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The TRiiBE is working in collaboration with indie investigative newsroom Unraveled Press and alt-weekly Chicago Reader to bring you confirmed sightings of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and other federal agents in the Chicago area.
From 10:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m. today, organizers are leading an anti-ICE demonstration at the Gary/Chicago International Airport, a joint civil-military public airport in Gary, Indiana. The airport has an adjacent U.S. Customs facility where immigration processing takes place, according to a U.S. Customs and Border Patrol fact sheet.
Today’s demonstration — titled “ICE Out of NWI — is being put on by NWI Resist, a coalition of activist groups and community members across the Chicagoland area and Northwest Indiana who collectively fight back against racist deportations and mass incarceration.
The airport is about 25 miles southeast of downtown Chicago, and nearly 37 miles southeast of Broadview, Illinois.
“There is a direct connection between NWI and Chicago ICE raids and it’s facilitated by the Gary/Chicago International Airport,” a protest flyer reads. “Join us to demand that the contract between Gary/Chicago International Airport and ICE end immediately. ICE out of NWI, and everywhere.”
In a Facebook post with Just Transition NWI and BLM Gary, NWI Resist organizers say they have protested at the airport without incident multiple times since 2016, “and we have always done so in unrestricted public spaces.”
Organizers say there will be individuals on-site who are trained in de-escalation, first air and rapid response. Lawyers and members of the press also will be present.
On Oct. 10, Gary Mayor Eddie Melton issued a statement condemning the increased U.S. Immigration and Customs (ICE) activity.
“The presence of federal ICE agents in our region is unsettling and causes significant concern within our community,” Melton stated. “I want to be unequivocally clear: my administration does not support the efforts or condone the actions of ICE raids that target our friends, family, and neighbors because of their race and ethnicity.”
In 2019, the Chicago Tribune reported that those detained at the suburban Broadview ICE facility are bused to the Gary/Chicago International Airport for deportation flights. According to the report, ICE Air Operations began using the Gary/Chicago International Airport for deportation flights in June 2013.
A video posted this past July to the official Twitter account for ICE shows a deportation flight using a plane with Global X written on it. The video blurs the faces of government workers while showing the faces of handcuffed detainees. It’s unclear what date the flight took place.
“This one lifted off from Gary, Ind., carrying dozens of aliens with one-way tickets out of the United States,” the caption reads.
On Facebook, NWI Resist organizers wrote about communities being torn apart by ICE and federal agents.
“Families are being separated. People are being disappeared. The moment to stand up to this is now, and whether the airport has an agreement with ICE or not, it is complicit in this network of destruction and violence,” the NWI post reads. “It is our right to protest, to speak freely, and to gather on public property. We keep us safe.”
Weekly anti-ICE protests also continue today near the Broadview ICE facility from 7:00 a.m. to 11:00 a.m., and Saturday from 3:00 p.m. to 6:00 p.m.
In Gary, Indiana this morning— Community members have gathered in protest of ongoing ICE flights. This small, sleepy airport is where many captives from the Chicago area detention center are transported (frequently in the middle of the night) as the next step in the deportation pipeline.
— unraveled (@unraveledpress.com) October 24, 2025 at 10:17 AM
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10:00 a.m.
Unraveled Press is on the ground at the “ICE Out of NWI.” They interviewed Lisa Vallee, organizing director for Just Transition NWI. Vallee shared that she was a member of the original NWI Resist coalition that began back in 2017 after learning that community members were being deported out of the Gary/Chicago International Airport.
“We started by doing small protests at the airport back in 2017. Some of them got larger, up to 100 people coming,” Vallee said. “We had union workers coming. We had nurses from Chicago unions coming, faith leaders and all sorts of different community organizations to say that we do not want our airport used for this. We don’t want any of our neighbors to be deported.”
Vallee said with the escalating ICE raids under President Donald Trump’s administration, it was necessary for the organization to pick up the fight again.
