“A Day Without an Immigrant”

Feb 17, 2025

The Hispanic community in Chicago and many other states in the country with big immigrant populations are living in fear.

At first, Tom Homan, Trump’s “Border Czar,” said that they would arrest only “criminals.” But president Trump said the majority of immigrants ARE criminals. They look for the criminals but they also arrest anybody they find without legal status. For Tom Homan, these are “collaterals.” With this situation, anyone who looks Hispanic can be detained and questioned, whatever the status of their papers.

For this reason, the Hispanic communities in many states have tried to organize, to protest in different ways, with rallies and boycotts of some big super-stores like Walmart, Target, and Sam’s Club, to name a few.

On Monday, February 3^rd there was a call in the social media, Facebook and YouTube, to have a “Day Without Immigrants.” That was supposed to mean no shopping and no work for the Hispanic community.

The result was hardly noticed by the same Hispanic people. In Chicago, there were only a few small businesses in Little Village where people did not work. And some Southwest Side schools like Curie High School had around 50% student attendance that day. But companies with large numbers of Hispanic workers, like Fellowes, WeatherTech and Packtiv Corp, were not affected by the call for workers to stay home.

There is a big immigrant community, largely Mexican, in Chicago. But to organize through social media like YouTube or Facebook is not very convincing for many workers. To reach out to the working class, to organize—that requires a different kind of planning. And there needs to be a call for workers in general, for both immigrants and non-immigrants. We are all under many of the same pressures, and we work for the same bosses, who all want to take advantage of our situation.