End ###
Coalition Against the Trump Agenda operates on the following points of unity:
With Trump's commitment to ramp up repression, we need to forge the broadest unity we can in order to defend our movements.
We unite around the demands to Fight the Racist & Reactionary Republican Agenda, Defend & Expand Immigrant Rights, Stand with Palestine and end all U.S aid to Israel, Defend the Right to Unionize & Strike, Stop Police Crimes, Defend Women’s LGBTQIA+ & Reproductive Rights, and Defend Education & Academic Freedom.
It is only by uniting the combined forces of our movements to fight for all of our demands that we can not only defend our communities, but win greater power.