Asked about the presence of police sawhorses and whether the organizers are confined to a “free speech zone,” Vallee said they have not had any correspondence with the airport.
“We didn’t want to do anything, like, comply in advance, and we didn’t want to give the airport the opportunity to say that they worked with the organizers of this event because they didn’t,” Vallee said.
However, she has heard unconfirmed rumors that a free speech zone may be set up in the future.
“This might seem like a safe zone, but once the 40 or so militarized police come and stand on the outside of this, it is not a safe zone,” Vallee said. “We do have people that are trained in rapid response, security, street medics and de-escalation, so we are hoping that that situation doesn’t arise, but we know we’re much more safe out here in the open than we are even behind this wooden box.”
10:15 a.m.
The Chicago Reader also is on the ground at the “ICE Out of NWI.” They interviewed Robert Garcia, 5th district councilman for the city of East Chicago in Indiana.
“I want to come out here and show my support for the people. I don’t agree with what’s going on with the ICE [and] no due process for the people that’s getting picked up,” Garcia said. “I’m not in support of that at all.”
Garcia talked about the connection between the militarized ICE actions happening in Chicago and the deportation flights from the Gary airport.
“People do not want to go out on the streets. We’re talking people food, medical care also, but as they keep on snatching people off the street, no due process,” Garcia said.
He shared the story of a woman who was going to work about 5:00 a.m. one morning and as she backed out of her driveway, two federal agents pulled up on her, broke a window and snatched her out of the car.
“Kids are crying and everything else, but just no due process. Like, you can’t even ask what’s going on with the paperwork. It’s just chaos,” Garcia said. “I don’t want ICE agents getting hurt also. They might pull up to the wrong person one day, [that person] thinking, ‘I don’t know who’s this person with a mask coming up to me,’ and they might get hurt themselves.”
Asked about the impact of ICE activity has had on the East Chicago community, Garcia said people are scared.
“I’m of Puerto Rican descent. They’re picking anybody that looks Hispanic, brown skin,” Garcia said. “You know, East Chicago is majority Hispanic. And anybody getting picked up at any time, doesn’t matter what nationality you are, you could get picked up just because you’re brown skin.”
10:45 a.m.
According to Unraveled Press, the Gary Police Department set up a “free speech area” in the publicly-owned parking lot ahead of the protest. There is no police presence in the lot at the moment.
Speaking on the microphone, Black Lives Matter Gary organizer Kim McGee called for solidarity among marginalized communities in Northwest Indiana.
“This is not isolated at all. They’re just snatching people off the streets. To some level, this is what certain parts of our population have always experienced,” she said. “It could be you next.”
A call for solidarity among marginalized communities of NW Indiana. "This is not isolated at all. They're just snatching people off the streets. To some level, this is what certain parts of our population have always experienced. And now, a lot more people are seeing [...] it could be you next."
— unraveled (@unraveledpress.com) October 24, 2025 at 10:30 AM
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Black Lives Matter Gary representative Jonathan Wilson recalled the uprisings in Ferguson, Missouri that followed the police killing of Mike Brown. He led demonstrators in the chant, “if we don’t get it, shut it down!”
“We hear that chant all over the world, and it came from a small city — I didn’t even know about Ferguson until that happened,” he said. “We gotta stop these deportations.”
Wilson has been organizing since high school. He helped lead a protest of 200 deportations from the Gary airport back in 2018, according to the Chicago Tribune.
And a callback to the uprising in Ferguson, Missouri after police killed Mike Brown. Chanting, "if we don't get it, shut it down!"
— unraveled (@unraveledpress.com) October 24, 2025 at 10:39 AM
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11:30 a.m.
The demonstration has wrapped up. As the demonstration took place in Gary, there’s been lots of ICE activity across the Chicagoland area.
According to the Uptown/Edgewater Rapid Response Team, two people were detained around 9:20 a.m. at Broadway and Belmont Avenue near the Laugh Factory comedy club.
