A tamale stand left behind near a BP gas station on Chicago’s South Side was the only evidence that tamale vendor Laura Murillo had been picked up by immigration officials.
Around 7:30 a.m. Thursday, residents started livestreaming on social media and the Citizen App, showing more than a dozen federal agents in a Home Depot parking lot on 47th Street and Western Boulevard in Back of the Yards.
Murillo’s fiance, Jaime Pérez, said that he was on a WhatsApp video call with her as immigration enforcement agents confronted her and she pleaded for help.
“You’re hurting me. You’re hurting me,” he recalled her saying. “And then they snatched the phone from her.”
Witnesses reported multiple arrests, but it’s unclear how many more people were detained at that location and another Home Depot on the North Side where immigration officials were seen that day.
Murillo was taken to the immigration processing center in Broadview. Pérez said he had spoken with by phone and she had asked for a coat because of the cold temperatures inside.
Local volunteers from the Southwest Side Rapid Response team arrived at the scene shortly after Murillo was arrested.
“I crossed the street and I saw that there were six unmarked cars filled with ICE agents. They wore military gear, which meant they had tactical helmets, long guns — at least 20 agents,” said volunteer Jianan Shi at a news conference with the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights.
They also witnessed “a large staging area with more than 15 cars” at a nearby shopping plaza on 47th and Damen Avenue.
Pérez said Murillo has been in the country for 20 years and has two daughters, ages 18 and 16; the youngest has special needs. The older daughter, Genesis Ozuna, picked up her mother’s supplies, and her work van was moved to a safe location by All Zions Towing at no cost to the family.
“This is how our $150 billion that Congress and the president appropriated are being spent,” said Lawrence Benito of the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights.
“To pick up tamale vendors off the street, to intimidate day laborers trying to earn a day’s work, to detain landscapers driving to their next lawn to care for, to detain unhoused people seeking a respite from sleeping on the streets…”
Ozuna and a group of residents decided to sell tamales from Murillo’s stand the following morning with café de olla courtesy of Back of the Yards Coffee. The effort, led by the nonprofit Increase the Peace, resulted in the sale of more than 300 tamales, with the proceeds going to supporting Murillo and her family.
“It’s been a very scary and tough time for us right now,” said Maria Orozco of the Street Vendors Association, whose parents sell food in Oak Lawn. “It’s been over 20 days since the majority of our vendors haven’t gone out to sell because of the political climate … a lot of them are just hiding out, making sure they’re not coming out of the house, having family members taking them food, groceries and stuff like that.”
The Street Vendors Association, based in Little Village, has more than 100 street vendors from the city and suburbs. Among its members was a flower vendor who was deported to Veracruz, Mexico, this month. The group has moved its monthly meetings online.
Orozco said the association has started a GoFundMe to collect funds that could supplement some of the income that they’re not receiving because of Trump’s deportation campaign.