Chicago is no place for ICE’s vigilante academy.
Beyond Legal Aid and our partners are demanding answers.
In July 2020, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (“ICE”) Enforcement and Removals Operations division (“ERO”) announced it would be holding a “Citizens Academy” pilot program in Chicago, that was scheduled for September 2020. Soon after, it came to light that other components of the agency had operated similar "Citizens Academy" programs in past years, dating back to at least 2012.
“Citizens Academy” programs are not schools and are not affiliated with any accredited or educational institution.
Instead, these are programs that would seed xenophobia and violence, influencing participants to view their immigrant neighbors as targets.
The program is designed to make high-conflict and violent ICE activities accessible and even entertaining to the civilians ICE selects for its program. Civilian participants, handpicked by ICE, would be invited to the six-week program and would receive training on ICE removal operations, “including, but not limited to defensive tactics, firearms familiarization, and targeted arrests.”
ICE’s description of the curriculum for the ERO Citizens Academy also indicates that it includes a visit to an immigration detention center, raising questions as to the privacy rights of those in detention. The active scenario-based nature of the pilot program creates the possibility that the Citizens Academy program will encourage powerful individuals who participate to help carry out the ERO’s mission of “arrest[ing] and removing of aliens.”
News of the vigilante “Citizens Academy” programs alarmed immigrant activists, who have experienced firsthand how ICE escalated its tactics during the former administration’s reign of terror against immigrant communities, which included sweeping changes to immigration policies, many of which remain in effect. Community leaders were similarly outraged and vowed to boycott the program, stating “[they] are very aware of the danger that this poses to our communities, and [are] not going to allow that to happen.”
As U.S. Senator from Illinois Tammy Duckworth put it, “This PR move by ICE is remarkably misguided, will do nothing to make communities any safer and should never have been proposed in the first place, much less while ICE is claiming they do not have sufficient funding for essential functions.”
After public outrage, ICE announced two weeks before the Chicago pilot program was expected to begin, that the program was canceled due to the coronavirus pandemic, and rescheduled to the Spring of 2021.
ICE has never disavowed this program and it presumably continues to operate.
Immigrant Defense Project (“IDP”) in New York City and Organized Communities Against Deportations (“OCAD”) in Chicago, along with the Center for Constitutional Rights (“CCR”), filed a FOIA request seeking transparency surrounding these programs, including training materials and data regarding how ICE runs these "Citizens Academy" programs.
